Good morning folks! After having a read over the discussion thread for the G4 top 100 list, an idea struck me. Since so many of us are incensed over G4's and other lists being too subjective and inaccurate, I propose that we, Smogon, take it upon ourselves to build our OWN Top Video Games list! This process will take careful planning and building from the ground up, and we must take care to utilize all resources we have (and be aware of our weaknesses). Because it will be time consuming, I think it would be best to break it up into Stages.
In order to build an acceptable list that is as objective and accurate as humanly possible (which is asking a lot), we first must discuss, propose, and agree upon the variables involved. This involves creating a system of scoring and ranking that evaluates each game fairly based on its many different aspects, from gameplay to replayability, music to graphics, and even popularity and marketing to nostalgia and pioneering. We must decide, as a group, which categories should be used to rate a game, and how to properly weight those categories based on importance. This in itself will require a long series of discussions, nomination and voting periods to set the rubric up.
Once we have a rubric, we can begin to evaluate, score, and eventually rank the video games. This is also a challenging task to tackle, because even with an acceptable rubric not all of us are serious gamers, so many games that may deserve to be considered simply have never been played by any of us. Unfortunately, because we are a smaller and private community, the more popular games will garner more discussion, but I think this dominance can be offset by combining a fair scoring system with a pledge to approach nomination and voting with as little bias as possible, so that even less popular but great video games will receive the scores they deserve, and by extension will earn their rightful spot on the rankings. The bright side to this is that while not all popular games are good, almost all good video games are at least popular enough to be known and debatable. Instances of a truly great video game being known to only one or two people here should be rare, so I think this won't be as big an issue as we might think.
Sorry for the length, but I wanted to lay my idea out so people could understand it. Now to the purpose of this thread, which is Stage 1. I believe the first step in this process, before we do anything else, is to create a pool of games to evaluate. This will enable us to start with a hefty chunk of games and then slowly but surely evaluate them all, enabling us to score and rank them and create our Top Whatever list. The way this first step will work will be based on simple nominations. Basically you can feel free to post and nominate any and as many games as you like to be included in the process, and they will all be considered and evaluated. This maximizes our sample size and hopefully limits the number of deserving titles that get overlooked or forgotten. Before I open this for nominations, I want to make a few rules:
1. Avoid Repeating Previous Nominations - For the sake of my sanity, since I'll be keeping track of everything, please compare your list of nominations to the master list in the OP to avoid repeating any entries. If one of your nominations has already been mentioned, please exclude that from your list before you post. A game only needs to be nominated once to be included in the pool, so no need to worry about your favorite game being forgotten.
2. Leave emotion at the door - As Rusty implies, try your best to not let emotion cloud your judgment. Be as unbiased as you possibly can, or this list will fail epically. Do not post a game unless you legitimately believe it deserves to be ranked. If you know the game sucks, don't post it.
3. No debating other people's nominations in this thread - the time for discussion will come eventually, don't worry. For now, Stage 1 will be devoted to nominating and compiling the list of games we'll have in our pool, so please limit your posts to simply the list of games you want included. This also means no bashing or flaming other users for their entries. I'm quite sure someone will nominate Angry Birds, and they have every right to do so, so insulting them for it will not be tolerated. If we let the rubric do its job, any bad entries will be left out of the list in the end anyway, so you don't need to discuss them here.
4. No off topic posts - Though I have no control over this since I'm not a mod, I would like to humbly ask off topic posts to be removed from the thread. Since this undoubtedly will become rather large, unnecessary spam will be a great hindrance and decidedly off-pissing. If a mod could help me regulate this, that would be outstanding.
5. Multiple posts are allowed, but within reason - Please try to get all your nominations into one post. However, I understand that inevitably we'll think of more to add later, so a new post can be made to add those entries. However, users that abuse this rule and intentionally make unnecessary numbers of posts with small lists will have all of their nominations discarded and will be barred from participation in the future stages. Like the previous rule, mod assistance here would be very welcome.
6. Moody clause - Obligatory Moody clause.
Ok then, that should cover it at least for Stage 1. I will update the original post as often as I can to keep the list current, but I can't spend 24 hours a day on here so try to be patient and look over the posts above yours to make sure you don't repeat a previous nomination that hasn't been added to the list yet. I will periodically make additional posts in the thread as I make updates to provide placeholders and make searching easier. That way if you're checking previous posts for redundant entries you only need to scroll back as far as my last post. I will typically do this at the end of a session rather than with every update so I avoid spamming up the thread myself.
And, without further ado, let's get this show on the road! Below is the master list, which will reflect all nominations by all posters. My nominations will begin the list, so go from there. I will do my best to keep this list alphabetized for easier review.
MASTER LIST
google doc spreadsheet is located here. I'm not going to continue to re-paste this list every time I make an update so please review the spreadsheet before posting entries.
In order to build an acceptable list that is as objective and accurate as humanly possible (which is asking a lot), we first must discuss, propose, and agree upon the variables involved. This involves creating a system of scoring and ranking that evaluates each game fairly based on its many different aspects, from gameplay to replayability, music to graphics, and even popularity and marketing to nostalgia and pioneering. We must decide, as a group, which categories should be used to rate a game, and how to properly weight those categories based on importance. This in itself will require a long series of discussions, nomination and voting periods to set the rubric up.
Once we have a rubric, we can begin to evaluate, score, and eventually rank the video games. This is also a challenging task to tackle, because even with an acceptable rubric not all of us are serious gamers, so many games that may deserve to be considered simply have never been played by any of us. Unfortunately, because we are a smaller and private community, the more popular games will garner more discussion, but I think this dominance can be offset by combining a fair scoring system with a pledge to approach nomination and voting with as little bias as possible, so that even less popular but great video games will receive the scores they deserve, and by extension will earn their rightful spot on the rankings. The bright side to this is that while not all popular games are good, almost all good video games are at least popular enough to be known and debatable. Instances of a truly great video game being known to only one or two people here should be rare, so I think this won't be as big an issue as we might think.
Sorry for the length, but I wanted to lay my idea out so people could understand it. Now to the purpose of this thread, which is Stage 1. I believe the first step in this process, before we do anything else, is to create a pool of games to evaluate. This will enable us to start with a hefty chunk of games and then slowly but surely evaluate them all, enabling us to score and rank them and create our Top Whatever list. The way this first step will work will be based on simple nominations. Basically you can feel free to post and nominate any and as many games as you like to be included in the process, and they will all be considered and evaluated. This maximizes our sample size and hopefully limits the number of deserving titles that get overlooked or forgotten. Before I open this for nominations, I want to make a few rules:
1. Avoid Repeating Previous Nominations - For the sake of my sanity, since I'll be keeping track of everything, please compare your list of nominations to the master list in the OP to avoid repeating any entries. If one of your nominations has already been mentioned, please exclude that from your list before you post. A game only needs to be nominated once to be included in the pool, so no need to worry about your favorite game being forgotten.
2. Leave emotion at the door - As Rusty implies, try your best to not let emotion cloud your judgment. Be as unbiased as you possibly can, or this list will fail epically. Do not post a game unless you legitimately believe it deserves to be ranked. If you know the game sucks, don't post it.
3. No debating other people's nominations in this thread - the time for discussion will come eventually, don't worry. For now, Stage 1 will be devoted to nominating and compiling the list of games we'll have in our pool, so please limit your posts to simply the list of games you want included. This also means no bashing or flaming other users for their entries. I'm quite sure someone will nominate Angry Birds, and they have every right to do so, so insulting them for it will not be tolerated. If we let the rubric do its job, any bad entries will be left out of the list in the end anyway, so you don't need to discuss them here.
4. No off topic posts - Though I have no control over this since I'm not a mod, I would like to humbly ask off topic posts to be removed from the thread. Since this undoubtedly will become rather large, unnecessary spam will be a great hindrance and decidedly off-pissing. If a mod could help me regulate this, that would be outstanding.
5. Multiple posts are allowed, but within reason - Please try to get all your nominations into one post. However, I understand that inevitably we'll think of more to add later, so a new post can be made to add those entries. However, users that abuse this rule and intentionally make unnecessary numbers of posts with small lists will have all of their nominations discarded and will be barred from participation in the future stages. Like the previous rule, mod assistance here would be very welcome.
6. Moody clause - Obligatory Moody clause.
Ok then, that should cover it at least for Stage 1. I will update the original post as often as I can to keep the list current, but I can't spend 24 hours a day on here so try to be patient and look over the posts above yours to make sure you don't repeat a previous nomination that hasn't been added to the list yet. I will periodically make additional posts in the thread as I make updates to provide placeholders and make searching easier. That way if you're checking previous posts for redundant entries you only need to scroll back as far as my last post. I will typically do this at the end of a session rather than with every update so I avoid spamming up the thread myself.
And, without further ado, let's get this show on the road! Below is the master list, which will reflect all nominations by all posters. My nominations will begin the list, so go from there. I will do my best to keep this list alphabetized for easier review.
MASTER LIST
google doc spreadsheet is located here. I'm not going to continue to re-paste this list every time I make an update so please review the spreadsheet before posting entries.
