The Game Awards 2015 Best Developer and GOTY.

[Megaoverlord12]

LuckyTrouble said:

I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the criteria for best developer and the relation to GOTY. Being a great developer doesn't necessarily mean that you're making the next GOTY. Being a good developer means making quality titles, making regular efforts to listen to the community to improve the final product, and having consumer friendly DLC practices in an age where DLC of some kind is a given with every big budget title.

It just so happens that CD Projekt Red made an incredible game, and then went on to be an example for basically every other developer by providing free DLC, expansive, inexpensive paid DLC, and listening to the community to provide patches to the base content that offered improvements in all the right places.

This is one year where best developer and GOTY happened to walk hand in hand, but just because CD Projekt Red was a super consumer friendly developer this year doesn't mean that another game couldn't have won GOTY. We all knew that The Witcher 3 was an incredibly strong contender though, and it was basically guaranteed as GOTY unless something could manage to dethrone it. Ultimately though, nothing did throughout the year on a critical level, and thus, the best developer of the year also happened to produce the best game of the year.

Edit: @OP - You seem to think that best developer requires game volume, which I see as odd. Why should a developer have to divide their resources and risk lesser products for the sake of praise at an award show? Should every director have to direct multiple movies a year to be best director? Every musical artist have to put out multiple albums in a year to be the best artist? That is just dumb criteria that values quantity over quality.

You make fair points, I just think the whole question of Game of the Year gets ruined when several awards earlier they announce that CD Projekt Red gets developer of the year. Part of the hype of an award show is to see what wins, which is all ruined for the big award if it's spelled out half way through. Maybe I would have less of a problem if they were revealed back to back. And BELIEVE me, I do not think a developer with more games should inheritenly get Dev of the year for it. The only one with more than two games there was Nintendo, and Splatoon and Mario Maker aside, this was their weakest year in a VEERY long time.