Its not different what makes a good movie?

Or better yet, to you what makes a game quaity?

Brand is diferent from Games or films. A brand is an item. Completely emotionally irrelevant. People stay with a brand because of the item lasting and providing trouble free use. 

People will not Buy a game or film if they thought the last iteration or even last 2 iteratons were bad. A person will only buy a game or film if they enjoy it. As is an emotional attachment. 

What is COD on now. 4th ieration this gen? It sold over 6 million in its first 2 hours. Are you telling me that a game which  people average over 300 hours of gameplay and had more people que for than any other game is not viewed by the majority as the best game of the year?

I disagee with movie awards also. 

Sales is the only way to show where people are wlling to spend there money. Which is a good guage of where people WANT to spend there money. Sometimes a new frachise will need word of mouth and longer to grab peoples attention. 

But someone who tries to say x game is better for y reason and should get game of the year, completely misses te point quality is an emotion iinvolving taste. 

Skyrim for some people has 300 hours gamplay. Others will do 2 hours and move along. I know loads of people who are well over 300 hours on MW2 and black ops. Yet some like me and you have tried it and moved on.

Content, game world, hours to completion etc etc are all subjective on the individual. 

The Game Developer Choice awards (at every GDC, every year) are pretty much the video game equivalent of the Oscars, and they're also the only awards I pay any real attention to. They don't matter, per se, but they're interesting in what they indicate about the tendencies of designers.

They should really get more coverage as most of the others are a bit of a sham being nothing more than popularity contests.

A quality game is preobably different among different people, but I would think some more universal aspects of what makes a quality game are: Level of polishness and refinement (Glitchy = bad), Unique content (Number of Multiplayer maps, sizes, story duration, etc), quality of campaign (Pacing, is the objective clear, is the game interesting enough to keep at it), and unique experience (Did the story move, or shock you? Was the game fun?). The last aspect is subject to bias, but that's what makes award shows unique.

Anyone can look up which game sold the best, if Game Awards were based on sales, why would people need to have an award comittee? Why not just look it up?

Sales =/= how much people enjoy a franchise. High sales could be due to high advertizing, wide appeal, accessibility, and other factors.

Do you think 5 or 10 year old kids who buy CoD bought it because they know it's good? They bought it because everyone else is buying it.

What about Just Dance 2, do you think it sold over 8 million units because it's such an amazing game? It's a good game, but because most of the sales go to women (who normally wouldn't play games) it sold better. In Fact 80% of Women gamers play games on the Wii (one of Nintendo old E3 Press Conferences), where only 20% of female console players play on PS3/360. Does this mean that most gamers (typically male) will find Just Dance 2 or 3, a great game? NO!

Accessibility also plays a factor in sales. Mario Kart 3DS won't sell well this year because not many people have a 3DS, and it's releasing in December. Yet if Mario Kart DS and Wii sales are anything to go off, Mario Kart 7 will outsell Modern Warfare 3's sales. So shouldn't this then be GOTY?

COD is easy to pick up, and has a wide appeal, people play it for an hour at a time when they get home, you can't do that with an RPG or other genre game. Also quantity =/= quality, people who play CoD play for multiplayer mostly, there is not story, plot, or anything in multiplayer, just mindless action. Since when does mindless action become an indicator of a good game?

Having a wide appeal is not an indicator of quality. Yes MW3 already has sold about 15 million units combined, and is on track to 25 million units (which is likely to be less then Mario Kart 7), but the metacritic user score is 3.2/10, and the combined website score is a mere 88/100, which isn't special for games. It doesn't matter that more people bought the game because sales aren't universal (people will buy the game because it's the only game they know, because of advertizing, or because everyone else is getting it).

Like I said before, if 15 million people played the game, and the average score is 3.2/10, is that a good game? Just because everyone is playing it doesn't mean it's good. I'd rather give GOTY to something people show that they like, having low sales does not tell us what games people don't like. Reviews and user opinions tell us that. Sales =/= Quality, Sales == Quantity, which are two completly different indicators of success. How you don't see that, I don't know

The problem with that is 1-2% actually bother to have a voice. And most likely hardcore gamers. 

Just because women like to play JD2, does that  mean we should exclude their opinion? 

As for the user ratings system online, they are massively broken. Fanboys downvote all te time. BF3 fans downvote COD MW3 and vice versa. Even on VGC it Happen. UC3 was voted heavily down as was Gears 3. Its pathetic but it happens. 

Still sales are a mearsure of quantity, not quality, and judging which game is GOTY on sales alone has problems because not only do we not know which game will sell the most (Mario Kart 7 vs. Modern Warfare 3 vs. Super Mario 3D Land vs. Zelda: Skyward Sword vs. Just ance 3), but we also don't know how much of those sales can be attributed to marketing.

As for ratings, what you say may be true, but we don't know that low CoD metascores are due to angry Battlefield fans. Battlefield 3 has a 7.4/10 metascore, so If CoD and Battlefield fans were thumbing down each others games, why does Battlefield 3 have a decent score?

BTW that 7.4 is Battlefield 3's PC User Score, MW3's Pc user score is 2.1, even lower then the 360 one I gave above.

As for Just Dance, women's views should not be excluded, but the game is selling to an audience that would normally not play games. Wide appeal =/= quality. Just because the game sells to women, which would normally not play games, doesn't mean the game is particilarly good, just interesting to that specific demograph.

Should GOTY go to the best selling game in the largest demograph? or should it go to the best quality game, regardless of sales? I am for the later as I think GOTY goes to the game of the best quality, you are for the former because you think GOTY should go to the game which sells the most quantity. I don't have an issue with that, but you seem to think your method of awards go to the game of best quality and you are uning a quantity arguement to support that. This is illogical, and I hope you understand that.

Think about it this way. If you had a gamer who was a fan of WRPG's, Shooters, AND Dance games, which game would they call their GOTY? Just Dance 3, Modern Warfare 3, or Skyrim? Which game would the majority of gamers who are fans of all these genres choose? GOTY should go to the game which fans acknowledge is the best game, specifically those who are a fan of that genre. People who don't like JRPG's or Dance games, or shooters, should not be able to critique those genres since that is biased.

GOTY awards are demeaning. There are too many great games that are released every year to prop one up above all of the others. Not to mention they are COMPLETELY subjective most of the time.

Last year me and my friends argued so much over if Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead Redemption was GOTY that it felt ridiculous. The only way it'll work is if GotY stands for GameS of the Year.

/end mini-rant

Mass Effect 2, duh!

Spike doesn't know what they are doing, in 2007 Super Mario Galaxy wasn't even a nominee despite being GOTY on most websites and getting the highest Metacritic of the year.

i disliked Mass effect 2 intensely. i thought RDR was wayyy beter.

Mass effect seemed to try to hard to be a shooter, but had terrible shooting and cover mechanics, the animations and action wer extremely stiff looking, and really took me out of the experience.

Did you like Mass Effect 1?

Mass Effect 2 is is one of my favorite games, I thought the gameplay was pretty damn good. An RPG which played like a TPS, and with damn good pacing. It's one of my top 5 video games ever, and I feel the exact opposite about the game from you.

As for Red Dead, I'm not a fan of westerns. Played the game for a bit and felt the controls were a downgrade from Grand Theft Auto 4. Didn't care much for the story or atmosphere.