I was looking to a thread on neogaf about demographic "pandering" and i started to think about this.

Most people here probably are familiar with the expression "Oscar baits". For those who don't know,here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait

Basically,you know when you're watching a movie where you have well known older actors portraying people with a suffering,complex life in some historical settings like WW2 and you think "damn this movie is obviously trying to get an oscar"?

This are what people call oscar baits.

Being an Oscar bait doesn't mean the movie is good.The movie can be good and in this cases it probably will win the oscar or at least be nominated but also can be a bad movie. In the end,it doesn't matter 'cause the movie was not design to be good or bad,it was design to be attractive for an specific set of people...the critics.We all know that critic,specially the hardcore ones have a different taste than the mainstream audience.So,in order to win an oscar,you need to make your movie attractive to them.

Well with that said,i made this thread to talk about games that you guys felt that where GOTY baits.Basically games that were not design to be good or bad or to be attractive for the demographic who usually buys this kinds of games.Instead,it was design to be attractive to the critics cause,again,they have a different taste then us most of the time.

IMO Dragon age inquisition would be a GOTY bait.Again, i'm not saying that it is a bad game(neither that is a good one) but it feels like Bioware was trying to "pandering" for the kotaku/tumblr/anita sarkasian crowd instead of focus on the target demographic of the genre (WRPG= 15 - 30 american male demographic).That could be one of the reasons why the game didn't sell that well(besides high competition on holiday season and DA 2 bad taste).

Just to be clear this is not a criticism.I'm just thought that maybe someone else here also has this feeling that,sometimes,games are made not to be sold but to send a message/win an award/fulfill an agenda.Please stay civil...

Wasn't dragon age Inquisition Bioware's fast selling game? pretty sure they just made an article here on VGC.

LOL. No offense, I know this is not a conspiracy that you created but um... no. It doesn't really fly in the gaming world. The risks are far greater.

I don't think it's really possible to create a video game equivalent to "Oscar baits". Unlike with the film industry, the average opinion of game critics tends to be quite similar to that of the core gaming market, since for the most part they're both made up of the same type of people. You can't really pander to one without pleasing the other, so "GOTY bait" is essentially just "a game people will like" :p

Also, DA:I hasn't had poor sales. I only had a quick glance, but it still appears to be tracking ahead of the original and has already passed the 2nd.

Gaming is a bit different. The critics have pretty much the same taste as the audience. Basically because most video game critics are just regular people who play a lot of games, rather than experts on game design who can really analyze what they're playing.

Adding to that, each publication assigns one person out of dozens to review a game, usually someone who actually wants to play the game and generally has a default positive opinion of it before even starting. Whereas major publications typically seem to have only a few film critics, who see every film released in the year whether they want to or not. You get a lot more instances of film critics reviewing a film that is obviously not made with them in mind as an audience than you get of game critics doing that. This is natural, since it takes much longer that the normal 2-3 hour movie length to play most games, but it's still a problem.

Oscar nominations actually have merit and are a huge deal to movies still in their cinematic runs and for DVD/BR/digital sales.

Does anyone really give a flying fuck about games winning Game of the Year? The difference is mostly that the GOTY awards are not official, and the people giving them out have no prestige, no integrity. Have you ever taken a gander at the 201 GOTY awards Last of Us won? Not implying it didn't deserve it, but yeah. It's full of random crap websites or publications or basically polls from message boards.

Also, there is much more of an emphasis on history in cinema. If a directors last movie won an Oscar, or even was just nominated, that means a lot. In gaming, no one cares. They care about how the game looks.

Games don't really gain anything from being critically acclaimed or by winning a lot of awards and not sell that well. Video game companies can't really do that or they'll go bankrupt.

GOTY awards are pretty meaningless at the end of the day... Oscars though, that's a different story.

Maybe artsy indies could fit that description?
Not all indies, but some do have that tendency.

I disagree with you here.I don't think Reviewer share of the same taste of the comunity as most people think.GTA 4,God hand,FF13,Dark souls 2,dragon age 2,rome 2 total war,skyward sword....these are examples of games that reviewers praised/trashed and people had the opposite opinion.

Imo most of the time,critics just give a score based on what they believe people will think about the game.

The best example is God hand.When god hand came out ign gave a bad score for it.They trashed the game cause,let face it,it was not the most polished,well design game of all time.But then,for some random reason it became a cult classic and after that ign made an article talking about the 100 best games of playstation 2 and guess what? god hand was there and they actually praised the game saying "it easy to confuse god hand as a bad game...." i laugh so hard when i read this...

Sometimes they give a score based on some biased political agenda like polygon's review of bayonetta 2 where they literally ignored all the things that actually matter for a game,like gameplay quality,and focused on their feminist propaganda (aka "muh..sexism!!11")

and sometimes they give a score based on some deal or special relationship with the publishers like IGN infamous Mass effect 3 review.

Unfortunately just a few journalist actually give their opinion for the game.That is one of the reasons why e-celebs like angry joe/boogie/jim sterling are becoming more and more popular and this sites are losing strength.When you see a angry review you actually see joe playing and having fun or getting frustrating or experiencing some kind of bug,.it makes his opinion more believable even if you don't agree with them.