Looks like Dark Souls broke the deadlock just after the deadline. 15-14.

There were enough "Other" votes for a runoff round.  Four games made the cut to round 2, and they are joined by 2 additional games that got more than one "Other" vote.  Please vote again for the most deserving game from the remaining options.

Runoff voting for 2011 Game of the Year will end on Friday, Dec 1 at 11:59 PM, EST.

Sticking with Portal 2.

I guess people keep voting for their personal favourites - I mean, Minecraft not getting to runoff (let alone winning by a slide) is to me facepalm worthy, though not at all unexpected on VGC.

Anyway, two of my favourites are in the poll (Portal 2 and Dark Souls) - I haven't voted for either of them in the first round, but I will eliminate Portal 2 at this moment - personally, I find it to be a better and more polished game per se, but this now boils down to influence on future games as well, and Dark Souls easily has upper hand in that.

Only other contender would be Skyrim - for me that was a solid game, but really dumbed down TES, so nowhere near my favourites, but its influence was quite noticeable. There were other open world WRPGs (and much better at that) from decades ago, but this one resonated with a mainstream audience quite a bit and, as a consequence, influenced massively what developers and publishers are trying to achieve in the 2010s (rippling even to usually hermetic Nintendo development).

Ultimately, I think I will go with Dark Souls - while Skyrim is a massive influence on the shift toward open world games, open world games were happening for decades, in one form or the other (mostly on computers, but some on consoles as well). Souls, on the other hand, became a genre of its own (though as sort of 3D Metroidvania, that was not all completely new either). Demon's might be the first to establish the formula, but it was Dark first to be noticed across all platforms and (re-)establish "git gud" era.

Of these Skyward Sword and Mario Kart 7 remain for me to vote on. It's close actually. I think I had more 'fun' with Mario Kart 7, but obviously a Zelda game is much more involving game. I think I'll now go with The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

I noticed that (the bolded) "decades" ago and started just doing the same. So I'm voting for Portal 2. Good analysis though of the cultural impact of Skyrim and Dark Souls. Yeah, when it came to Skyrim's particular success, accessibility here was key to that, definitely. Dark Souls very much felt like a throwback to the higher difficulty levels that used to be commonplace in games. In ye olden days, often just beating a game was a legendary feat amongst kids. It wasn't so much anymore by 2011. It was nice to have that element back in the cultural mixture. Of course, I was in throwback mode in more than one sense myself by this point.

Praise the sun.

Minecraft has become huge and is everywhere, yet the fact is, I don't want to play it anymore.

Portal 2 I would replay any day. I first voted for Dark Souls, yet upon further reflection, Portal 2 is the more perfect timeless game I can pick up and play any time and have a smile on my face in a few minutes. That's ultimately more worthy of goty for me than how much a game positively or negatively influenced the gaming landscape. Because honestly, souls like is more like a stain on the industry to me than a positive. Since it mostly means difficulty for the sake of difficulty, not intricate vertical map design and world building which is what I love Dark Souls for. Same as TotK trying too hard to be Minecraft, is what ultimately makes me prefer BotW.

Once VR gets a big enough install base, Portal 3 made for VR please, just like HL Alyx.

I'm still trying to maintain some sort of distance from my favourite vs GotY - there were few times that overlapped, but for the most part it did not.

As for Souls, yeah, that difficulty, with no difficulty setting to choose from, was more than welcome. It's not that some other developers were not doing the same thing, but DS made that accepted in mainstream again.

If you asked me in 2011, I'd without a doubt would say Portal 2 - Minecraft was quite new and not yet as influential and Souls was still not a thing. But given that what we're doing now is all in retrospect, I personally cannot ignore how much game have influence for further generations of both players and developers - hence Minecraft, without a doubt and Dark Souls in runoff (given the absence of Minecraft).

I'm the opposite, Portal 2 only passed Dark Souls in my top 50 a few days ago after weighing them against each other again. Imitation and sequels can dampen the impact of the original or earlier titles. Same as Uncharted 3 fails to gain traction now, as well as the first Civilization and Diablo.

Call it souls like / sequel fatigue, Minecraft saturation, they're games I have fond memories of, but don't feel like playing anymore. Having a big influence isn't always for the best. It will be same for 2013, GTA5 is arguably the most influential and still most played game of 2013 with 190 million total sales, not my goty though.