March Mayhem Top 64 Announced

[HT_Black]

I fixed it for you, nyek nyek nyek.

We've been over this:
Zynga is an ass pimple: Unpleasant, but harmless.
Valve is a cancer: A part of the body that has become corrupt and is killing it from within. You might not even realize what's happening until it's too late.

You know what? I'll be straight with you: I'm hopped up on caffine abd bubblgum and right now I'm PO'd over the Xbox version of HL2, so I'm more than willing to hear what you have to say on the matter. If you have a moment, would you like to spell out your feelings on Valve, and why exactly they suck so much? I'm serious--I'd really love to hear what you have to say.

It's pretty basic: They have bad ideas and are successful. The entertainment industry is an inherently uncreative place. Media is a giant game of follow the leader, and whatever ideas start selling make their way across pretty much everything, corrupting the medium from within. Like a cancer almost.

Huh. That is actually a pretty good comparison. But shouldn't you be disgusted by everyone who toes their line, rather than Valve themselves? After all, if their games are indeed bad, they'd have closed shop years ago--is there anything in particular that springs to mind when you say that?

In terms of guilt levels, Valve's fanbase is aboot the level of a junkie. Valve is morally comparable to a dealer.
Lots of bad games sell well: Pokeymanns, WoWcraft, Metal Cog, Quick Time Event the Movie (Heavy Rain, I like to think most of them don't require explanation though)

Okay, I'm on board with that--it's a perfectly accurate statement.

Valve is responsible for the surge of games aboot power-armored non-characters, fighting generically evil aliens, using generic guns and one shoehorned in gimmick weapon, assisted by a minority sidekick, and shoehorned in love interest (Valve gets bonus points for making them the same character, making her incredibly annoying, and making her the love interest of a character who we have no in game evidence against being a disembodied pair of hands) to take back the grey-brown wasteland for humanity.

But this is where things get a little bit tricky for me. Most of those things you described were the spawn of DOOM, WOLFENSTEIN, or if you're only referring to the last decade, HALO.[footnote]As an aside, isn't it interesting that those titles use all caps?[/footnote]

The thing that confounds me the most is the "minority sidekick" comment. Usually, when someone says that, they are referring to the character being a Peter Molyneux-esque ethnic stereotype given shape instead of their actual skin tone--can you clarify what you mean by that? Additionally (and slightly tangentially) I haven't noticed much of a romantic subtext between the player and Alyx. Did I miss something?

 

[dalek sec]

Honestly, I don't care who wins as long as frakking Zynga is crushed and does not win so go anyone that's not Zynga!

 

[Baldry]

Soooo Mojang AB, Bethesda, Bioware, Konamai, Square Enix, Obsidian, Insomnic and Treyarch, maybe Valve, but not to sure...

AND BY THE NINE, ARE YOU MAD?! Zynga again, didn't we learn from last year, DIDN'T WE LEARN!

 

[Novania]

Not Zynga!!!! I thought we got rid of them last year!!!!!

You only got rid of them last year by desperate people calling in /b/ to help... It was basically /b/ot votes that turned the tide last year.

I thought that when the people called /b/, they came and voted for Zynga... not against it.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Who I would like to see in the top 4 (in no particualr order):

Valve, Nintendo, Blizzard, Bioware.

 

[Gerrawn]

...Zynga's in the contest again? I'll be in a bunker with Dragon Age 2, only popping out to vote every once and a while.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Not Zynga!!!! I thought we got rid of them last year!!!!!

You only got rid of them last year by desperate people calling in /b/ to help... It was basically /b/ot votes that turned the tide last year.

/b/ ruined it farther then it already was. They spammed the forum with posts from morgues, voted for Zynga and even threatened to attack the Escapist. The only we got rid of them is because Valve put an advertisement on the Steam Forums. I think that says quite a bit right there. It took Zynga COUNTLESS adverts to reach that point and in one advertisement, Valve managed to completely destroy them.

 

[Rusty Bucket]

You decided to put Zynga on again after the clusterfuck it caused last year? Guess I'll eb avoiding this one altogether then.

 

[FinalHeart95]

I have a good idea who to vote for, but knowing my luck it'll be Naughty Dog and Insomniac facing off in the first round.

 

[Amalith]

You decided to put Zynga on again after the clusterfuck it caused last year? Guess I'll eb avoiding this one altogether then.

Zynga's really only a problem because of the damn quick register using facebook option. I was terribly annoyed at all the posters with their names as names with no avatars that showed up out of nowhere last year.

I'm also fairly dissapointed that Yukes is on the list, because as far as I could tell, all they've done are those shitty WWE and UFC games.

 

[soren7550]

I'm calling it right now: the final showdown will be between Valve & BioWare. As for who'll win, I want BioWare to win but I believe that Valve will win once more.

 

[Rusty Bucket]

You decided to put Zynga on again after the clusterfuck it caused last year? Guess I'll eb avoiding this one altogether then.

Zynga's really only a problem because of the damn quick register using facebook option. I was terribly annoyed at all the posters with their names as names with no avatars that showed up out of nowhere last year.

I'm also fairly dissapointed that Yukes is on the list, because as far as I could tell, all they've done are those shitty WWE and UFC games.

The thing that annoys me about them being in again isn't anything to do with their validity as game developer, it's about what it did to the community last time. Lets be honest, it wasn't exactly a nice place to be during all that shit last year, and I'm struggling to see a reason as to why they're in here again that justifies going through it for a second time. It sure as hell isn't the quality of their games or the honesty of their business practices.

 

[BreakfastMan]

GO TEAM ZYNGA! We will go all the way this year! ALL THE WAY! WOOH!!!

 

[maddawg IAJI]

I'm calling it right now: the final showdown will be between Valve & BioWare. As for who'll win, I want BioWare to win but I believe that Valve will win once more.

I could have predicted that. That was the outcome of last years too. Valve and Bioware have been in the final 4 every single year and the only thing stopping Valve from winning every time was Turbine xD

 

[Trivun]

For those of you upset about Zynga, you have a vote and a tweet. Use them to your advantage.

To be fair to both sides here, I think the problem isn't that Zynga got a lot of votes (though admittedly that was the reason some were up in arms, because some people were particularly sore losers on the Escapist regulars' end, though it wasn't the main reason). No, the main reason people were up in arms last year was down to the fact that Zynga were abusing the fact that develoeprs are free to advertise through their sites and fanbases, which I personally agree with as a concept (and I was glad Turbine won two years ago, personally, despite not being a massive fan of them, they are a decent developer).

At the end of the day, last year, Zynga didn't just use that ability to advertise, they abused it by spamming their customers with instructions to vote, and indeed we had massive numbers of people coming to the forums, admitting openly that they were cheating and creating multiple accounts to vote, or using bots and programs to do so.

Therefore, I as an Escapist (and I feel I speak for the majority this year too) can safely say that I'm fine with Zynga being included, provided that the Escapist mods and staff do their part as much as possible to make sure that they (Zynga) follow the rules completely, that all other developers do likewise, and that anyone caught cheating, whether they admit it or not (and that goes for all developers, and all fans of all developers, too), is dealt with as efficiently and as swiftly as possible. Including, and this goes for every developer, not just Zynga, being disqualified from the contest entirely if anything untoward is ocurring. That's all we ask for, at the end of the day. Though I doubt many of the more 'rabid' fanboys, including (and indeed especially) Escapist regulars, will be willing to be as civil and accepting of that.

That being said, I personally don't see Zynga as real 'developers' of actual video games, but that's a totally different argument, and at the end of the day they're here in the contest, and have been recognised as developers by the Escapist staff, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Also, out of interest given that it was directly responsible for much of the problem last year, what's happened regarding the Facebook quick-register function? Strictly speaking, you can't deny that it does give Zynga an unfair advantage given Facebook is it's primary base of operation and targeting for customers...

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

What are the chances someone BESIDES Valve or Bioware is going to win this year?

None? OK...

 

[Spinwhiz]

~snip~

EDIT: Also, out of interest given that it was directly responsible for much of the problem last year, what's happened regarding the Facebook quick-register function? Strictly speaking, you can't deny that it does give Zynga an unfair advantage given Facebook is it's primary base of operation and targeting for customers...

Everyone is welcome to their opinions and I appreciate you seeing all of the sides. Well done! I love logical discussion. The rules are strict this year, which everyone will see when the brackets are released. We did not find any cheating last year but be well aware that I was on top of it, as I will be this year with our team. While this is supposed to be fun, we hate cheaters and will eliminate whomever they are, regardless of seed.

As for the quick-register, we are putting up barriers to stop that. This year, you will need to sign up for an account (which of course you can from Facebook) but then you actually have to accept an agreement form just to participate in March Mayhem. Once a participant does that, THEN they can vote or post in the March Mayhem forums. To post in any other forum thread outside of March Mayhem, they must once again agree to those forum terms.

As a side note, I've told everyone last year that Twitter actually levels the playing field for all seeds, if their voters decide to use it and it really does. Last year could have been MUCH different. Hopefully people will use it to their advantage this year but again, that is entirely up to the voter.

 

[Trivun]

~snip~

EDIT: Also, out of interest given that it was directly responsible for much of the problem last year, what's happened regarding the Facebook quick-register function? Strictly speaking, you can't deny that it does give Zynga an unfair advantage given Facebook is it's primary base of operation and targeting for customers...

Everyone is welcome to their opinions and I appreciate you seeing all of the sides. Well done! I love logical discussion. The rules are strict this year, which everyone will see when the brackets are released. We did not find any cheating last year but be well aware that I was on top of it, as I will be this year with our team. While this is supposed to be fun, we hate cheaters and will eliminate whomever they are, regardless of seed.

As for the quick-register, we are putting up barriers to stop that. This year, you will need to sign up for an account (which of course you can from Facebook) but then you actually have to accept an agreement form just to participate in March Mayhem. Once a participant does that, THEN they can vote or post in the March Mayhem forums. To post in any other forum thread outside of March Mayhem, they must once again agree to those forum terms.

As a side note, I've told everyone last year that Twitter actually levels the playing field for all seeds, if their voters decide to use it and it really does. Last year could have been MUCH different. Hopefully people will use it to their advantage this year but again, that is entirely up to the voter.

Woo, thanks for replying to my (rather lengthy) post, I'm happy to see that the staff of this site do indeed take user comments into consideration and take the time to reply and address any concerns, so thanks . That does sound pretty fair to me, and I for one am pretty pleased with that, hopefully there'll be much less hassle this year then among all new site members and existing site members than we've seen in the past. Of course, I still expect some hassle, it would be naive of me to think there'll be no problems at all this year, but it's good to see steps are being taken after last year's, to be frank, debacle...

 

[Anarchemitis]

Voting EA Canada and Valve.