Deliberations for The 2018 Easy Allies Awards

Well done Ian.... I lol'd at the end with the "most broken game" award. Very well done, kudos.

Mitchell Collier

Smash is more of a fighting game than Monster Hunter World is an RPG.

To meu the Celeste and Astro Bot discussion is strange. I could never see the best platformer as "the best platforming mechanics" or the best rpg with "the best rpg mechanics". It's just, split the games into genres. And then what is the best game, regardless the motives. So the best platformer would always be a better game then any other platformer nominated.

Miguel Pires Ramos

I heard it was buggy as hell for a really long time. Don't know how it is now though.

Olf Himself

same question.

Andy Goergen

Can anyone tell me if there are Red Dead spoilers throughout? Or are they mainly confined to one section of discussion about the game. I really want to listen to this, but that’s the only game left that I care about and haven’t beaten yet. Minor spoilers are okay, but if they randomly talk about the ending during another games discussion I should probably just wait until I finish

Yeah, I knew they said pretty much unedited, but I was expecting it to go backwards from the live stream last year ha. If adding in graphics after the fact is too much work because it needs to be out at a certain date to do the stream with personal top 10's (which is a good thing IMO, people who were there live really enjoyed it), maybe record the deliberations through OBS/Xsplit itself and add in the graphics as you go next year? Either way, can't wait for the epic STUDIO BASED discussions in 2020, the year of hindisight Otherwise, I loved the discussions themselves and just got done with the 6:42 monster. Jones was asked on CoJ what EZA's best features were, and I think these kind of discussions are one of those things. People weren't fighting to "win" for their game like other outlets do, it just felt like a meaty Frame Trap with hard decisions and passionate words. An absolute triumph.

Skankman

Feedback: One thing that I thought went better for the last GOTYs than these, was that you used to put up graphics about what category we are currently in, which game we are discussing, and what is coming up next. During Yesterday's GOTYs, I often lost track of where we were on the road map of the whole event, and sometimes what the current category was. Doing it pre-recorded is fine with me, but the graphics and labeling could give the viewers much more information. When it comes to the final video that is listing all the winners, I would have liked it if you would have given at least one sentence for each one, that describes why it won or what made it special. In it's current state, it's more or less just reading titles. L&R Snowcone Guy ps: Getting GOW the GOTY felt like a long con inside job conspiracy, executed by evil forces. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. :P

Snowcone Guy

Obviously yall can't dedicate this much time often to this sort of stuff, but just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the way this whole GOTY Deliberations Premiere into Personal Top 10 Group Stream day turned out. Really felt like a huge event to take part in. This was a real deal day of celebrating a year's worth of games, not just some extended group stream or a race to the goal worrying the whole time how long it was taking. I do think I prefer LIVE discussion like last year as it lets chat mildly add to the discussion, despite the hell chat becomes during it (sorry mods who have to deal with that), but this length of discussion was much more satisfying than the way things were breezed over last year to get to GOTY faster. Lots of us kind of find the GOTYs themselves boring, but we love hearing the exact weird ways you guys reach those decisions, as silly as they are at times. There are two things I think need to be addressed in some form before next year though. Clearly Patreon is not ideal as a website for hosting any sort of coherent game submission and voting system. Of course that's all just for a silly side award about what collectively has the most mass appeal, so personally something I wouldn't miss if cut entirely as long as we could together as chat be a part of the larger discussions again, even in small part. The second thing is something I've been observing and waiting to see the results of throughout the whole back half of 2018, and that is members of EZA feeling an obligation to play certain games as GOTY contenders. I see where the idea is coming from, but it feels very counterproductive to make people feel like they have to play certain games because "they will be discussed for GOTYs" as the most likely winners. Look at all the Allies who played the lengthy Red Dead Redemption 2 and admitted they wouldn't have continued playing it if not for "needing to have" for the sake of the discussion, one around a game that ended up not even being much more important than many of the other games during the day of discussion that Allies weren't obligated to play but naturally gravitated towards. In a way it feels like unnaturally stacking GOTY contenders based on assumption. I'd much prefer letting EZA as a whole cast a wider net than to forcing as many as possible to play a small handful of games you expect to be the best games of the year. While it does suck not to personally be able to weigh in on stuff you haven't played and only have seen from the outside and that makes for less elegant discussion on the small handful of "big name" games, it actually creates a better overall situation of letting the games that drew EZA in shine. Obviously the ones that make a big impact with some of you will spread to others in the group through word of hype or just general interests aligning much more naturally anyways. Nobody told Ben or Ian to play The Missing for GOTYs, and sure only those two could pipe up much during discussing that, but two people was plenty to hold a discussion around and it explaining the significance in a way everyone in the room and watching through our far away computers could understand. It'll obviously lead to disagreements over which thing is better than the other, but with much HoGs practice under your belts I'm confident yall can strike your cases for the games you feel passionate about and vote a winner by the end of discussing all relevant entries. We're getting more and more great games every year, and frankly it is waste to funnel the majority of you towards a select few people expect to be great, instead of letting you guys find your own paths and collectively report on what you played. It is also worse for us EZA viewers outside of GOTYs to have to hear that so and so can't play X game they're actually interested in, because they're slogging through a game that isn't gelling with them solely for the sake of GOTYs. We don't need to take these awards so seriously that they make you guys sacrifice discovering cool stuff you could be into to "be caught up for GOTYs".

MBUN

Smash isn’t a fighting game

A Joker Fan

Its a shame nobody played Pathfinder:Kingmaker. Ben you should really check it out. I think its better then Pillars of Eternity by a large margin. However the beginning is very tough challenge especially for any difficulty above normal.

Tony Ranallo

Awards programs typically don't give you any reasoning as to why something was chosen. It may be worth discussing in the future, but if we were to add even just a winner to all 16 categories, our "quick wrap up" would be 45 minutes to watch and take a lot longer to produce. -Bloodworth

Easy Allies

Can *someone* in the allies please play Just Shapes & Beats? Soundtrack snub for sure.

Daniel Rona

My two cents: the deliberation is neat and all, but I prefer the GOTY video to have a nice synopsis for why a game won after the winner is revealed. As it stands, I may as well just read a list online and it's not super fun to watch; and I'm sure I'm not the only one who simply doesn't have time to watch a 7 hour video, but still wanna hear your thoughts. Regardless, love you all. It was a great year with EZA!

Spoilers on the table then huh, well I need to dodge a few missiles here and there then. Near the end of Red Dead 2, but should probably avoid that talk entirely.

Johan

What a year of games! Listening to you guys talking about youre passion for the medium is amazing as always. I personally don't agree on all the winners, but hey, that's life. Soon 2019 will start for real with RE2, can't wait!!! L&R from Sweden!

c ek

Blood is running with scissors this year! I love this fast and lose deliberation

Mac

Full spoilers for the end of the game during best narrative. Haven't finished watching to know if there more later on though.

Kristen Rogers

So far as I understand it, Tetris is the only video game yet made to have been proven NP Complete. So it's the only video game with a categorical claim *not* to be a puzzle. Into the Breach, on the other hand…

Benjamin Rowlinson

Awesome. Can't wait to get into it!

Leroy Anderson

Oh my god I love how long this recording is. Thank you so much. What a treat! Thanks guys!

Logan Young

Oh baby it's here

Victor Ko

that's a lot of deliberating. Can't wait to watch this tomorrow

whoa havent even started yet, just looked at the video length, this is gonna be exciting... tomorrow when i will have the time :)

erni

zap gun zanagunadoo

YES!!! HELL YES!!! YES YES YES!!!

Miguel Pires Ramos

Can someone let me know how rough the GOW spoilers are? I am still not done yet :(

Tyler Travis

Jones: This will probably take 3, 4 hours? Whoops. lol