The 2023 Community GOTY Results

As the final piece of the 16th Annual Giant Bomb Game of the Year, we are here to review the results of the community's vote. Before we get started, I want to give a shoutout to @rorie for keeping this tradition going for the last seven years and to @thatfrood who took it upon himself to run the voting process on his own for many years before that.

Over 700 people voted this year for a total of over 6100 votes (not everyone fills out all ten slots). Within those 6100+ votes, 647 different games were named. Today, we're going to look at the Top 50.

Last year, Elden Ring straight up destroyed the competition with nearly triple the weighted score of God of War Ragnarök in second place. But, as you'll see below, this year's race was a little bit tighter.

We fully relaxed the rules of Community GOTY this year and encouraged everyone to put whatever-the-hell they wanted on their ballot. The points are based on a weighted system where your #1 is worth more than your #2 and so on. I don't actually know what the math is on that because this "Community List" feature is built into the site. When the deadline hits, it just spits out a report, which I transcribed here. Someone would have to hunt down Dave to find out about the math maybe. Anyway... let's go!

With 66% of the community giving it a vote, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has now completed the trifecta. It has won the site's GOTY, the combined Guest List GOTY, and now the Community GOTY. In fact, the three different Top 10s were eerily similar. Among the thirty spots available, only twelve different games made the lists.

Many of you included classic and obscure games on your list, which resulted in over 350 games getting only one vote, and another 80 that only got two votes. In fact, only 69 games (Nice) got 10 votes or more.

Well, that about wraps it up for this year's GOTY content.

If you missed any of the 2023 GOTY festivities, you can find everything on the Giant Bomb Game of the Year 2023 wiki page including all the winners, podcasts, videos, staff lists, and guest lists.

If you enjoy statistics, be sure to check out my blog here: Data Dump: GOTY 2023 Staff & Guests Breakdown.

Until next time.

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Thanks for all of your work on putting this together, Marino.

Here is a list of all 647 games that got at least one vote.

Thanks for all the work you do Marino!!

@marino: Weird to know now that I am the only WarTales pervert in these forums.

Thank you for your work in getting everything GOTY together!

Thanks for all your hard work!

Excellent work, Marino!

Glad to see so many people enjoyed Hi-Fi Rush despite the staff being lukewarm on it.

gotta say a pretty good list , clearly alot of ppl have good taste this past year . its nice to see hi-fi rush break into the top 10 on both guests and community

TotK as GotY is such a surprise for me. I'm glad that many people had fun with it but its success just as baffling to me as Hogwarts Legacy getting so little love despite its amazing presentation. TotK didn't even made my top 10.

This list tells me two things:

1. Not enough people played Lies of P.

2. FFXVI being anywhere even close to the top 10 much less ahead of . . . well, everything below it . . . tells me a large chunk of this community needs to go to gamer jail.

Wow 3 other people voted for EA Sports WRC. I was expecting to be the only one. That game's pretty good but given how quickly it went on sale with deep discounts, I'm guessing it didn't do very well (Also, the whole "yeah we kinda destroyed all your career saves with our last update. Sorry!" thing wrecked a bunch of good will towards it). They even chucked substantial launch discounts at anyone who owned the Dirt Rally games. I think I preordered it for the equivalent of less than $40 USD.

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that I am the only person who voted for iPod Solitaire.

Congratulations to whoever finally got into Battlefield 1943.

I'm the one person who voted for EverQuest, but that's because I can't add this Geoguessr clone to the wiki. It's super well-made and I played countless rounds of it last year whenever I was bored.

https://www.eq-guessr.com/

Interesting as always. I'm mildly surprised Remnant 2 isn't a little higher (my #2 of the year), I guess it ended up being a little more niche than I thought (it also only showed up twice on guest lists). Also glad that Hitman garnered a respectable number of votes on the strength of the Freelancer mode released in January.

I literally started playing Lunacid on Friday (it was released on Halloween 2023), and would have added it to my list, but I missed the cutoff by mere hours. Oh well, it still wouldn't have made the top 50, though I see a few other people voted for it.

I’m the advance wars guy :D

One of the two fans of Bookwalker and Coffee Talk 2. Might've voted for Dordogne if I remembered it. Just anything to make sure Starfield didn't end up on my list.

Shout-outs to the seven other people that played Thirsty Suitors.

What a year. Shout out to everyone who enjoyed video games in 2023!

Thanks for the hard work Marino!

Seems like a clear case of the big 3 contenders just being ordered 1-3 based mostly on sales. More people played Zelda than BG3, and more people played BG3 than Alan Wake.

Obviously, this is unavoidable with this type of voting method, but I'd be interested to see what the average placement each got when it was voted for at all. Essentially, how points per vote compares to the total voting results.

Good stuff. The top 5 are usually easy to guess, so I pay attention to the 6-20. Surprised, Starfield made the top 20. It's not a bad game overall, but it didn't live up to the hype. Glad FFXVI made the top 20 and was close to the top 10. Diablo IV falling out of the top 20, tells me the game overall was more disappointing than Starfield, and I can believe it

I've started playing Starfield over the last week or so (after dropping it 15 hours in at release) and I'm having a pretty good time. On one hand the ability to fast travel mostly anywhere does negate the sense of an interconnected world. On the other hand it's a godsend if you just wanna get some quests done that you don't have to worry about ship fuel and travel time. You just warp to the place and do the thing. The story isn't particularly compelling so far but I'm enjoying being in that world and doing Bethesda things.

Thanks you for all of your hard work Marino! Also looking at the results Zelda swept for all the GOTY options at GB.

That's how I felt about the fast travel system. It's the one thing I liked a lot about Starfield. You can fast travel pretty much everywhere without any issue, as long as you have a ship powerful enough, which can take some effort to get if the person cares enough. Lot of people didn't like it because it does make the game feel compact, and we're talking about outer space. I think it's a system future developers should think about using in their open world games.

Glad to see the greatest video game of all time won. One hell of a year for games, I hope to catch up on quite a few of them I missed/didn't finish.

Shit. I must have forgot to vote because there aren't ten votes for Disgaea 7. 6 placing and 7 not even making it is pretty funny though.

Next year it's Freddy Pharkas's to win.

@therealturk: I tried to get the word out, Lies of P was my number 1. But everyone I hear in the Souls community is really positive on it.

@marino: Proudly claiming the singular votes for Parasite Eve and Xenogears. It was helluva year for me and my PS1.

@brian_: hi i am one! #6 on my list! Such fun writing!

@franticfinesse: I spent most of this year playing old games, and just put in votes for only the five games I did play that came out in 2023, but Thirsty Suitors was #1 on my list. It's funny. I spent a lot of time playing PS1 games as well and I did start playing Parasite Eve and Xenogears, but got sidetracked and didn't end up finishing them. They both seemed rad though, and I look forward to getting back to both of them this year.

That was me! It was kind of an honorable mention on my list. I loved that game when it came out, and I just had to play it for a few weekends before it got shutdown. RIP.

(Looks like I was also the only person to vote for Metroid Dread. Fantastic game.)

That's a great list. You should split that Top 10 up across two years and you'd easily call both years great. Having all of this in one year is a glut in the best way.

Great list. Still cannot sing the praises of Alan Wake 2 enough. That game is a triumph and it's unfortunate it came out in a year with the BotW sequel and one of the greatest RPGs ever made in BG3 stealing some of the thunder (both games I loved as well in a VERY stacked year). But the future does seem very bright for Remedy and a lot more people will be interested in what they do next.

Thanks Marino!

I'm a lil surprised Zelda and Mario each did so well, but that's the classic Nintendo effect I guess. I enjoyed TotK but was a little less hot on it than BotW. For me, Remnant 2 is probably the game I'd encourage more people to play based on its slot on the list.

It was an incredible year, though; I had so many games that could've been in my top ten, and even more I didn't get to that likely would've been in with a decent chance if I had.

EDIT: I think I was the only Immortals of Aveum vote, so I'll just say - don't let that game's pretty terrible opening put you off. It's a fun time and the writing is a lot more charming than the first hour or so lets on. I really think it puts its worst foot forwards, which is a shame because I think the rest of the game is worth playing.

armored core 6 being that high up and street fighter 6 making it in the top 10, great job gb community