So many volunteers, just at the mention that I'm working on some games. Wow, I should've just asked ages ago.

Maybe I'll make a separate thread on that since I don't wish to get too off-topic...

We have two games we're working on, one that's based in Greek mythology (and a certain maze and bull-headed monster), and one that's a celebration of the Metroid-style games out there with at least three characters (a princess, a dimwitted knight, and a wizard)... I was going to be voicing everything (but the princess), but more range is always a good thing.

I'm glad Skyrim won GOTY. I have Skyrim on the PS3 and I yeah it does lag like crazy sometimes (usually when I'm outside roaming around). But I don't let it bother me. I just wait for it to blow over. I also remember one time in third person view my character was floating in mid-air basically floating and sometimes expanding in different directions. Yet when I looked in first person everything was normal. But other than that Skyrim is just fine for me.

No worries with that. I have other projects going on as well, actually I don't know what I'm doing here (wasting time and being a little addicted?) but "The more the merrier" they say and now you know who to call. Your time won't be wasted I assure.
Get back on topic or Shang Tsung will decimate your souls, peepah.

I'll hold you to it! I've always wanted to do voice acting and my range is good. I could play whoever and as far as music....you've seen what I CAN do. I CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING IN AN INSTANCE. Also, don't care about topic derailing, I want in on some VG operations!

[J-spit ́s bouncing soul!]
Railed to the topic to give my €0.02: this is a tricky situation without a question to the Spike. I don't think that they have ever met a case like this before. While someone has to take responsibility (if not Bethesda) on the flaws in Skyrim, apparently Spike doesn't have the guts for that now. For the up-coming awards, a factor for flaws could be remade.
The game is for players and if it doesn't please players as hoped it shouldn't gain the ultimate rank either. Nevertheless, whether Skyrim is a GOTY or not it won't affect to my opinion about the game. There is no universal opinion for a game, working for everyone, that should be acknowledged. But it's a tricky situation, like I mentioned.

Game dev of the year has to be nintendo, valve or DICE. DICE is a long shot due to their server issues with Battlefield. Nintendo has held on somewhat to their Japanese workmanship. Long testing periods based on a matter of honor and pride. Valve is not only a hard working developer. but they are even kind enough to provide developer commentary. Something I believe is SORELY needed in games with dev kits for the aspireing game designer, mapper, and developer.

Not trying to come up with excuses for them, but Bethesda might have voiced their concerns, and wanted to push the game back. The publisher might have told Bethesda that they where not going to get any more funding for testing, and that it was either ship the game and patch it after launch, or risk loosing future funding.

I know this is an extreme example, but look at what happened with Duke Nukem Forever. Take-Two refused to give the developers any more money. Just cut them off.

From what I'm reading about the PS3 problems, I'm honestly thinking some of it may have to do with the PS3 hardware itself. If the game is lagging and locking up while exploring the game, from what I remember reading the Blu-Ray lens on the PS3 actually has a slower read speed compared to DVD drives in the 360, and PCs and with the PS3 using bigger capacity disks, the data might not have been compressed as much as the 360's, and this is creating a bottleneck. Causing the game to slowdown and lock up while exploring the outside world. If this is the case, then there really isn't much Bethesda can do to fix the problem. It's a hardware constraint. Short of creating a patch to flush the memory cache more often to keep data from backing up, I don't see how Bethesda could honestly fit it.

[edit]:When promoting games, developers want to show off their best version (Ie Battlefield 3 showing off the PC version). It could be that Bethesda didn't want to show the PS3's short coming, and decided to try and hide it.
It could also be the reason why they don't want to give a straight answer on the matter. Having a game that is GOTY, and that aside from getting strong sales over the holidays, would also help to sell more consoles as well. Sony obviously wouldn't want Bethesda to come out and say that the game suffers from hardware constraints. It would hurt their console sales for the holidays.

Portal 2 raped errbody.

I think Super Mario 3D land should have won

Just kidding, but I haven't played many games that came out in 2011. I think Mortal Kombat might have been the only one. Still, I wish it wasn't Skyrim because everyone's been talking about it for such a long time. Honestly, it feels like it's been on everyone's mind for years and everyone knows about it. I wish the title went to a title that wasn't quite so hyped. I don't have any examlpes since I haven't been keeping up, but there's got to be some out there.

I would have given it to Batman or Portal 2, but that's just me.

A little off topic, but looking past the bugs, and glitches, Skyrim definetly is the best game of the year IMO. Just so much to do, and get sidetracked. The whole game world is engrossing, and really pulls you in. I think the only other game that comes close is Batman: Arkham City. Since the game came out, I've managed to log some 60 hours in Skyrim, and I'm just playing 2 days a week. I know a friend of mine has already logged 160 hours himself. The only game I can even think of that I logged close to than number of hours is Final Fantasy 7. I think my final total was around 100 hours.

Game is awesome to me, works for me, and Im gonna go play it right now.

Gotta say- I'm a PS3 Skyrim player, and I haven't encountered much of what you're describing (knock on wood).

I get the occasional freeze, but 360 and PC get those, too.
It's not ideal, but in a game so huge, it's almost unavoidable-
find me any newer GTA game that doesn't have any game-breaking bugs,
for example.

That doesn't mean they aren't great games,
they just require the player to keep their weak points in mind,
and save frequently (in multiple files) to avoid trouble.
I have Skyrim set to auto-save every 5 minutes,
so I've never lost much progress at all due to bugs.

I also have my PS3 set to upload my save files overnight,
so I have backups if any major corruption sets in.

Again, knock on wood...

Anyway, I would say that it's definitely *my* GotY.
It may not be perfect- no game is,
especially when it's that huge.

But it's occupied me for literally *days*
(ie- solid playtime, not just days where I played a little),
and that's something very few games have done.

The VGA's are one of the most biased awards shows on TV....plain and simple.

I stopped watching them after I watched Geoff Keighley make a complete fucking asshole of himself to an interviewer. Plus the categories are just plain ridiculous, last year I belive one of the categories was "most popular game sponsored by Mountain Dew"?!?!?! are you serious???

If you're playing the PS3 version, I encourage you to change a few things.

PS3 copies have a very high percentile of failure after around 50-60 hours of playtime or file sizes that swell past the 13 or 14 MB mark. Saving frequently doesn't help, since the problem with PS3 copies is that the file sizes get too big and the PS3's processor simply cannot stream the necessary data off the disc... to the point the game becomes unplayable and all save files will experience this problem, no matter how far back you saved.

The Bethesda forums are full of people saying that to postpone, or lessen, the chances of this happening, you should take some precautions. Bethesda has released an official statement to PS3 users to do the following to avoid problems:

Turn OFF auto saves. This can cause temporary stuttering since the PS3 saves these files in the background. This is most noticeable with large saves when fast traveling to a new area or entering a new area that auto saves.

Clear space on your hard drive. Skyrim makes heavy use of the hard drive, and freeing up space on here seems to help many people. Hard drive speeds also differ in PS3 models. Some users have reported increase performance by upgrading their drives.

Waiting for time to pass. Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you've done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items. Saving, resetting, and loading after this will have the largest effect.

Hope your copy avoids any game-ending problems. If you haven't so far, you're one of the lucky ones (knock on wood).

Look, the whole "GOTY" selection is at best one part subjective opinion and one part objective analysis. This means that whatever decision is reached, someone will always cry foul. You think Skryim is the bee's fuckin' knees? Awesome. A lot of people feel the same way about shit like Portal 2, Modern Warfare 3, Deus Ex: HR, Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, etc. That's PURELY subjective opinion and you can argue that until your balls fall off. What you CANNOT argue against is the technical execution of the product. Either it works at launch or it doesn't. Remember Dead Island? That was a pretty solid game completely discredited because it launched with gamebreaking bugs. In my eyes Skyrim falls in the same category, especially in a year with so many big games.

So yeah, while Skyrim is a fun game it should be held accountable for launching fuckin' broken. I feel like the release of Skryim sort of reminds me of the release of the movie Avatar where everyone was initially blown away and it wasn't until closer inspection that the movie didn't really hold up. I'm starting to catch on to Skyrim's repetitive systems (or often lack thereof) and the majesty of the vast world exploration is starting to feel redundant. Yes it's heads and shoulders above Oblivion but it still suffers from the same inherent design flaw of just repeating the same shit over...and over...and over...and over. Sorry but you don't get brownie points from me for making a 400+ hour game if 65% are repetitive encounters with Draugr, NPC Bandits, Falmer, or Dwarven Machines. Well and Dragons...lets not forget Dragons. Likely you wont be able to since there's more Dragons attacking than you can shake an ancient nordic sword at, severely diminishing their "Wow" factor. I could go on but you get my point.

I love how people are instantly forgiving of Arkham City...

that game is nothing more than basically the first game without room walls. The number and width of cosmetics do not hide the fact that there is not anything groundbreaking or game-changing in it.

Sure, it is a hell of a sequel, but that does not warranty anything above 70 or if I am lenient 80% ...if such rating has any merit to begin with.

Now you have me worried, Garlador-
While I have quite a bit more than 60 hours of playtime,
my save files are not yet 14mb... but they're very close (12mb).

Also, I have the original, backwards compatible PS3, FWIW.
And my hard drive is damn near full, so maybe I should do something about that?

It's hard to imagine this could retroactively ruin old saves,
but that's too serious a consequence to be taking chances-
thanks for the warning.

Hopefully my streak of avoiding this problem continues.

In my opinion, Dark Souls is a much more, well-put-together, than Skyrim. If not BETTER than Skyrim (Coming from someone who bitches and moans and cry about Dark Souls difficulty). Yeah, Skyrim is fucking awesome. but the glitches and what not cripple it, and the DRAGONS, oh my god, What a huge disappointment on the Dragons. They all look the same, act the same, etc except with different powers. But all in all it's a pretty kick-ass game, i just prefer Dark Souls more.
As for STUDIO of the YEAR, it should have gone to NAUGHTY DOG. Simply for the fact that Uncharted 3 got such great reviews and to me, Actually lived up to it's hype. (Plus there wasnt any glitches which i recall! *TrollFace*) and if there were glitches. NAUGHTY DOG was/is there to patch them. Keep in mind this is all opinion.

This is everything I've wanted to say about this game, ever. The game is 40 hours of fun and 300 hours of bullshit. That game was short, it was linear, all the things everyone complains about... But it was freakin' breathtaking. A little on the easy side, but that's nothing big. It's a one shot game you do for the experience of it, not for how much time it consumes or how skilled you become at it. Better than Skyrim.

@ Harle: YES! It was a breathtaking experience. It has that "HOLY SHIT!" Factor that, in my opinion, never goes away.
And i totally agree, about it being linear and what not. But that shouldn't affect any game's quality. Uncharted 3 was fucking Kick-ass, one of the BEST "GOD-DAMN" games in the universe.

Looked like a yawnfest to me, but each to his/her own I guess...