And the Award Goes to?

Yes it's true, we have entered that time of the year when everyone and their brother has decided that they need to do a GAME of the Year. But what really is the point in the end? Everyone more or less talks about the same games in their top ten and most sites have agreed this year that Bioshock from 2k Games is the winner. I certainly can understand why this happened but what I don't understand is everyone's need to proclaim it from the rooftops.

The quality of the title is rather obvious to anyone who has played it. But what some games of this year haven't shown is that they are all basically, when boiled down the same thing. I can hear it now, the cries of how wrong I am and what a fool I am. But it's true. The games of 2007 fell into two categories.

Critical darlings and financial ones. Only a couple of games bridged the two. Most games that did well financially were totally destroyed critically and most of the games that were critically acclaimed had a hard time getting off the ground financially.

The two games that really broke that mold were the Orange Box from Valve and Halo 3 from Bungie. You could also count Guitar Hero 3. All these games were incredibly well received both financially and critically.

But what do these games have in common and why then are all games the same. It's a lot easier than you might think. The reason for Halo's success was it's heritage. If there was no Halo or Halo 2 there would not have been the blockbuster Halo 3. It just couldn't have pulled in all that money. Same holds true for the Orange Box. If two thirds of the box hadn't appeared in other places and from the award winning company Valve. There wouldn't never have been that financial success. Finally the same holds true for Guitar Hero 3. And to an even greater extent there is Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. If there hadn't been all those Mario games in the past this game would never have been such a financial success.

The industry now is run by sequels. If the game isn't a franchise product it doesn't have that multimillion dollar power behind it. The reason for this of course is the distracted nature of the average consumer. Most consumers don't pay much attention to the here and now. Most pay attention to the last year or so.

So if your game is new and unique and no one has played anything like it. Then there is no way for that average consumer to know that your game exists. Unless there is a feature film about it or some kind of graphic novel about it.

Therefore, I will probably go along with the crowd and drop my top ten best games of 2007. I might even do it tonight. But folks please just take this as my opinion. Because the main thing that you should take away from 2007 in video games is that this was the year of the sequel. What will next year bring? More of the same. But then, that IS what everyone wants right???