I say Valve. But I believe a lot of PS3 users do not like them right now...
Oh maybe a showdown between Bethesda and Obsidian? *Cues in dramatic music*

Something tells me The Escapist did that on purpose. If Obsidian survives the wrath of Capcom and goes up against Bethesda, it'll be a fight for the ages.

Round 2 has started if anyone's interested :dance:

And Bethesda is destroying Capcom....
It's going to be a tough one with Valve next. Both are my favorite developers.

I would be shocked if Bethesda defeated Valve. I like Bethesda way more, but they haven't released enough popular games to beat Valve.

I'm really angry over what Zynga is doing. They're the developer of Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, and they're advertising in those games for people to go vote for them. So there's thousands of people just mindlessly flocking to the site and voting for them. They'll probably win the whole thing at this rate.

I don't really understand how they managed to beat Infinity Ward, but I am glad they did so.

Yeah, no matter who wins between the two I'll be happy.
Wow and Zynga is beating Rockstar North right now...That's dumb.

Such a shame, Capcom's titles rock TES and Fallout 3. Oh well, I can't complain, haven't yet bothered to register and vote.

I can see it ending up with Blizzard going against Valve. Pretty good match up.

svcks you have to register or use facebook to vote.

I dislike IW as much as the next guy, but I dislike Zynga even more simply because they advertise to get more votes. Unlike, say, Bethesda, who just mentions it in it's blog, Zynga advertises it anywhere it can, including in it's games. That means that Zynga will destroy any developer it runs in to, even if that developer has produced better games (and it's not hard to have better games than Farmville and Mafia Wars).

So pretty much Zynga is getting some [censored] Facebook users to spam votes for them? Well, I won't mind as long as they get beaten by an actually good developer.

It's not really surprising, is it?

I'm sure everyone would agree that this isn't in any way a competition about which game developer is the best, but rather which can rack up the largest number of votes. If we really wanted to know which developer was best, we'd have a panel of qualified, independant, judges to weigh the pro's and con's according to preset standards, or at least a set number of voters chosen to be representative of the general population.

What we have now is an undetermined number of voters without any kind of selection at all. Add to that the fact that gaming enthusiast are very few in the grand scheme of things, and we have a competition that says absolutely nothing relevant about anything at all.

Ask a random person on the street who Relic are, and you'll most likely get an answer along the line of "Who?", or perhaps "Isn't that an adventure series on CBS?". Same for Bethesda, Epic, Obsidian, Bioware. People might have heard of Blizzard, but beyond the three letters "WoW", they won't have a clue what they're about.

So, what do you, as a developer, want to do to win?

Why, of course, you want to mobilize the broad majority of people; the one's who do not spend their free time arguing on internet forums. How do you do that? Make a mention of it in Farmville, because everyone and his mother plays it, literally. Just like Facebook itself, it's viral.

The general public doesn't know about their design philosophies, about how they cater to the demands of their customers, or for that matter how they treat their employees. The general public will, in general, go like "Oh, I play this, so I'll vote for whoever made it!".

That's just how things work; if there is a niche-market, whoever is the first one to pull it into the mainstream will get the big bucks, and the people in the niche will be upset because the broad majority suddenly became interested in what used to be their own domain.

It's not wrong, bad or unjust, it's just the way it is.

Bethesda vs. Valve? My two favorites

edit: or at least it should be valve vs, beth,

No, it is wrong. It's wrong because they're asking their hordes of fans to vote for them, and because of that they thousands more votes than most other developers do. It's throwing the competition way off. Every developer Zynga will run into, no matter how much better of a developer they are, they will get crushed by the thousands of mindless drones voting for Zynga because they were told too. It's unfair. And what's worse is that Zynga's CEO has admitted to scamming it's customers. They shouldn't even be considered a legit developer.

Now, obviously, this isn't an accurate competition. It's nothing but a popularity contest. Yet it's still fun to participate in. But Zynga is ruining that fun by basically stuffing the ballot box. What's the point in participating if Zynga is just going to cheat.

While I agree that they aren't developing games in the sense that BioWare, Square Enix or Valve are, had Infinity Ward advertised their spot in the competition, Zynga would have been utterly decimated. Them being in the competition to begin is a bid odd, sending the Zynga Train to rush the polls even though most of them didn't even know what they were voting for was a bit silly, but it's "fair" nonetheless.

Mindless drones? Cheating?

I think this discussion ought to end here, don't you?

You take offense shockingly easily, man. First my comment on long distance relationships, now this. Fine, if you can't have a discussion without becoming instantly offended, then I'll drop it, just for you. :shakehead:

Hey don't forget this rule from the pinned rules:



Remember we have members here who may play those little games Zynga makes so, just be careful not to flame them while stating why you believe it wrong.

Yeah guuuyyyssss! I have a level 103 Mafia Wars character! Don't bash on me! :cryvaultboy:

The WoW-fanatics come out of their dark hollows to bring down the Spartans and Elites of old. This is sad.

Wait so you think Bungie should be beating Blizzard or am I missing something here?

I think it's more along the lines of there being a little troop shortage. And because I avoid WoW like the plague.

Has Zynga advertised this? I checked their website and the facebook pages for Farmville and Mafia Wars (which I believe are their two largest games) and I found no mention of the Escapist or the Developer Showdown. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, or don't have access to some important feed, but at the very least it looks like Zynga could be promoting this far more than they have.


Turbine did the same thing the first two years of the Developer Showdown - they advertised the Developer Showdown to their MMO crowds and that created a large enough group that they took down almost everyone with a comfortable margin.

You're right that it does take a lot of the fun out of it. In the Bethesda vs. Turbine match up last year we put up a really valiant effort but we couldn't compete with Turbine's advertising. The fact that the various developers advertise this event to different degrees has an enormous impact on how the votes go - I'm sure if Blizzard were really promoting this in their WoW news they'd get a huge crowd too, same for Valve and Steam.

For better or worse I think the Escapist runs this primarily as a promotion - the fact that they're giving people advantages for twitter and facebook involvement seems to support this. I'm not suggesting that they don't want people to have fun, I just think that attracting new members is their priority. It got me to register last year and I know I'm not the only forum goer to do this. :hehe:

At least I'm not an Escapist regular, a lot of those people are really unhappy with the enormous influx of Zynga members. Hopefully the situation will settle down after this ends. From a promotional perspective I'm sure including Zynga was a great move but it will take some time for their established community to stop bristling over it - particularly if Zynga wins.

I also wonder if attracting the Zynga crowd will result in many people who keep coming back to the Escapist for their videos and articles. While there are plenty of "gamers" who also play Zynga stuff the majority of Zynga gamers seem pretty casual and I'm not sure if they're really going to care about most of the Escapist's content.

If Square Enix doesn't stop Zynga then I have no clue what will, I wanted Ifinity Ward to get knocked out early because that would give Bethesda better chance of winning. I just have to wonder who will win in the Nintendo vs Blizzard part :S