Voted.

Zynga vs Valve...

....Go Valve!

So who is Zynga again? How is it that a developer I have never heard of has gotten to the semi-finals?

Some developer who makes games for Facebook. Apparently they are advertising the competition in their games or something, and getting a bunch of votes.

As much as it svcks that Bethesda loss it does mean that

A)We can't lose against Zynga and
B)Valve will provide a easier banner for any true gamer to unite under and hopefully defeat the Zynga menace.

I don't see why everyone (including the developers!) always get so worked up about this particular popularity contest. :shrug:

Zynga has been getting a lot of votes, I think Valve has a very tough battle ahead.


It's within the rules for a developer to advertise the contest, in fact I'm sure the Escapist loves having the contest advertised.

Turbine won last year by really trumpeting the contest - they mainly develop MMOs so it was easy to get the word out to a lot of people. I don't see Zynga's tactics being all that different but as a casual game developer (who provides free games) they reach an exceptionally large number of people.

I'd rather not see Zynga win but I don't think they're operating all that differently than some of the other developers.

That figures.... so all of the votes are moms and young women who play facebook games. That's a shame since they all probably have no idea even who the other developers are, or why they are voting.

Voting for the next round is now open:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/index/532-The-Escapists-2010-March-Mayhem

Sorry that Bethesda is out, but it clears my conscience and allows me to vote for Blizzard without worry of harming Bethesda's results now.

Valve is currently destroying Zynga but that can easily change if a huge wave of voters come.

Valve went from 94% of the votes to 79% in a little over 30 minutes. It was over before it even started.

*sniff* I dun wan Zynga to winz :cold:

Are the escapist forums running slow for you guys? Uh oh. Might be another wave of Zynga voters....

The Zynga Train has arrived. 5% in 5 minutes, that's brutal.

Zynga? Is this for real? You have to be kidding me. http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/85779.html

Well at least Valve is holding a solid lead. (For now)

It's a close one between Bioware and Blizzard though.

Go Valve! Go BioWare!

Huge wave of Zynga voters just came in. It's nearly 50-50 between them and Valve now.

Which really svcks. Valve needs a lot of support.

I don't think there's any hope of Valve winning this. And if Valve can't win it, well, I can't picture Blizzard or Bioware being big enough to win over them.

If Blizzard wanted to really promote this to the WoW crowd they may be able to pull it off - but I don't know how likely they would be to do that, and at the moment they're loosing to Bioware.

I think it's likely Zynga will win this. In the short term The Escapist has gotten a huge amount of advertising and they'll probably be able to ride that for a while. (And I certainly don't have any ill will towards them for this.) However if Zynga wins I think there's a risk that lots of people won't take their next March Madness seriously being resigned that Zynga or some similar developer will sweep it again. I know after Turbine's victory last year I almost didn't participate this year since: it just seemed a foregone conclusions that an MMO developer or someone else with easy advertising access would dominate the polling - and in fact that's just what happened

And even though the next MM won't be for eleven months there were a lot of people commenting this time that they were voting against Turbine to prevent it from winning MM for a third time in a row.

Valve is ahead of Zynga. Not by much, but they're still ahead. Bioware is fairly far ahead of Blizzard.

Stupid popularity contest. :banghead:

Valve, Bethesda, and Bioware are still my favorites.