http://www.escapistmagazine.com/global/tournaments/standings/2-2010-March-Mayhem-Developers-Showdown

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

Just wanted to spread the word about this. Everybody should go and vote for their favorite developers. Bethesda has no chance of losing the first round, but I still voted for them. And for Bioware and Valve, of course. And I made sure to vote for whoever was opposing Ubisoft.

If you vote, make sure to post here with who you voted for!

Didn't one of the developers skew the results to epic proportions the last time there was this kind of showdown?

Where did you hear that? I don't recall hearing anything like that. :shrug:

Why do you hate Ubisoft? Have they offended you in any way?

Yep. I hate them for their ridiculous DRM. Oh, sure, they make good games, but any developer that imposes such draconian DRM on their potential customers is not worthy of receiving my affection.

Once they stop using that DRM, then I may learn to like them again.

(Oh, and lets not turn this into an argument or anything. You asked a question, I answered it, I don't want to derail the topic)

Bethesda will easily get to round 2, probably round 3 as well. But I think Infinity Ward or Blizzard will win

EDIT: Just checked the votes for Bethesda in round 1
Bethesda - 2480 votes
Twisted Pixel - 211 votes

No worries about that I was just curious. For some reason I always thought you were an Xbox 360 player ...

So I was just kind of confused.

On topic: I didn't vote because it required me to register. :shrug:

I was but my 360 suffered the RROD so now I'm strictly a PC player until I get around to buying a new 360.

I believe it was during that GOTD competition we had a thread about. IIRC, Valve actively tried to rally its entire Steam base to vote for Half-Life 2.
Of course, now I can't find the thread. It was probably purged in the update. But the point still stands. Someone might still try to pull that trick off again.

I'd probably go with BioWare and Blizzard before Bethesda, don't get me wrong, Bethesda makes great games, but BioWare and Blizzard have made games I enjoy more, I doubt any game could ever top the experience I had with Warcraft 3 or KotOR.

Oh, well this competition is just for the developers themselves, not for specific games, so I don't know if they'd try to do that for this.

Though it is something to look out for.

If I were to vote it'd be for BioWare, Naughty Dog and Square-Enix. Don't particularly care about the rest enough to vote, though I don't feel like registering for any of it.

I guess this might make me sound ignorant, but what is the Developer showdown?

I voted for Bethesda, Nintendo, Square, Bioware and Atlus so far.

My money is on either Blizzard or Valve winning.

Blizzard should win, all of their titles are massive classics.

Turbine won the last two times and some people felt they acted unfairly by linking to the Showdown in their login news or somesuch. It did give them a considerable advantage but I'm not sure if it's really unfair - in fact given the animosity it generated it may have hurt them almost as much as it helped them, a lot of people were purposefully voting against Turbine last year and I think its continued to this year. When I checked yesterday they were winning with sixty something percent of the vote whereas most prominent developers were winning with eighty or ninty percent.

Last year Turbine Won: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tournament/index

Which really to me says that the thing is kinda crap, since they're just not that big in my opinion.

I am kinda wondering about seeding though. Last year Bethesda was a 5 seed right after Fallout 3's release and now they're a two seed? Odd.

Well I'm not really expecting Bethesda to win, after all, when the average gamer thinks about them they only think about 3 games, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3, and some of the poorly made published titles people think they developed. If Bethesda makes it into the final 8 this year I'll be happy.

Did this one about a week ago - I think my final two were volition and rockstar north. I hate how they put the popular developers together in the first round so you have to eliminate your faves right from the off.

Edit: not that I'm implying that everyone only likes popular developers

I could have sworn Valve won last year.

No, though Valve did advertise on steam for people to vote for Gordon Freeman in some "Best game character ever"-contest.

Could you explain seeds to me and what them being a lower seed means?

Yeah, if they'd done really well last time I'd understand but they got taken out by Turbine in round three.

And really, as much as I love Bioware I have trouble believing they'd be ranked higher than Blizzard. Yeah they're in different divisions but it still seems odd.

My guess, the ranking system was set up to try and get a few favorites as far to the end as possible - in the hopes of keeping those fan bases stopping by for as long as possible. While Bethesda didn't get very far last time we did give Turbine a run for its money (and actually managed a slim lead for much of the round) and maybe they figured it would be better to have groups like us get more invested.

Then again Square Enix is set up to go against Turbine soon and I have to imagine Square Enix brings in a crowd as well :shrug:


Basically the top seed is believed to have the highest chance of winning and the lowest seed the lowest chance of winning. The difference between two consecutive ranks can be pretty negligible sometimes, but not always.

For example Nintendo (1) and Blizzard (2) are both very popular and have huge fan bases. On the other hand there seems to be a larger difference between Bioware (1) and Relic (2).

It looks like PopCap is going to beat Sony Online, which honestly surprises me. I thought the fact that it had Sony in the title would send Sony "very devoted fans" voting like crazy.

So if it's PopCap vs. Bethesda, who do you think will win? I'm thinking Bethesda, though it'll probably be tight.