Games That Have "Won" Without Winning

How do I pick games exactly?  Well, I make lists, and I don't have a plan.  Whenever I encounter a game, new or old, that I would like to cover, I add it to my list.  That list quickly gets far too bloated, so I also sometimes have a note in my room with 5-10 possible games written on it, too.

When I say I don't have a plan it's largely because I have TOO MUCH of a plan, a plan too large to be useful, in the form of this list.  I often don't even have the next game chosen yet at the time that I record the finale of the current one.  I just wait until it's time to record the next episode of that timeslot, realize it's time, and make a choice.  I'll lean towards a brand new release, obviously, since I'm trying to grow the channel.  You always have to be growing, after all.  No matter who you are you're always slowly losing people, so "growing" often doesn't even mean becoming larger but instead staving off decay.  Chasing trends is part of the game, even if you're a rather niche channel.  That just means your trends are more niche, like Pathologic or Obra Dinn.

But what about when there isn't a hot new release within my particular umbrella lately, or I just don't feel like bothering with the newest releases that particular day?  THE LIST.  The massive possibilityscape opens, and I am paralyzed by choice.  Sometimes a particular project that's been lingering in the back of my head calls to me, and I strike out to play something like Onimusha or Intelligent Qube, but a lot of the time I feel pulled in every direction at once.  Might want to play Rage before Rage 2 comes out, or Psychonauts for the same reason.  Better get that Surge and Nioh DLC done before their sequels come out.  But when are you going back to the expansions for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Final Fantasy XV, and Dishonored 2?  But you said you wanted to cover all of the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil games, so better get on that.  But when will it finally be time for KOTOR, Dragon Age, Witcher, and Pillars of Eternity?  I know they're huge, intimidating undertakings, but you have to start at some point.  There's always more Yakuza.  Fuck it, wildcard, let's just go play the Dead or Alive 5 campaign, that'll confuse everyone and feel like an escape from obligation.

This is where we get to the title.

I was looking back at this results page and thought it might be worth highlighting.  In blue are games that won either that poll or later ones, while in red are games that were played after that poll without actually winning.  I think many have guessed it in the past but I don't think I've come out and said it before: the results of polls can certainly weigh on my choices when it comes time to pick new games. 

Sometimes when I can't land on anything that feels quite right I seek outside reinforcement so that, frankly, I can move on.  This is how Ashen, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and many games I haven't kept track of from the past have gotten played.  You'll notice that the reds and blues work quite differently.  I'm not just passively picking the most popular thing that hasn't been played yet, so don't expect this process to happen automatically just because the thing you nominated got second place.  Instead, the process works backwards: I have particular games that I have a personal interest in, and I find validation in choosing them sometimes when I see it performed strongly in the previous poll.  "You're thinking about playing this, there's clearly a demand for it, so just do it."

So yeah, there's a short message conveyed in a long way, as I tend to do.  Don't take this post as a promise, and certainly don't take it as permission to send multiple messages demanding I play a game because it got third place so now I "have to."  If anything, my intent is to give people some hope when they're discouraged by particular trends.  Sure, most people are probably satisfied, as the results are quite democratic in nature.  But there's also the undercurrent of people who become frustrated when ANOTHER Myst game (4 times, 64 episodes), ANOTHER Zelda game (4 times, 265 episodes), or ANOTHER Mario game wins (3 times, 95 episodes and counting).  I just wanted people to know that even if a popular franchise seems to consistently dominate the polls it isn't a blockade that stops anything else from getting covered.

The semi-useful disorganized nightmare list:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19XvKSUyUsVbN1c2GcLBQTTr1pt5XpfT6lxvYC5F0O7Y/edit#gid=0 

Be sure to check out the all new existential nightmare tab I added: "Franchises & DLC," which should answer some common questions people always ask of "why haven't you played the DLC yet, it's been a year!" or "when are you going to play [next game in franchise?"  The tab features the full franchises of games I've covered before that I have interest in taking further, along with DLC expansions that came out for various games after I originally covered them.  It's staggering.  I swear it feels like it would take 5-10 years to clear that page even if it was all I did.  But hey, I'm not planning on going anywhere I guess.