Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1377

(+) Yeah! (+)

With another full year of polls behind us, here's the current status of our vote totals since 2008:

Year | Average | % Increase/Decrease from Previous Year
2008 | 91112 | 3.64%
2009 | 85797 | -5.83%
2010 | 72588 | -15.40%
2011 | 56882 | -21.64%
2012 | 42981 | -24.44%
2013 | 36506 | -15.06%
2014 | 27323 | -25.15%
2015 | 21162 | -22.55%
2016 | 17492 | -17.34%
2017 | 14282 | -18.35%
2018 | 11360 | -20.46%
2019 | 10464 | -7.89%
2020 | 10483 | 0.18%
2021 | 9471 | -9.65%
2022 | 8362 | -11.71%
2023 | 7655 | -8.45%
2024 | 6963 | -9.04%

Another year, and another drop in average vote totals.

The Board 8 wiki page on this subject has been updated with the 2024 average vote totals.

https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/GameFAQs_Site_Traffic

Leonhart4 posted...

I wonder how ridiculous any contest would be considering these results are possible now

I know PotDs don't correlate directly to contests but I wonder how the Noble Nine would do now, for instance

GotD2 was basically the nail in the coffin of Final Fantasy as the King of JRPGs, where Final Fantasy's best was total fodder (XV) or got smoked by Mario Kart 8 (XIV). That's a decade of being irrelevant on this site, and it gets uglier when you realize Final Fantasy's last relevant game came out before these contests started.

This poll is more the formality of what we've known for a while, that Final Fantasy as a name alone doesn't make a game king.

Rebirth is a sequel to a game that showed a lot of vulnerability when it won Game of the Year, and my gut says a ton of Rebirth excitement was taken in both the RPG department (Metaphor) and Sony (Astro Bot), but...this is still rougher than I imagined.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Good start for FF7R2.

Whoops.

lol final fantasy

Be really nice to see Unicorn Overlord pull off 3rd place here.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Those Yakuza Like a Dragon whatever games are all so bad.

Yeah i'm not really a fan of the newer games either.

FF now close to doubling infinite wealfh

The rise to heaven is back, baby!

Or reborn you might say

If LaD was winning we could be making "infinite votes" jokes.

Doubling just achieved.
Seemed like a pretty big jump from the previous update too.

Too early to say if this is good or bad for Rebirth. However I think theres a reasonable chance Metaphor will take the whole thing. Also I like splitting the polls by season, especially now that the release schedule is a lot less seasonal than it used to be.

So it will probably be Rebirth, Erdtree, Astro Bot and Metaphor in the final?

Well, okay Like A Dragon completely collapsed.

Still not inspired by that Rebirth start, but this is more in line with what I expected.

Spoilers Rebirth having lots of pointless minigames is the place where it is most faithful to the original

Still upset there was no CPR minigame though, maybe in Part 3

Wait heres a possible yet cursed thought:

Wukong rallies.

How is it different from any other game franchise that has direct sequels

LightningStrikes posted...

Too early to say if this is good or bad for Rebirth. However I think theres a reasonable chance Metaphor will take the whole thing. Also I like splitting the polls by season, especially now that the release schedule is a lot less seasonal than it used to be.

So it will probably be Rebirth, Erdtree, Astro Bot and Metaphor in the final?

have they ever done expansions for these? I dont think Phantom Liberty got in last year

would be funny if Animal Well was the odd one out

ctesjbuvf posted...

How is it different from any other game franchise that has direct sequels

Well usually each entry would be it's own complete story, like the mgs games.

I don't know that it would have been possible to remake ff7 to the scale they want in one game though.

Then don't play it

You won't like them anyway

LiquidOshawott posted...

have they ever done expansions for these? I dont think Phantom Liberty got in last year

would be funny if Animal Well was the odd one out

Good point, there was a different poll for expansions one year but generally not. Neither Future Connected or Phantom Liberty were in last year. However, with Erdtree getting more mainstream GOTY consideration elsewhere this year maybe an exception will be made.

If its not, it will probably be either Animal Well as you say or Stellar Blade. Though Im rooting for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes! Whatever happens I doubt Dawntrail will do much if its included, it got a pretty underwhelming response, The War Within is surprisingly the better received MMO expansion this year.

Shadow of the Erdtree was in that "what's your pick for GotY so far" poll earlier this year so I'd guess it's in these polls too

They made them so that they contain their own story too. I don't see it being that different. MGS is less episodic sure, but it's not at all uncommon.

ctesjbuvf posted...

MGS is less episodic sure

Did you mean more episodic? My metric is that MGS1, for instance, feels like a complete story on its own. Sure there are be some hanging threads for the future, but I'd be pretty certain at the end of FFVIIR-1 it doesn't feel complete at all, like there MUST be more. Not saying it's a bad thing either, but it is what it is.

People got used to FF games being entirely self-contained

That hasn't been the case for over 20 years now though

Rebirth fits in the same category as something like Mass Effect 2, doesn't it? In terms of how self-contained it is.

LightningStrikes posted...

If its not, it will probably be either Animal Well as you say or Stellar Blade. Though Im rooting for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes!

Thousand Year Door would beat all of these.

Also if last year was Zelda falling and this year is (maybe) FF falling surely this already happened in 2010-2011 when FFXIII failed to even make the final poll then Skyward Sword cane second to Skyrim the next year?

Yeah, or, say, The Empire Strikes Back if we want a movie analogy

Or just name any series where a trilogy is the plan from the start, the second entry is almost always just a bridge from the first to the third rather than anything self-contained

LightningStrikes posted...

Also if last year was Zelda falling and this year is (maybe) FF falling surely this already happened in 2010-2011 when FFXIII failed to even make the final poll then Skyward Sword cane second to Skyrim the next year?

Yeah, but those games were panned (relative to other games in the series at least)

Tears of the Kingdom and Rebirth are both highly regarded games

MacArrowny posted...

Rebirth fits in the same category as something like Mass Effect 2, doesn't it? In terms of how self-contained it is.

idk that's an interesing one. I think the ME games still kind of have their own plots. ME2 has a distinct beginning middle and end based on Shepard working for Cerberus and the Collector plot. I'm not sure even Rebirth would have this "identity"

You're not sure because you haven't played it...!

Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, or, say, The Empire Strikes Back if we want a movie analogy

Yeah, although I'd point out that the first Star Wars is much more self-contained than Remake Part 1.

pjbasis posted...

Did you mean more episodic?

Yea lol. My bad.

Mass Effect is a good example of a similar case. They added some things to the original story probbaly exactly to make the games have their own story on top of the overarching one.

Leonhart4 posted...

You're not sure because you haven't played it...!

shhhhh soon

pjbasis posted...

Yeah, although I'd point out that the first Star Wars is much more self-contained than Remake Part 1.

Well yeah, because you're not sure you're getting a sequel (even if you'd like to make one)

The prequels and sequels both have endings that clearly set up for the next movie

Episode 1 ain't set up shit! (Although I know it was supposed to and it's mostly a failure on its part how little it contributes to the prequel storyline)

Playing through Yakuza 7 now, my first Yakuza game.

Heard a lot of good things about it, but once I found out Infinite Wealths location is Oahu, it finally gave me the nudge to try it out. Born and raised on that island.

On Ch 4 so still early but its different but im
enjoying it.

Unicorn Overlord got to within touching distance of Baltro with the American morning vote and now it's fallen off again.

This is honestly an absurd collapse from Infinite Wealth. Worse than joke character trends.

KamikazePotato posted...

This is honestly an absurd collapse from Infinite Wealth. Worse than joke character trends.

I remember a match in Game of the Decade that had absurd trends like this. I think it was Skies of Arcadia/Baldur's Gate.

correct. Baldurs Gate II showed the same ridiculous trends against Banjo Kazooie in 2015 and Baldurs Gate III did the same thing against Tears of the Kinggdom in GOTY last year.

Although Baldurs Gates problem is that it was spectacularly bad with the early vote even by WRPG standards while Yakuza was the opposite here - absurdly frontloaded and spent most of the rest of the day collapsing.

KamikazePotato posted...

This is honestly an absurd collapse from Infinite Wealth. Worse than joke character trends.

It seemed to have fairly normal trends in the mid 2024 poll. I have no idea where this burst and collapse came from.

The thing about Infinite Wealth's collapse is that it wasn't even frontloaded. It started off bad, spent about 2 hours rising to heaven, and then fell off like this.

Paper Mario is strong out of the gate but the others are catching up.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9599-what-is-your-pick-for-game-of-the-year-for-2024-so-far
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9785-best-of-2024-winter

It's fun seeing the changes between the two polls. Dragon's Dogma 2 got exactly the same score in both! Which is probably a bad thing, considering that the Winter poll is much weaker competition. Balatro had the biggest game, followed by Infinite Wealth.

According to Geolocation results, Like a Dragon got 69.33% of the vote in New Jersey yesterday. I wonder if someone was proxy voting for it there.

Yesmar_ posted...

According to Geolocation results, Like a Dragon got 69.33% of the vote in New Jersey yesterday. I wonder if someone was proxy voting for it there.

Seems like it. Results look more normal if one takes away 245 votes from Like a Dragon out of New Jersey. This also makes the vote total from New Jersey more inline with older polls (around 100 instead of around 400).

TeamRocketElite posted...

Seems like it. Results look more normal if one takes away 245 votes from Like a Dragon out of New Jersey. This also makes the vote total from New Jersey more inline with older polls (around 100 instead of around 400).

Fun Fact: Stellar Blade has 94% in New Jersey.

So it's come to this, huh

TeamRocketElite posted...

It seemed to have fairly normal trends in the mid 2024 poll. I have no idea where this burst and collapse came from.

It's not explainable by the Geolocation results either. Like a Dragon only did about 1.5% better in the US compared to its worldwide result. Looking at the other continents, there weren't notable showings in any specific countries other than a 22.58% in Belgium and 20% in Hungary.

I do have the full poll updates and trend charts, and will be posting those soon.