DualShockers Game of the Year 2019: Vote for Readers Choice & GOTY Nominations

Welcome back, everyone! This is resident DualShockers Editor-in-Chief, Lou Contaldi, and it is time for the annual bloodbath… err– celebrating the best and the brightest of gaming in 2019!

While it is tradition to hold a separate poll for Readers’ Choice for both Game of the Year 2019 and Most Anticipated Game of 2020, we are spicing things up with a few new ways this year: announcing our nominations for each category and giving you a way to participate in the DS staff polls.

Vote for Readers’ Choice 2019 Awards:

Without question, our community is the best part of DualShockers, so we (and the developers and publishers we chat to) know that the Reader’s Choice Award is one of the best annual honors to win. And, as always we are looking for your help in making that selection in one of gaming’s busiest years.

You’re given the ability to change your vote at any time before the cutoff time, which will be December 22nd, at 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time. People change their mind all the time, so we don’t see a reason why you wouldn’t be able to change your vote here.

Below, you’ll find a form to vote for your favorite game (you can find it here if you are on mobile). In order to limit spam and vote manipulation, you’ll be asked to log in to a google account if you aren’t already. If you don’t have one, making it is pretty easy and very quick.

In order to be eligible for Game of the Year, a game needs to have been released for the first time (unless it’s a remaster/remake) between December 10th, 2018 and December 15th, 2019. Expansions are not eligible. Early Access games that have moved out of early access this year (for instance Dead Cells) are considered 2019 releases.

While we love Japanese games, only releases in the West are eligible (to avoid games appearing for two years in a row). For instance. it wouldn’t make sense to ask you to vote for Persona 5: The Royal as Game of The Year, since most of you will play the Western version (Persona 5: Royal) in 2020. You’ll be able to vote for it in our Most Anticipated Game of 2020 – Reader’s Choice Award.

Asian market releases in English have been included where appropriate in case a western release is confirmed as not happening, or extremely unlikely.

As you’ll probably notice, the list is very long — though sorted alphabetically. While other outlets give you a narrowed down list for Game of the Year, we think it is better that all voices get heard — even niche games that may be ignored. If you notice a game is missing that you wanted to vote on, go ahead and let us know in the comment section and we will add it on.

You’ll also notice that there are plenty of games that didn’t review very well on the list. It’s not our place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t like. Yet, we apologize if we missed or forgot games that you might love. After all, we’re only human.

So, what are you waiting for? Get voting, and feel free to let us know your favorites in the comments:

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DualShockers 2019 GotY Award Nominations and Vote

Now here comes the new part: not only will we be sharing our nominees for each category ahead of the vote, we want you all to be part of the decision-making.

Following a multi-week process of narrowing down on our nomination pool with both the DualShockers Staff and our Discord community, we have a tighter list of the games we are voting for in each category. Starting today, we will be tallying votes from both Staff and the Community. Each DualShockers Staff member will have one vote; comparatively, the Community will get a 10% stake in the final totals (at 3 points) for all of their leading contenders. No game will win without a clear majority (50.1%).

Voting cut-off for this initial vote is Wednesday, December 18 at 11:59:59 PM Pacific. In the instance that there is no clear majority (which will most certainly be the case), there will be a series of run-off elections happening exclusively on the DualShockers Discord! You can join those conversations by heading here: https://discord.gg/uKFUAxp