Remember When 'Game Of The Year' Editions Actually Meant Something? (2024)

I still remember my Half-Life: Game Of The Year Edition, with its weirdly botoxed-looking Gordon Freeman tensely staring at me from the sleeve, surrounded by a golden banner denoting the game as part of the ‘Best Seller Series.’ I have a nostalgic fondness for those 90s-00s initiatives, like the Best Seller Series and the PlayStation Platinum Collection, which awarded top-selling games that had been out for a while with some kind of trophy-coloured label as well as a cut price. It felt like a badge of honour, a well-earned war medal, and made me feel like a real games connoisseur having those silver and gold-trimmed games lining my shelves, while also making it more affordable for me to fill said shelves with games.

‘Game Of The Year Edition,’ that Half-Life copy said on the front. Turn it over, and on the back you had a couple of things things that cemented that claim–a quote from the venerable PC Gamer that this was “The Best PC Game Ever,” as well as a little stamp pointing out that Half-Life was “Awarded Game of the Year by over 50 publications.” None of this is surprising, of course. Half-Life is a phenom, a game-changer, and few would question its GOTY claims in 1998, even though you could argue for the likes of Fallout 2, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, and Baldur’s Gate pipping it to top spot (man, what a year for gaming that was).

The point is that ‘Game of the Year’ meant something when Half-Life became–as far as I’m aware–the first game ever to be re-released as a ‘Game of the Year’ edition, which included all DLC for the game and Team Fortress, as well as that illustrious label.

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And for a few years, that label kind of held true. Deus Ex: Game Of The Year Edition came out in 2001. Again, a fully deserved and verifiable claim, though oddly there wasn’t really any new stuff in the edition apart from a patch, a few changed map files, and some modding tools. Unreal Tournament and Morrowind got their own GOTY editions in the early 2000s. One of the less famous examples was Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns–a 2001 strategy game that in fairness won quite a few ‘Best Strategy Game’ awards that year, though you can already see the integrity of the definition getting stretched a bit. The implication with ‘Game Of The Year Edition’ back then was ‘best overall game, irrespective of genre.’

Among perfectly viable GOTY editions for games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, and (at a stretch) Borderlands and Borderlands 2, we started also seeing GOTY Editions for games like Worms Reloaded, which got a 79 on Metacritic and seemingly wasn’t nominated for any awards. In fairness, the original 1995 Worms and its 1997 sequel Worms 2 had some legit GOTY claims back before GOTY editions were a thing, so perhaps Team17 was just making up for those lost years (a bit like how Return of the King swept the Oscars even though it was clearly an inferior film to the previous two). We'll give them a pass... this time.

It’s some time around 2010 that shit started getting crazy. Obviously, trying to date the exact year that the whole concept of ‘Game of the Year Edition’ became broken for good is like trying to accurately date the building of the Great Sphinx, but you could probably trace it back to 2010-2011, when Men of War: Assault Squad and Two Worlds II (think The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as conceived by German trash-film director Uwe Boll) both got repackaged in GOTY editions. Eyebrows were raised and questions were asked by some journos, but it’s not like there was some higher authority to go to here; not governments nor the EU nor the UN dared step up to declare this a breach of consumer rights or a war crime, and unfortunately we don’t have a dispassionate council of judges ready to throw those who transgress the laws of games branding into a fiery pit.

Sure, Game of the Year Edition used to mean something, but it’s only because the publishers behind actual GOTY-worthy games were plucky enough to label their games as such. It was only a matter of time before the plebs like Men of War and Two Worlds got their hands on it, making the whole world realise that you can repackage absolutely any game you like as a quote-unquote Game of the Year.

These days, I see the ‘Game of the Year’ label as a bit of a marker of a publisher’s insecurity about their game, oddly tacked onto the kinds of games that had all the potential and resources to make an actual push for Game of the Year, but fell short. Last year, our pals at Gamerant pulled up Far Cry 6 over its so-called ‘Game of the Year’ edition, despite the fact that the game won no such awards at any of the major ceremonies. A more accurate title would’ve been ‘Coulda-Should-Woulda-Been Game Of The Year (if it actually bothered doing something new with the series formula for the first time in like a decade).’ Bit mouthy but hey, you could always add that part in brackets with an asterisk as smallprint at the bottom of the box.

Next up, Cyberpunk 2077 is due to get a ‘Game of the Year’ Edition in 2023, even though when it came out in 2020 it was barely a functional game for many people, let alone a best game contender (and surely, if GOTY Editions have any kind of merit, they’d refer back to the year in which the game came out, right?).

Contrast that with another CD Projekt RED game, The Witcher 3, which was almost unanimously seen as the GOTY for 2015 yet was re-repackaged as a modestly titled ‘Complete Edition’ in 2016. Like Geralt himself, the bundle didn’t need to peacock or adorn itself with false gravitas; it knew what it was about, and its legacy and GOTY status were secure enough that it didn’t need reiterating.

That’s the great irony. In more recent years, games that actually do win myriad GOTY accolades tend not to reiterate that fact. I appreciated how Dark Souls had a ‘Prepare to Die’ Edition, and I imagine that Elden Ring–the most GOTY’ed game ever, or something–won’t feel the need to do the whole ‘GOTY Edition’ spiel when the time comes. I have a quiet respect for games that opt to theme the names of their bundled editions around the game itself (Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Augmented Edition), or just outright take the piss out of the ‘GOTY Edition’ convention (Saint’s Row IV: Game of the Century Edition, I salute you). Even the old ‘Gold Edition’ adage, as per Resident Evil Village, feels more classy than a claim that only a trivially tiny proportion of people would agree with.

And say what you will about Bethesda’s shameless monetisation of the same game over and over again, but at least Skyrim’s multiple editions weren’t just battering us over the head with the fact that it was by most accounts the best game of the year in 2011. Fallout 4, on the other hand, did get a GOTY Edition, though hardly anyone placed it above The Witcher 3 as the best game of 2015 (again, playing into the ‘GOTY Edition as signifier of insecurity’ theory).

So I guess my point is: GOTY Editions are bullshit, and may as well not exist. How about we get rid of them in 2023?

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