The Tanoubliette: Pussy Hurt and Delusions or TTPHAD for short.

So a web site you don't like gave a game you don't like "Game of the Year". What's the actual problem?

Me? Probably not. Did you actually read the article, though?

http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/15/5311568/game-of-the-year-2013-gone-home

Do you not think they did a good enough job explaining how they made the decision? Seems to me like they made a legitimate, well-informed choice.

Here's IGN explaining why Gone Home was their PC Game of the Year:

http://ca.ign.com/videos/2014/01/09/the-best-pc-game-of-2013-gone-home-igns-best-of-2013

Again, the explanation is dead-on. What's the problem?

Video review for Gone Home that does a fantastic job explaining why Gone Home is not just a video game, but a good video game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU-0Ijj-ZHA

Follow-up piece by the same guy that addresses some of the more specific points people try to use to push the "Gone Home is not a video game" narrative:
http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/17896/article/two-months-later-gone-home-is-still-asking-us-what-a-game-actually-is

The best quote actually comes from the lead developer:
"I think people who are saying this or that 'isn't a game' are just looking for a way to dismiss it and say it's not valid generally, and that's the language they choose."

So take your "troll country" bullshit elsewhere, Quaid. I've made a better argument for why Gone Home is a game than you or anyone else has for why it isn't.

So much of the heavy criticism of Gone Home is not even based on the game, but rather a childish tantrum responding to the positive reception of the game. You can see this in the user reviews on Metacritic, which contain a tremendous amount of butthurt over the positive reviews it got and are clearly a transparent and ferociously immature attempt to "set things right".

Check out these quotes and see if you see a pattern: (Sorry, no spoilers here)

"The thing that bothers me the most about this game though, is how it has a Metascore of 90..."
"...the reason why everyone is giving it high scores, is because the main character is female and lesbian. "
"I simply cannot believe how low games have fallen for something like this to be considered one. A fact that is not helped by the quite frankly pathetic and desperate pandering of the ''professional'' reviewers by giving it such high scores just to seem ''progressive'' and ''mature'' when all it really does is lower their credibility. "
"The game simply does not hold up to the raving reviews it is receiving by critics across the board."
"All the high reviews seem to be just based on the "special" story. I can't tell you the big secret (you stumble upon about 10.15 minutes in the game) without spoiler but it's a sad fact that this is the reason why this "game" is so hyped."
"Don't listen to people blindly praising this for "being different" (which is not an excuse to be crap). You'll even notice that some people are praising this for homosexual relationships. Truly the end of times this is."
"9/10 for a game that is not a game in first place. Sure you can move around and click on things, I guess the developers thought my morning routine deserves a 20 dollar price tag on it, for it takes me an hour, feels completely rushed and there is not a real story to it.
See, here is the real twist, were I a lesbian, my morning routine would be deemed as "IMPRESSIVE", "OUTSTANDING", "GRANDIOSE", or any other adjective truly devoid of meaning when it comes to modern gaming. "
"Ultimately this is an art project, and like most art projects reviewers are afraid to give it low scores for fear of looking like they don't "get it.""
" I think people are really getting onboard with this game because of the sister-is-a-lesbian-who-runs-off-with-her-military-lover story-arc."
" I fail to see how you can give a "game" without any gameplay characteristics a 10/10."
"It's a crime that this game is being fawned over..."
"The fact that critics are praising it's story is a sign of the extremely low standards the videogame industry has in that particular field."
"... the ridiculous reviews given to it by "critics" are most likely due to the hip agenda the game addresses."
" I'll just give it 0 to balance out all the 10/10 reviews that COMPLETELY ignore how terrible a game it is."
"Unbelievable. If only games journalism was a licensed field of work, then we could strip it from everyone who rated this game higher than a 3 out of 10. This is not a game, and is an "interactive story" in only the loosest sense of both words. Yet another high watermark in a long-standing tradition of prominent games journalists broadly failing to do their jobs properly."
"Just another case of how big time reviewers don't give a about the quality of the game at all, just the bull**** they can get out of it."
"... the story is bland and predictable but is considered "the best story in video game history" because its about a homosexual child."
"This "game" is the embodiment of hipster indie developer bull**** that is the cancer to the video game industry."
"Reviewers are giving it rave reviews purely based on the fact that it is a LBGT interest story it seems."
"The reviews tell more about gaming journalism than they do the actual game."
"Whatever the critics are smoking, let me have some."
"What I don't understand is how can a serious reviewer give this "game" a 9/10 or 10/10"
"I guess this one just fly's over my head as I cannot understand the critics answers for a 100%."
"Gone Home is a feminist, "check your privilege" type of game that everyone should avoid."
"OK, I feel compelled to write about this game. Why has it got a score of 90? "
" It's getting perfect tens by professional reviewers for lord knows what reason, I assume they just don't want to get called sexist or homophobic since the game deals with fairly delicate social issues that internet activists get extremely riled about."
"Do not buy this game if you are sick of people deliberately making high-minded, 'socially conscious' non-game "'experiences''' (there really aren't enough quotation marks in the world) specifically to score pander to reviewers who obviously can't distinguish art from pretentious faffery"
"This is not a game, it is interactive media that is being overhyped by game reviewers for some unknown reason. I suspect bribery."
"I don't want to be associated to this as a gamer."
"The only reason the story is considered to be great and 'deep' is because it involves lesbians."
"This, uh, thing, has been given great reviews because of it's supposedly 'deep' and 'insightful', but it's not."
"I'm rating this game a five in protest to rave scores from professional critics."
"The critics really dropped the ball on this one (or were paid off, maybe)."
"Had the game not featured a feminist and LGBT agenda, I'm confident that it would not have achieved a high rating from any critic. But nobody wants to be wrongly labeled "misogynist" or "intolerant" nowadays- it would kill business."
"The 'professional' critics that rated this 'game' so highly should be completely and utterly ashamed of themselves."
"Some say it is the best told story ever. Are they serious?"
"Don't know why the reviewers loved this so."
"It astounds me as to how this ?game? is receiving perfect scores. I think a lot of the approbation being dumped on Gone Home is merely because of the homosexual subject matter."

Now user reviews in general are terrible, but if anybody should be accused of trying to push an agenda it's these fuckers here. Bitching about what other reviewers said about a game does not count as criticism of said game. It's the same "us vs them" mentality that poisons pretty much every discussion that has ever occurred on Rerolled, especially if SJWs are in any way a factor (even if tangentially). Do you see why it's so hard to take the "it's not a game" argument seriously?

I think you meant Khorum, not Khalid.

He didn't say much, it was just an underhanded jab at Gone Home that plays into the same narrative that's so popular here and among many anti-SJWs. I find that particular brand of smarminess worth countering, so I did. Get over it.

Popular opinion here seems to be that Gone Home was undeserving of its accolades. Khorum jumped onto that bandwagon with his comment. I think the flak it gets is based more on people trying to combat what they see as SJWs taking over gaming than any inherent flaws in the game itself. The positive reviews it got were not due to critics being bribed. They were not due to critics being afraid of seeming insensitive to the LGBT community. They were not due to pressure from SJWs. They were not due to wanting to seem "hip" and "with it". They were not pandering to non-gamers. They were simply people who play and analyze video games for a living discovering a unique, engaging, polished, intelligently designed, highly creative use of the medium they love. How do I know that? Because I saw it too, and I couldn't care less about pandering to SJWs. Meanwhile, most of the anti-Gone Home crowd (certainly including you) didn't even understand the game. You didn't even make the minimum of effort to realize you were playing an actual character with reason and purpose. The whole thing apparently went over your head, but you feel you're in a position to decide that it's not a game, despite plenty of critics and gamers who would never even have considered that a debatable point... because reasons. You went in with a closed mind and your confirmation bias did the rest of the work for you.

"It works because it is a game, because whoever?s playing it is used to games and can pick up on the common things that games do. Being a game is critical to the experience and a vital part of the thing that Gone Home is, and if this story was told in any other medium then it wouldn?t of had so many layers. This kind of experience just doesn?t work any other way. It has to be a game."

But sure... I'm the one getting "decimated".

Lith: "Except if environmental and mechanic story telling were the main factors in GoTY--one would have expected Spec Ops The Line to win GoTY in 2012 from both these companies. As it's broadly considered masterful in it's modern retelling of Heart of Darkness and it uses both in game mechanics (The control elements feel very arcady vs super-realistic environments) and environmental cues/clues to a tell a very rich story of trauma and mental disorder. It is, essentially what Gone Home was multiplied by a thousand, with a far higher production value (You can read any of their reviews--they all gushed over it.)

Yet, no GoTY--hell, it didn't even make Polygon's top ten games.

If you really can't see how ideological position and a sprinkle of nepotism really boosted Gone Home? You're not being reasonable Tan. But then again, you are a troll, so I don't know what I was expecting."

What was Polygon's GOTY in 2012? The Walking Dead, another story-centric game short on twitch mechanics. #3 was Journey, an experimental environment-exploration game. Clearly, Polygon was happy praising unconventional games before Gone Home was even released, so your suggestion that ideology played a role in that choice is just your selection bias showing.

I've heard a lot of great things about Spec Ops: The Line. I own it on PS3 (got it free when I was a PS+ member), but only played it for about an hour or so before I put it aside and played something else. Why? Because while I can enjoy a good FPS, it's not a genre I'm personally attracted to. You're attempting to make an objective "this game is better than this game" statement, which is, frankly, stupid. Again, did you read their explanation as to why they chose Gone Home in 2013?

Polygon: "That's what makes Gone Home so powerful. It's not unusual; it's ordinary. That may sound strange, but in an industry dominated by sci-fi and fantasy tropes, violence and an obsession with heroism, it wasn't a floating city in the sky that took our breath away, but rather a trip back home, and the exploration of a single house, seen through the eyes of a stranger."

This is not to say that a game can't tell a great story AND include tropes, violence and heroism (from what I understand, Spec Ops challenges and subverts these concepts even as it features them prominently), but what "clicked" for Polygon was the relatability of Gone Home, the fact that the medium of video games was being used to tell an ordinary story in a unique and creative way. You don't have to agree with their choice (subjective decisions will never be unanimously agreed with), but trying to invalidate their choice by politicizing it with your own bullshit narrative is immature and counterproductive.