Escapist's March Mayhem 2011

Voting starts next week.

I'll post what I'll predict for the first round soon.

I predict it will descend into pettiness, with people claiming the thing is rigged every step of the way. And the publishers Konami, Nintendo, Sega and Capcom will be entered as developers, despite this completely invalidating the entire point of the thing.

And the publishers Konami, Nintendo, Sega and Capcom will be entered as developers, despite this completely invalidating the entire point of the thing.

Will be? The list is already right there. Capcom and Konami are indeed on it, but Nintendo seems to have been divided up. I see HAL Laboratory and Game Freak on there anyway.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:22:23 PM by Clarste

Oh wow, Valve vs. Double Fine and the debut of Mojang AB?

^Plus, there are different EA studios on there. You can see EA Tiburon, Bioware, and Criterion on there.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:22:26 PM by RocketDude

Frankly, last year's was awful. It turned into a Valve jerkfest where everyone and their mother was either a Valve fan, a Bioware fan, or the spawn of Satan.

And I like Valve.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:46:58 PM by Scardoll

^^^ But they still haven't divided it up fully. They're keeping the 7 seperate EAD groups as one still.

^ And that made it different from any other one because.....

This thing is designed solely to create flame wars between fanboys. There is no other possible outcome. It is engineered to end badly.

edited 7th Mar '11 8:52:21 PM by IndigoDingo

I was primarily objecting to your use of the future tense concerning information that was linked to in the OP.

And where the fuck is Atlus?

^ Oh, that. Sorry, I didn't check, I thought he meant voting for who's in.

edited 7th Mar '11 9:01:37 PM by IndigoDingo

Easy wins (Or so we think)

Blizzard will beat Team Meat.

Valve will beat Double Fine Productions (Damn, I like Double Fine's work).

Irrational Games will beat Creative Assembly, because of Bioshock.

Rovio doesn't stand a chance in Hades against Square Enix.

Bioware will beat Telltale games.

Bungie will beat Lucasarts.

DICE will beat Silicon Knights, since Silicon Knights hasn't released a notable game since Eternal Darkness.

Zynga will beat Cryptic because the Farmville forums will be bombed by advertisements that won't leave until they vote Zynga head honcho. There might actually be some truth to those accusations about Satan.

Team Ico will beat Epic Games, simply due to Shadow Of The Colossus fame.

Platinum Games will beat Lionhead Games due to the backlash against Fable.

EA Tiburon and Neversoft seems close: Gamers tend to hate sports games, gamers REALLY hate how Guitar Hero got run into the ground.

Rockstar Sand Diego is gonna kick 2K Marin's ass; Red Dead Redemption vs. Bioshock2, hmm, yeah, it's fucking obvious.

Hatred of Rare will probably cause a loss against Capcom.

As you can tell, my maturity rapidly decreased while writing this list.

And that made it different from any other one because.....

Zynga almost beat Valve. That's what caused most of the flame wars.

edited 7th Mar '11 9:11:26 PM by Scardoll

Valve vs. Double Fine

Yeah, I noticed that. I like Valve, but I'm planning to vote for Double Fine, because I really like the works of Tim Schafer. Still it's going to be a real big upset for Double Fine to beat Valve.

And of course we'll see how far Zynga shall go this year. Yeah, by the Semifinals, it really got ugly from what I saw.

edited 7th Mar '11 9:11:14 PM by EarlOfSandvich

For a good idea of how bad Zynga vs. Valve was: Bioware vs. Blizzard was the thread right next to it. Guess which thread got more fanboys?

edited 7th Mar '11 9:13:44 PM by Scardoll

Lets see some of the more interesting starting lineups

• Telltale Games Versus Bio Ware
  • Aw Crap I Love both
• Nintendo Vs Mojang
  • (Twitches uncontrollably)
• Blizzard Vs. Team Meat

I also anticipate several curb stomp battles in the near future but only time will tell.

"Tell Tale Games vs Bio Ware"

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

Still picked Bio Ware, but come on...

edited 7th Mar '11 9:16:22 PM by Firebert

Oops I forgot

• Level5 Versus Firaxis Games
  • AKA Professor Layton Versus Civilization

edited 7th Mar '11 9:38:56 PM by stevebat

My predictions for Round 1 (What I think will win):

• Blizzard vs. Team Meat
• Guerilla vs. Insomniac
• Creative Assembly vs. Irrational
• Criterion vs. Konami
• Popcap vs. Treyarch (I think the difference would be a vocal hatedom the Call Of Duty series has gathered)
• Rovio vs. Square Enix (Angry Birds is no Deus Ex, and there's an upcoming Deus Ex game, so...)
• Naughty Dog vs. Nexon (The Uncharted series. Never played a game, but I think it would be that way.)
• Cryptic vs. Zynga (begrudgedly... and what is Cryptic anyways?)
• Nintendo vs. Mojang AB (the placement is rather unfortunate)
• Namco Bandai vs. Quantic Dream
• Lionhead vs. Platinum
• Epic vs. Team ICO
• Media Molecule vs. Obsidian
• EA Tiburon vs. Neversoft
• Disney Interactive vs. Remedy
• Behemoth vs. Rockstar North
• Bio Ware vs. Telltale (Once again, unfortunate.)
• DICE vs. Silicon Knights
• Polyphony vs. Rocksteady (Two words: Arkham City!)
• Bungie vs. Lucas Arts
• Gearbox vs. Volition
• HAL vs. Ubisoft Montreal (DRM deaded but damage is done)
• Firaxis vs. Level-5
• Bethesda vs. CCP
• Double Fine vs. Valve (Another unfortunate spot; I like them both)
• Crytek vs. SCE Santa Monica
• EA Canada vs. Harmonix
• Relic vs. SOE
• Turbine vs. Visceral
• CD Projekt vs. Game Freak (Pokeymanz)
• 2K Marin vs. Rockstar San Diego (Red. Dead. Redemption!)
• Capcom vs. Rare (Look what Microsoft has done to the latter)

edited 7th Mar '11 9:46:19 PM by EarlOfSandvich

Heres my highly opinionated and Fanboyish bracket setup

As you can all see these are not my predictions

@ Earl, Scardoll: You're forgetting something - this is not on this site. This is on The Escapist.

Rovio will pulverise Square Enix. People will vote Rovio without even knowing who they are.

And for those who don't know who Nexon are, suffice to say, Nauhty Dog have it in a walk.

And for the reasoning on Team Ico - you'd be amazed how quickly people forget.

And for the reasoning on Team Ico - you'd be amazed how quickly people forget.

People don't forget about Shadow. It's one of those games that pretty much becomes the center of attention whenever it's talked about.

And never, ever underestimate Squeenix fans. Even on the Escapist, where Final Fantasy is the resident whipping boy, they're a scary bunch.

edited 7th Mar '11 10:17:56 PM by Scardoll

I don't underestimate Square Enix. But unlike you, I also don't understimate their hatedom. If the two clash, the hatedom have the home field advantage.

Rovio hardly even enters into it. If it was Halfbrick they would have fans, but Rovio? Nono.

As for Shadow, I will never forget it. You will neve forget it. But I've seen how Team Ico get knocked out in the first round every damn year, so clearly other people forget it.

As much as you'd like to think there is, Hatedom never has a home-field advantage against Square Enix...

If there is voting involved, rather than hating/trolling posts in a forum, Square Enix doesn't lose all that often.

Edit: They'll make it to the round of sixteen. Looking at the bracket though, they may have trouble making it to the round of 8 because they'll be up against Naughty Dog.

edited 7th Mar '11 10:47:07 PM by Swish

Edit: Never mind, apparently they do better than I give them credit.

edited 7th Mar '11 10:40:08 PM by IndigoDingo

You'd be suprised how big the ignorant hatedom of Naughty Dog is. Some people are still convinced Drake is a racist cause Yahtzee told them he is. And of course, their involvement in Jak and Daxter and the good Crash Bandicoot games is long forgotten. Although so is Way of the Warrior, so its a mixed blessing.

So when does this begin?

Starts tomorrow.

And the hardest choice for me would be between Valve and Double Fine.

Wait, this is serious? Due to my lack of gaming knowledge I just played around with the thing until it was Square vs Hal and Nintendo vs Game freak and Nintendo won.

I admit I had to make a few tough decisions, I love Minecraft but Nintendo brought me more joy.