Negative Gamer Awards: All The Results!

After days of nominating, voting and counting of results, the final verdicts have been reached in this year’s Negative Gamer Awards! We brought back some awards from last year and gained two new ones covering journalism and casual gaming.

The NGAs are both our annual look back on all the BS we’ve had to put up with this year, and a way for us to highlight those truly exceptional cases. Mediocrity begone as we highlight the failed terrible PR attempts, pocket gouging extras and … brown games.

All the results (if you don’t want to listen to the NGCast special) have been listed below for you to skim read then complain about. How dare Imagine Babies not get an award!


Award: Most Over-Hyped Game

Winner: Modern Warfare 2

Inevitably, the one game we could not escape from and which turned out to be not-all-that is the clear winner of this year’s Most Over-Hyped Game award. The game’s hype came less from the PR team and more from the press and fans, both clamouring for any and every piece of information available. If somebody said the game was so big it could generate its own news, then that became news. It’s the biggest game of the ever!

Award: Most Blatant Rip-Off

Winner: Xbox Avatars

Pets. Pets! They are actually making and worse, selling virtual pets for your virtual avatar! Gamers seem to have just accepted this as a sensible thing for a games console to do now. Combined with a huge array of branded t-shits and outfits barely disguised as adverts and you have the makings of the biggest rip-off of the year.

Award: Biggest PR-Backfire

Winner: Modern Warfare 2 / F.A.G.S.

Not content with just screwing over the PC gamer, Infinity Ward made quite sure to insult any remaining fans with an excellently made and hilarious video which ends on the acronym for the fictional group Fight Against Grenade Spam. See what they did there? They embraced their most vocal consumer and achieved some impressive passive-homophobia in the process.

Award: Brownest Game

Winner: Killzone 2

I heard they had to invent a new shade of brown just for the opening level of Killzone 2. A cross between Uncharted 2 and a bucket of dirt this game secured its place as the winner of this award by using only colours found on the dark side of rocks. Using the power of the PS3′s Cell this game generated more dirt-per-inch in HD than any other game previously or prior. [Poo joke].

Award: Biggest Broken Promise

Winner: The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Group

Some of us were rather surprised when Valve announced a sequel to their much loved and rarely updated Left 4 Dead was not only being made, it was going to be released near instantly after its predecessor (using Valve-time). Some took the news worse than others and one group decided to do something about it. A boycott was formed and a few months later, disbanded. I’m sure it had everything to do with Left 4 Dead 2 being a worthy sequel and nothing to do with the free trip to Valve the group’s leaders experienced just a few weeks before declaring their boycott over.

You’re Doing it Wrong, Special Mention Award: PSPgo

Where to start? A release leakier than a sieve, ergonomics designed for people without fingers and inability to play any of the games you’ve already bought on UMD: The poor little PSPgo never stood a chance. It failed on so many levels and for that, PSPgo, you’re doing it wrong.

Award: Most Annoying Social or Casual Game

Winner: FarmVille

John started playing FarmVille. Write something on John’s wall. John signed up to a deal to get some FarmVille Money. Poke. John wrote a letter complaining about the US healthcare bill, just to get some in-game cash. John lost hundreds of dollars in a scam. John no longer likes social Facebook games.

Award: News or Discussion Topic Driven Furthest Into The Ground

Winner: No Russian

Hey, did you hear about this thing in Modern Warfare that’s like art, and killing, and totally has, like, loads of meaning? Here, have a thousand million articles covering it from every angle you could dream of! Beating “Journalism is dead” for this award the No Russian “controversy” that Modern Warfare 2 created was a shining example of a topic covered to death, even before most had played the game.

Award: People’s Choice Award For Biggest Disappointment

Winner: PSPgo

Beating out Halo 3: ODST, Brutal Legend and the Australian OFLC, the PSPgo was not only voted by staff to be the shittest thing this year, it was also voted by you as the biggest disappointment to come out of gaming in the past 12 months. Many of us expected great things from one of the first digital-download-only consoles. Sadly Sony failed to not only convince the shops that this wouldn’t put them out of business, but they also failed to convince those buying the device it was worth it. Claiming this was their plan all along it seems Sony quickly dropped the uncomfortable portable like a stone.

Those are all the results from this year. If you want to have a look at the games that made the short-lists you can do so right here.