Bottom 1024 — Week 25 — Poll 31

[This Old Neon]

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!

Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Saturday... or Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

[Kong Wen]

It would be hard to vote against League of Legends here. The game is immensely influential and arguably genre-defining, still the standard many are judged against. In many ways it's absurd that it's fighting to survive the top 1024. Is someone going to come in here and tell me Kickle Cubicle, a forgotten Lolo-like on the NES that didn't spawn any sequels, is a more important game than LoL?

[Niahak]

I played League of Legends for a few years (2009-2013 probably) and playing online with random people was one of the most miserable gaming experiences of my life. After it got more difficult to schedule time to play with friends, I saw no reason to continue playing.

While I'd agree it's influential, I'm never going back. Toxicity has always been around on the internet, but League incubated some of the worst of it (and I got out before it got really bad, from what I heard). It's probably more symptom than cause, but I associate its rise with some of the worse changes in internet discourse.

Importance is a useful metric for this vote, but I'd argue "Best" doesn't just mean "Important". I didn't participate in that vote - and wouldn't vote for Kickle Cubicle - but I'd have more fun playing Kickle Cubicle and the world might be better off if some League players chilled out kicking ice cubes for a bit rather than queuing for another 25-minute match.

I'm not sure whether it's "quick matching" alone or the addition of F2P on top of it. I feel like lobbies made for a much healthier online community.

[Kong Wen]

Importance is a useful metric for this vote, but I'd argue "Best" doesn't just mean "Important". I didn't participate in that vote - and wouldn't vote for Kickle Cubicle - but I'd have more fun playing Kickle Cubicle and the world might be better off if some League players chilled out kicking ice cubes for a bit rather than queuing for another 25-minute match.

It doesn't just mean important, but it does/can mean important.

From the OG BGE mission statement:

The “BEST GAME EVER!!!” Project is not intended to champion any particular objective quality. The best game can be the best for any of a number of reasons: its earnings or critical reception, its influence and impact, the emotional resonance of its art or music, the playability of its mechanics or the thoughtfulness of its design, the immersiveness of its world, the quality of its writing and characterization, or the memories and nostalgia it invokes. All participants are invited to engage in their own ways, and nominate and vote according to their own criteria, however arbitrary and however personal.

I don't even like any MOBAs, and certainly not LoL, whereas I do enjoy Nintendo World Cup. I'm simply making a case for LoL being an easy top 512 based on certain criteria.