The Chosen Games: 2006

Each week, we highlight one game as "the Central Committee's Choice." With the new year, we though it might be interesting to high-light the games we chose during 2006:

• Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine
  
• Aveyond
  
• Battleship Chess
  
• Bullet Candy
  
• DevastationZone Troopers
  
• Dodge That Anvil!
  
• DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold
  
• Eets: Hunger. It's Emotional
  
• Gibbage
  
• Gish
  
• Jets'n'Guns
  
• Massive Assault
  
• Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso
  
• Mudcraft
  
• My Worst Day WW2
  
• Oasis
  
• Outpost Kaloki
  
• Pursuit of Power
  
• Shadowgrounds
  
• Space Hack
  
• The Shivah
  
• Toribash
  
• Tribal Trouble

More about our decisions, and our decision process, below the fold.

As befits a quasi-Stalinist organization, Chairman Costik's choices usually rule, but other staffers often recommend a game (or, when the Chairman is away promulgating the revolution, sometimes choose them directly).

These games can, in other words, be seen as what we think are the most interesting titles on the site--with some caveats.

First, the Chosen game is almost always a new game--new to our site, at least. It's rare for an older title to appear -- although it sometimes happens if we're not in love with the new games this week, or if there's an older game that suddenly starts getting more interest than we'd anticipated. So there are any number of titles that were on the site at launch that have never been highlighted this way that are just as good--and will probably appear as a "choice" at some point, when the pickings during a week are otherwise slim. And there are good games that appeared in a week when we though something else was cooler.

Our choices are almost always purely on the basis of what we think is cool, rather than necessarily what we think is going to sell, as befits the ethos of Manifesto Games. But we are often swayed by IGF awards or nominations; excellent reviews elsewhere; and admiration for a particular developer's previous work. And we're certainly not oblivious to sales--in particular, if a game is selling well for us despite not having previously been a "Central Committee's Choice," it is likely to become one--arguably for crass commercial reasons, but arguably because if a game is striking a nerve with our audience, we serve our audience better by high-lighting it.

And of course, the individual biases of the Central Committee do play a role: Chairman Costik is partial to RPGs and adventure games, Dr. J tends to go for wargames and turn-based strategy, RedEl for humorous arcade-style titles, and Rockeater is often the voice for fiscal sanity (i.e., highlighting games that are doing well despite not having been previously featured). You shouldn't read to much into these characterizations, though; we're all game sophisticates, and even if say, "shmup" doesn't appear as any of our preferred genres, we think we can distinguish between a good one and a mediocre one--and indeed, have highlighted a number.

Being chosen by the Central Committee is not a panacea for a game; while it guarantees some number of demo downloads, it doesn't necessarily generate a huge number of sales. We're okay with that--certainly we'd like it to be otherwise, but what we find interesting isn't always what our audience finds worth plunking money down on. But our raison d'etre, in essence, is to highlight games we think are interesting that are, by nature, not likely to be commercial successes, at least in the conventional market, so we can hardly complain. Indeed, typically the games that do best for us are those where we can generate some press attention for them independently of the site--or that generate a buzz regardless, with people finding them here.

I'm inclined to go through this list, and talk a little about why each game was chosen, but that will have to await a future post. In the meantime, with caveats, this isn't a bad way to look at the games we've thought are most important over the last year.