Game of the year, all years
Sometimes used seriously and sometimes used jokingly, it is used to refer to a game that nearly every
gamer has
heard of, played and loved. This game is one often credited for raising the bar in a particular genre, such as how Goldeneye popularized
zoom on rifles in FPS games and had absolutely amazing multiplayer, or how Starcraft introduced three vastly different races to combat against each other instead of traditional
RTS using fairly similar races with a few different units. Other frequent GOTYAY nominations are Deus
Ex, System Shock 2, Doom, and many others.