Wow stardew really did dunk on cyberpunk didn’t it? I know it’s not exactly the perfect comparison they’re very different games trying to do very different things but I’m totally fine with just having games like stardew (not in terms of gameplay but in terms of scope I guess is the right word). Funny how a game made with love and with no pretentiousness to revolutionize or be the “game with best X” is not only playable on every platform it also has a huge following for a few years now and is still getting updates that are crazy good (and free the updates that is) mean while mister “we’re going to revolutionize gaming with the best and most in-depth character creator ever” got kicked out of the PlayStation store
maybe I just follow all the right people but it really feels to me this year that the games that have actually left a cultural impact on people or that have managed to stay in the conversation space (where others, the typically “big name” titles, have died down a bit after release or don’t even really get talked about at all) are the games that you can clearly see were made with love and cos it’s what people wanted to make and what they truly believed would be just actually fun to play. if i think of the games that came out this year that are still popular and talked about right now i would say among us, fall guys, hades, animal crossing (although that did die down a bit but I feel like that’s got a lot to do with the villager dialogue trees unfortunately being extremely shallow), phasmophobia popped up a bit there towards the end of the year. outside of animal crossing none of these are what you would consider ‘big name’ titles. closest I can think of is fall guys just cos they have the backing of revolver which is a decent sized game company by its own name but even then it didn’t get much airtime at all until it was released and became massively popular. the one thing that all these games have in common at least in my eyes is that they were made with so much love by the creators and it really shines through.
now I’m sure the triple a titles that made shittons of money and won big at the game awards and sold consoles and all that, im sure they were also made with love. i don’t want to say the devs on those games weren’t putting their love into it and weren’t passionate about what they were making cos I can guarantee they were. what I am saying however is that the love being poured into it never got a chance to shine through. now there’s a bunch of reasons for that *cough*CAPITALISM*cough* and I think that the way triple a games are made is actually very restrictive to what the game can achieve. the art style is almost exclusively ~realistic~ to the point that how close to uncanny valley or lifelike or w/e you can get, the better. the hours and exhaustion and lack of good leadership almost always lead to things being overlooked in development resulting in a load of bugs and glitches and general problems with the game, the most well demonstrated example so far being cp77.
now back to the non-big-name, cass’s-personal-decision-of-what-the-most-loved-games-of-2020-were list of games, I’m not gonna say none of those problems were there (well maybe the art style one. none of these games are “realistic” looking lol), I’m saying that even if they were there, the leadership and teamwork and vision and whatever else was good enough that the games we got were fun to play, fun to look at, able to continue to be popular despite having much less “content” than other names, and the ‘made with love’ thing I keep talking about really really shone through.
now to actually get back on topic for this ask, I know stardew valley didn’t come out this year, and it’s definitely taken a bit of a backseat since a few years ago when it was the most popular indie game, but it ticks all of the same boxes as the other games on this list, AND it was made by one man!! Like!! Albeit I’m pretty sure he now has a small team helping him but STILL! basically this very long tangent deviating away from what you were asking is just to say that stardew valley and any other game like it where it doesn’t matter how many people worked on it or how graphically or performance-heavily impressive it is, will always beat out any triple a game as to how much people care about it and want to play and keep playing it well after release. it’s because it’s made with love and the creator/s are able to share that love with people playing it and it makes the people playing it love it all that much more. i honestly can’t say I’m surprised that sv did better than cp77 this year because like of course it did. it was always going to. the content coming out of a capitalistic machine cranking out triple a titles will never be able to live up to the passion project of some dude who doesn’t have a proper desk and just wants to make a cute pixel art game where you farm and romance cute people. it just isn’t possible under capitalism and the way that triple a games are made.