The number of ambitious games that carved a corner for themselves this year is astonishing. Effort was king in 2000, and that made us realize we need to judge the winners on merit alone, not simply the effort put forth to be unique or revolutionary. Perhaps in a couple of years we will see the fruits of this year's innovation in terms we can judge by -the end product. But massively multiplayer online, voice recognition, and Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment (FREE) games, for example, are infants in the console world, and you just wouldn't give a baby a big, big award - unless it was truly, and without question, deserving. Those concepts have a lot to prove, and there are so many fun and technically and graphically successful games out right now, we had to draw the line somewhere.

So we tip our caps to raw talent and innovation, but our winners are those who finished the race. Throughout two days of on again off again deliberation, we narrowed our individual lists of nominees down to just five per category. Then, in a measure not unlike drawing up a Miss America, we chose the four runners-up and tossed the crown to the best of the category. In the case of some categories, we were still gridlocked after more than an hour of deliberation. We didn't draw straws or barter for seniority rights. We fought and argued to the decision, in some cases agreeing to disagree only after hearing all arguments and then voting again.

We realize, too, the subjective nature of this or of any vote. You may agree with our choices or you may not. But either way, we are very interested to hear what you have to say. We may comprise the staff of GameSpot, but at our core, we are gamers just like you, and your opinions are important to us. So look through our awards, then file your ballot at the end of this feature. The Readers' Choice Best and Worst of 2000 awards will appear in January.

On to the show.
 

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