User blog comment:Evans0305/BioShock wins for the Smithsonian's Art of Video Games!/@comment-939754-20110506040426/@comment-2250991-20110506055620

Well, like I said, it was a tough voting process, but the "How did BioShock beat Halo 3 and Gears of War 2?" debated is going to be discussed for a while. Here's what I thought that hindered the nominations: 1) It wasn't about choosing the best selling game or the most played game of all time; it was going for the best example of innovative direction and creativity in a game, especially in it's design, narrative, and inspiring originality in it's genre. If thinking long enough about those two nominations, they were never originally emphasized on those criteria when they were created, as much as just development improvements for a sequel entry. 2) Because they were sequels of their top franchises, they kinda retained too much on their predecessor's style and gameplay, so even if one or four improvements were added, they were more or less the same as their previous game. 3). Comparing them to BioShock, They didn't have a good enough story or narrative. Gears of War 2's story was only improved because Epic Games saw that other games had a better direction with their shooters than just Good-Guy-vs-Bad-Guy-shooting-stuff-until-it-bleeds; Even Cliffy admits that the reason Gears of War 2 had a better emotional emphasis was because of being inspired by BioShock's narrative. Halo 3 may have had a good narrative, but it's story was rushed as a game. 4) Their singleplayer campaigns were rushed enough as an excuse for their Multiplayer campaigns. No matter how you try to look at it, BioShock is the better successor in the category than the others. At least both Gears Of War 2 and Halo 3 were named the top nominees, and at least Halo 2 won the Xbox vote, which I'm glad it did.