Gamespot 2009 Contest

In 2009, Gamespot became an absurd alternate reality where Gordon Freeman Always Wins

Gamespot 2009 Contest

Announced:	August 13, 2009
Started:	September 1, 2009
Ended:	October 15, 2009
Winner:	Winner: Gordon Freeman Runner-up: Mario
Best prediction:	Blakenthal - 149/155
Notable matches:	Bub & Bob vs. Master Chief Pac-Man vs. Kirby Gordon Freeman vs. Solid Snake Samus Aran vs. Bub & Bob

The Gamespot 2009 Contest, titled All Time Greatest Video Game Hero was the first character contest held on Gamespot. Due to the lack of an announcement for the next official GameFAQs Character Battle, many members of Board 8 took an interest in the contest. With a different demographic the contest became fresh as simple choices on GameFAQs became hard decisions on Gamespot and with many snubs and fodder characters people were quick to relate this to GameFAQs' original contest.

Other differences to the GameFAQs contest include multiple matches occurring at the same time, matches lasting for days, a 1v1 setup, lower vote totals leading to greater chances for rallying/cheating, and a different point system that isn't so heavily weighted toward the final rounds. Huge favourites to win the tournament included Link, Solid Snake, Mario and Master Chief. The winner of the contest was Gordon Freeman who defeated Mario in the final.

The official board for the contest is Board 909187272.

Qualification

Gamespot staff picked 54 characters to enter the contest while choosing another 24 characters for users to vote on in a massive 24-way poll. The top 10 winners would qualify for the contest. The winners were...

• Nathan Drake - 13%
• The Apprentice - 12%
• Yoshi - 9%
• Jak & Daxter - 7%
• Kirby - 7%
• JC Denton - 7%
• Wander - 6%
• Nameless One - 5%
• Banjo & Kazooie - 4%
• Travis Touchdown - 4%

The 14 characters who did not make the cut were, in order of their final percentages, Ben, Frank West, Leisure Suit Larry, Viewtiful Joe, Maverick, Terry Bogard, Kurt Hectic, Dirk the Daring, Arthur, The Stranger, Professor Layton, The Master, Kid Chameleon, and Ulala.

Snubs

Notable snubs (who were not featured as one of the 54 locks or the 24 wildcards) include:

• Noble Nine: Crono
• High Mid-Carders: Vincent, Squall, Auron, Zelda, Sora, L-Block
• Mid-Carders: Luigi, Zero, Aeris
• Low Mid-Carders: Max Payne
• Non-Heroes: Sephiroth, Ganon, Bowser, CATS

Newcomers

The Contest featured 14 characters who had never appeared in any GameFAQs Contest beforehand (plus one actual person, Bo Jackson).

• Very Low Midcarders: Frogger, The Apprentice, Kyle Katarn, Liu Kang
• Bad Fodder: Bonk, Nights, Dig Dug, Lester Chaykin, Garrett, Gex, Mike Haggar, Cate Archer, Nameless One, Ico

Controversy

Due to the lower vote totals in Gamespot's contest compared to the GameFAQs character battle, it was very possible for results to be changed from external factors. In addition, Gamespot may not have had proper voting controls in place until well into the contest. The low vote totals were the likely result of a format requiring you to scroll through a long list of matches to put in votes in all of them due to the high number of matches running at once; the first voting period had 16 matches.

4chan Controversy

There was a rally on 4chan which tried to get Bub & Bob as far as possible in the contest. They defeated Master Chief and Sonic the Hedgehog under what seemed like dubious circumstances, but nothing was done about it. GameSpot may not have had proper safeguards in place at this point, but the real problem was that their average vote count is so low that it can be affected by major rallies.

In the third round, Bub & Bob had nearly 16,000 votes removed after obvious cheating against Samus Aran. GameSpot noted that the votes they removed came from only 5 different people. Near the end, Team Rocket Elite began checking the vote count every 3 minutes, and said that Bub & Bob were getting hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of votes in these intervals while Samus was getting between 10-20 votes in the same time span. (For reference, B&B were outdrawing Samus by scores of roughly 1000 vs 5 during three minute periods, and this went on for hours at a time- a streak like that was nearly unprecedented in Contest history, with the only comparison being the infamous StarCraft vs Melee match in 2004.)

Steam Controversy

There was a rally on Steam when Gordon Freeman was going up against Link. Valve began advertising the contest, making direct links to it within their Steam system. Afterward, Gordon Freeman's vote count shot up and Gordon Freeman beat Link by over 36,000 votes. To put the sheer number of Gordon Freeman votes into perspective, he got almost as many votes in this match as the entire vote total for Mario/Samus, held at the same time. In fact, Gordon Freeman had more votes than Bub & Bob did at the peak of their cheating.

There was also significant rallying from the Valve fanbase in order to earn Gordon his wins over Snake and Mario, but the Link match was the only time Valve felt threatened enough to link the match directly from within the Steam client.

Bracket

Contest Bracket
Division 1				Mario Kratos	Mario Samus Aran	Mario Gordon Freeman	Gordon Freeman
Mario Bonk	Mario The Prince	Mario Lara Croft
The Prince Nights
Kyle Katarn Dig Dug	Kyle Katarn Lara Croft
Lara Croft PaRappa
Cloud Strife Lester Chaykin	Cloud Strife Little Mac	Cloud Strife Kratos
Phoenix Wright Little Mac
Pikachu Nathan Drake	Pikachu Kratos
Sam Fisher Kratos
Division 2				Samus Aran Mega Man
Master Chief Bub & Bob	Bub & Bob Sonic the Hedgehog	Bub & Bob Samus Aran
Sonic the Hedgehog Ryo Hazuki
Garrett Frogger	Frogger Samus Aran
Samus Aran Jade
Ratchet & Clank Gex	Ratchet & Clank Mega Man	Mega Man Pac-Man
Mega Man Mike Haggar
Pac-Man Kirby	Pac-Man Dante
Dante Manny Calavera
Division 3				Ryu Gordon Freeman	Gordon Freeman Link
Guybrush Threepwood Wander	Wander Ryu	Ryu Niko Bellic
Ryu Abe
Niko Bellic The Apprentice	Niko Bellic Strider Hiryu
Strider Hiryu Cate Archer
Liu Kang Yoshi	Yoshi Gordon Freeman	Gordon Freeman Solid Snake
Gordon Freeman Bomberman
Alucard Travis Touchdown	Alucard Solid Snake
Solid Snake Crash Bandicoot
Division 4				Duke Nukem Link
Ryu Hayabusa Nameless One	Ryu Hayabusa Sackboy	Ryu Hayabusa Duke Nukem
Sackboy Bo Jackson
Leon Kennedy JC Denton	Leon Kennedy Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem Marcus Fenix
Fox McCloud Jak & Daxter	Fox McCloud Link	Link Donkey Kong
Earthworm Jim Link
Ico Banjo & Kazooie	Banjo & Kazooie Donkey Kong
Raziel Donkey Kong

Final X-Stats - RAW

1. Gordon Freeman - 50.00%
2. Solid Snake - 50.00%
3. Mario - 44.20%
4. Ryu - 41.00%
5. Link - 40.60%
6. Yoshi - 34.50%
7. Kratos - 32.53%
8. Cloud Strife - 31.36%
9. Samus Aran - 30.14%
10. Little Mac - 29.98%
11. Pikachu - 29.28%
12. Earthworm Jim - 28.74%
13. Niko Bellic - 28.45%
14. Bub & Bob - 28.28%
15. Sonic the Hedgehog - 27.99%
16. Duke Nukem - 26.55%
17. Master Chief - 26.30%
18. The Prince - 25.90%
19. Mega Man - 25.68%
20. The Apprentice - 25.55%
21. Liu Kang - 25.46%
22. Bomberman - 25.40%
23. Phoenix Wright - 23.98%
24. Lara Croft - 23.34%
25. Nathan Drake - 22.95%
26. Sam Fisher - 21.86%
27. Leon Kennedy - 20.76%
28. Ryu Hayabusa - 19.49%
29. Wander - 19.11%
30. Marcus Fenix - 18.75%
31. Pac-Man - 18.54%
32. Kirby - 18.54%
33. Alucard - 18.10%
34. Strider Hiryu - 17.98%
35. Guybrush Threepwood - 17.77%
36. Abe - 17.55%
37. Dante - 16.43%
38. Donkey Kong - 15.43%
39. Crash Bandicoot - 14.60%
40. Lester Chaykin - 14.24%
41. Ratchet & Clank - 13.77%
42. Kyle Katarn - 12.84%
43. Sackboy - 12.79%
44. Fox McCloud - 12.59%
45. Frogger - 11.88%
46. JC Denton - 11.84%
47. Ryo Hazuki - 11.53%
48. Manny Calavera - 10.78%
49. Cate Archer - 10.54%
50. Garrett - 10.40%
51. Jade - 10.01%
52. Raziel - 9.41%
53. Travis Touchdown - 9.16%
54. Nameless One - 8.54%
55. Dig Dug - 8.32%
56. Jak & Daxter - 7.95%
57. Bo Jackson - 7.54%
58. Gex - 7.13%
59. Mike Haggar - 6.88%
60. Banjo & Kazooie - 6.05%
61. PaRappa - 4.62%
62. Nights - 4.40%
63. Ico - 3.96%
64. Bonk - 3.54%

External Links

• Official Contest Site
• Board Odds Project Results