Japanese game designers vote for their favorite game of 2013

151 people voted and the full list at the link below names 68 games (a lot of games got one or two votes). TLOU was at the top, with GTA5 and Dragon's Crown tied for second and FF14 in third. Like I've said before, I think Dragon's Crown is an amazing game (the ultimate evolution of Double Dragon) so I'm not surprised to see it rank so high.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2013/12/27/best-games-of-2013-according-to-japanese-devs-the-last-of-us-dominates-nintendo-games-shunned/

The Last of Us was favored by legendary names like Final Fantasy developer Hiromichi Tanaka, Comcept President Keiji Inafune, Yakuza series Producer Masayoshi Yokoyama and Nihon Falcom President Toshihiro Kondo.

Grand theft Auto V was preferred, for instance, by Gung Ho Online Entertainment President Kazuki Morisihita, Yakuza series Producer Toshiho Nagoshi and Director Hiroyuki Sakamoto, Rain Director Yuki Ikeda and Ni No Kuni Director Ken Motomura.

Dragon’s Crown received quite a few votes from Capcom developers, in addition to Killer is Dead‘s Director Hideyuki Shin, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Designer Yuji Abe and Nippon Ichi President Souhei Niikawa.

The Last of Us is a masterpiece whose creative and commercial success will hopefully help usher the return of true AAA survival horror games to console (rather than the gory action games RE and Dead Space devolved into).

I'm honestly not a big fan of GTA5 (awesome characters and some cool touches, but I didn't like many of the missions and I didn't think much of the sidestuff was fun) but clearly tens of millions of gamers disagree with me. I will say that Rockstar didn't phone it in and the game had a lot of cool ideas.

1. The Last of Us – 14
2. Grand Theft Auto V – 12
3. Dragon’s Crown – 12
4. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – 11
5. Kantai Collection (browser) – 9
6. Beyond: Two Souls – 6
7. Candy Crush Saga – 6
8. Monster Hunter 4 – 4
9. LINE Pokopang – 4
10. Chain Chronicle – 3
11. Hotline Miami – 3

*Sigh* I had videos inserted (glitches have prevented me from posting photos for a while, but I have been able to post videos)but Glitchspot deleted them.

@CarnageHeart: None of this stuff surprises me. Positive critical reception of Western games in Japan is common place (at least if you read around on the internet), they just don't sell amazingly well.

There are a couple of things I get from this list:

1. Japanese critics understand the importance of browser and mobile (phone) gaming, unlike sites like Gamespot which think that they're too good to care.

2. Japanese critics are still giving disproportionate attention to Japanese games, but then again that's just normal cultural nationalism.

3. Nobody cares about Nintendo.

Keep in mind, the voters weren't journalists, but people who work in the game industry.

Oh I missed that. In that case, I'd make the same observations, but from an influence standpoint.

Japanese developers find Candy Crush to be a much more interesting phenomenon than the latest Mario or Zelda game, and that can be interpreted in many ways.