For what has been hailed as a vintage year for gaming, 2011 sure took a long time to get going. It was only a couple of months ago that I’d purchased a grand total of two games that didn’t come from the App Store, and then we had a big game a week for a while there, putting ridiculous strain on the funds of any gamer. There was recently a comment from Activision’s Eric Hirshberg on the entirely manufactured and unnecessary ‘rivalry’ between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 that I think the whole industry could take note of:

“We shouldn’t be tearing each other apart fighting for a bigger piece of the pie – we should all be focused on trying to grow a bigger pie.”

Not everyone has the money or dedication to spend hundreds in a single month to play everything, and it’ll suck the industry dry for every company that doesn’t have a billion-dollar marketing budget. So how about spreading the love a bit, even if it means making the spring into Christmas-lite?

As always, any game that was released somewhere in the world and was played by me for the first time in 2011 is eligible for the list, starting tomorrow, even though there are a few notables that are excluded on this basis. And for reference, here are my lists for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.