This year's sports game of the year discussion was a pretty one-sided affair. Despite the problems at launch, NBA 2K15 managed to win the Gold Medal at the podium running away. Last year's winner, FIFA, didn't even medal this year -- which was somewhat surprising considering its strong effort this past year.

Let's go to the staff and see what they say about the best games of 2014:

Matthew Coe: I love our staff choices for Sports Game of the Year. NBA 2K15 is my choice for GOTY and it's currently unrivaled as a single player sports experience. MyCareer mode combined with MyLeague and MyGM is the best total sports package of the year and that's not even taking online into account. Nearly daily roster updates, gameplay enhancing patches, 2KTV, face scanning... this has been one of my favorite games of all-time. Now that we're past the rough launch I think the game is getting more of the praise it deserves.

MLB 14: The Show was my first foray into Sony's baseball franchise since the PS2 days. I wouldn't argue with anyone who chose it for GOTY. MLB is a labor of love from the San Diego Studio and it shows all throughout the product.

Madden was still Maddening in a lot of ways this past year but we did see real improvement and steps forward for the franchise. Let's hope the game continues to go more toward an NFL game and less of a traditional "Madden" experience.

Jayson Young: Despite an opening month that was stalled by constant server errors, and online matches that, to this day, remain marred by input lag, NBA 2K15 is so much fun to play offline, and so innovative in its feature set, that it cannot be denied this season's top award.

Computer opponents played a much smarter game of basketball this year at both ends of the court, thanks to rewritten AI and many new plays/sets. While NBA 2K15's competitors are increasingly restricting consumers' access to editing their products, My League contained more customization options than any other $60 sports title. Likewise, no other career mode on the PlayStation 4/Xbox One offers anything close to My Career's voice-acted cutscenes and constantly shifting storylines. Visual Concepts' 3D face-scanning technology may not have functioned properly for everyone, but it did add a new level of immersion for the gamers who were able to get it working.

Even NBA 2K15's roster updates have become more detailed and more frequent than ever before. Its post-release patches have also made major gameplay improvements, and impacted every game mode, instead of limiting the developers' post-launch support only to modes that generate digital revenue.

If Visual Concepts' "top engineers" can finally figure out how to fix the series' atrocious netcode, and can introduce more options to their lackluster online leagues, then NBA 2K16 will be the odds-on favorite to repeat as champion in 2015.

Bob Kollars: While it often seems like sports gamers get the short end of the stick, this was actually a really good year for us. Visual Concepts further cemented that opinion(for me at least) with their release of NBA 2K15.

It seemed like there was a constant backlog of games this year, and I found it very hard to find time to devote to all of them. One title that seemed to receive a large allocation of that time is NBA 2K15. Although server issues seemed to plague the game at launch, they have worked hard to alleviate those. The developers also listened to a ton of community feedback, and implemented a lot of those changes into the game. I will never claim that NBA 2K15 is a perfect title, but it comes as close to replicating the pro game of basketball than any title title ever.

No matter how one approaches NBA 2K15, they are bound some find something that will draw their interest, and keep it for a very long time. Some may feel like the game feels and plays like past versions, but you have a game that is so dialed in, it really is about tweaking that game, and not trying to fix something that isn't broke.

Ben Vollmer: When it comes down to it, NBA 2K15 still provides the most fluid and immersive experience in sports gaming. It all comes down to the little things, the aspect of gaming that once allowed MLB: The Show to sit atop the throne. Things like watching Kobe fire up six straight shots without a make, only to hit his next five or seeing the patented Dwayne Wade pump-fake against a capable defender are what pull me into the game and keep me there.

MLB: The Show is still deserving of a spot on any GOTY list. Despite not making any deep strides forward, it's core experience is still nearly flawless. If it wants to find itself on top, it needs to get back to the small things that once made every game feel different. The game is inching closer to feeling a bit too familiar. Madden has achieved the exact opposite. It definitely moved in the right direction with its latest iteration, even though the base experience is still ridden with legacy issues.

Dustin Toms: NBA 2K15 has figured out what everyone wants: communication and updates. When 2K started hiring fans like us, everything changed. The big issues were fixed, but then smaller ones arose. Those smaller ones would be fixed, and then the complaints would focus on petty accessories. Now those petty accessories are being changed daily and it's pretty damn awesome. I used to think basketball gaming was coming to an end, but I've been proven a complete idiot to my thinking. This game deserves some overarcing awards outside the sports genre.

Chris Sanner: The game we completely overlooked this year, and I'm not sure why, is FIFA 15. I would be remiss if I let this opportunity to point out how great that game was go by. There are a lot of things games like NBA 2K15 did that FIFA does just as well or better, such as on-field gameplay and presentation -- and let's not forget about pesky server issues. With that said, every poll on OS shows that the vast majority of gamers still prefer single player experiences to multiplayer -- and NBA K15 was as good as it gets when you sat down to play on your couch. 

The other big surprise of this group to me was how Madden snuck in at the bronze level. Madden NFL 15 was a good game which overhauled how users experience defensive gameplay. While those changes were not without flaw, they were clearly much needed and gave the game a fresh coat of paint which made many users happy. This year was a big year for Madden, and next year could be even bigger.