It was supposed to be private between Mitchell and someone else in the scene. I don't mean to say that it makes Jobst's big claim true, just that Mitchell isn't entirely absolved and Jobst wasn't completely wrong on everything either.
The 118 page court judgment is online (I can't expect anyone to read it) and in general, the court sides with Jobst on most things, it's just that none of it really applies to the big "caused Apollo's suicide" claim Mitchell actually sued over. That's on a different level.
It was just a two question + your name form: type-in your #1 pick but also why. Full-on first past the post, single vote only, no option to name other games. Pretty flawed methodology overall.
That said, I will admit that I did put in Shenmue and while I didn't expect it to get #1, I hoped it'd be top 3 at the very least. I really do trace more or less every successful strongly story based open world game of the 2000s back to a combination of Shenmue and Half-Life. Shenmue's story didn't have a super wide appeal and would be completely uninteresting to most teenagers at the time (which was still the main gaming audience), but the method of storytelling is top-notch, and its open world just felt far more genuine than anything predating it. Meanwhile, Half-Life did an excellent job at telling a story that looks boring but is actually very interesting, and did so in an engaging, if not particularly open world way.