Author: VGC | John

John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.

Ludocene Wants to Fix Game Discovery With a “Dating App” for Video Games

Discovering new video games is harder than ever before as thousands of new titles are added to digital storefronts every month.

I’m sure you’ve read some version of this sentence in dozens of articles over the last few years. But discovery isn’t just an industry buzzword and the “too many games” problem is very real. So how do you sift through more than a thousand games a month to find the best of the best?

Enter Ludoscene, a new website from the Family Gaming Database, that will try to help players find their next favorite game when it launches later this year.

Ludocene, which actually comes from the Latin for “New Games”, is now seeking funding through Kickstarter. The website (and accompanying app) is designed to function like a dating app crossing with a deckbuilder. Users will fill their deck with games they already love, narrow the choices with modifiers like platforms or ESRB rating, and even call on the help of Experts (such as Brian Crecente, Simon Parkin, and more than a dozen others) to meld their favorites with Ludocene’s human-built recommendation engine.

Ludocene is a new way to find your next game. It uses rich human-researched data to build your catalogue of games. It uncovers amazing, unusual and unexpected matches not just the usual suspects or big popular games.

It feels like you’re playing a game, where winning is discovering video games that perfectly match your tastes:

– Build your perfect deck of games you love.
– Pick experts whose taste you trust.
– Discover your best matches in the tailored suggestions.

Each game is represented by a card that you can interact with: click to view a game trailer and flip to view more details and the best prices on storefronts.

You can see Ludocene in action, and hear more about the project from Andy Robertson of Family Gaming Database, in this video:

If it’s funded, Ludocene will be available to Early Access backers in a few weeks. The rest of us will get a chance to find our perfect game sometime over the Summer.

2024-2025 DICE Awards Deals its “Game of the Year” Award to Astro Bot

Astro Bot had the momentum coming out of the 2024 Game Awards with four total wins, including “Game of the Year” honors. But there wasn’t a clear frontrunner going into awards season, and there was no guarantee it would be able to fend off the rest of this year’s field of contenders forever.

All that said, Sony’s adorable little automaton ended up dominating the 2024-2025 DICE Awards in similar fashion. Astro Bot, and developers from Team Asobi, took home the “Game of the Year” prize last night, as well as statuettes for “Family Game of the Year”, “Outstanding Achievement in Game Design”, “Outstanding Technical Achievement”, and “Outstanding Achievement in Animation”.

Not to be outdone, the rest of the “Game of the Year” contenders performed pretty well during rest of the ceremony, with Helldivers II, Balatro, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle divvying up the majority of the remaining awards.

Helldivers II nearly matched Astro Bot‘s total as it collected four statuettes for “Online Game of the Year”, “Action Game of the Year”, “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition”, and “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design”.

Meanwhile, Balatro (“Mobile Game of the Year”, “Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year”, and “Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game”) and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (“Adventure Game of the Year”, “Outstanding Achievement in Character”, and “Outstanding Achievement in Story”) earned three awards apiece.

Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller and IGN’s Stella Chung returned to host this year’s DICE Awards, and you can watch a full replay of the ceremony (as well as find a complete list of all the winners and nominees) after the break.

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2024 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress

People who focus on the business side of games predicted that 2024 would see fewer AAA releases than 2023 and more layoffs throughout the industry. Sadly, they were right on both counts. It’s rough out there for people who make games.

But the dour cloud that’s currently hanging over the industry is all the more reason to celebrate the developers that did great work last year.

Astro Bot has currently collected the most “Game of the Year” hardware since the end of the year (including at The Game Awards, the only major statuette to be awarded so far), but a dozen other games have been with at least one “Game of the Year” accolade. That cohort includes LocalThunk’s Balatro, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, MachineGames’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Atlus’s Metaphor: ReFantazio.

We’re still waiting on results from the GDC Awards (March 19th), BAFTA Games Awards (April 8th), and a few others. But you can find an in-progress overview of all the games fighting for 2024 “Game of the Year” honors after the break.

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The Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library is Now Open

Work had already begun on the Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library when it was first announced in December 2023, but the VGHF team has spent the last year making their online presence even better, diligently cataloging and scanning many of the materials available in their collection.

But the time has finally come, and beginning today, the Research Library is now open to all.

Though it’s officially in “Early Access”, the Video Game History Foundation Library (available at library.gamehistory.org) is a searchable catalog of the VGHF’s holdings. That includes magazines, newsletters, development documents, correspondence, commercials, and more. Best of all, material from the collection that’s been digitized can be viewed online from anywhere for free through the Digital Archive (archive.gamehistory.org).

This is an amazing resource for researchers or anyone who wants to learn more about games. For example, did you know Nintendo’s Rad Racer was originally going to be titled 3-D Racer? I didn’t, but I do now after digging through Nintendo’s Publicity Folder from CES 1987. Thousands of little tidbits of information just like that are waiting for you in the Video Game History Foundation’s Research Library.

Discover even more of what this (virtual) space offers with Library Director Phil Salvador in the video below:

I’m very excited to dive in to the Research Library and you can learn more about it on the Video Game History Foundation Blog.

“These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” According to the Editors of Dexerto and Elden Ring is #1

With Rolling Stone’s new Best Games list in the books, I was able to look back at a list I missed from 2024… Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time“.

Published in August, it’s a very list as it skews very modern, including the selection of From Software’s Elden Ring at #1. In fact, the remainder of the Top 5 (including Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 at #2, Atlus’s Persona 5 at #3, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us at #4, and Valve’s Portal 2 at #5) is comprised of games from the last 15 years.

This pattern continues the further down the list you go, including with all the games that Dexerto picked that have yet to appear on any Best Games lists. These first-time selections include Baldur’s Gate 3 (#8), Cyberpunk 2077 (#33), Sea of Thieves (#70), Doom Eternal (#81), 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (#84), Diablo IV (#86), and WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (#100).

The rest of Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” is certainly worth a look and the list will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the next update.

OK Boomer Shooter: The Etymology of a Subgenre

Boomer Shooter. I’m sure just typing out the name of that subgenre has caused a visceral response in a good percentage of the folks reading this.

You’re not going to find anything approaching an official definition of Boomer Shooter on the Internet, which is fine, because generational theory doesn’t really work that way. Instead, it’s all about what feels right. And to most players, a Boomer Shooter is a first person shooter inspired by the genre’s roots in the 1990s. Titles that blended a focus on frenetic shooting (often at non-human enemies) and breakneck speed with wild color palettes and an otherworldly sense of place. Games like Doom and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D instantly spring to mind. Those are the original Boomer Shooters (and then known as Doom Clones) and they are the games that many of today’s developers look to for inspiration when dabbling in the subgenre today.

Amusingly, only a few actual Boomers (that’s folks born between 1946 and 1964) were responsible for the games that inspired today’s Boomer Shooters. Instead, most of those genre-defining games were actually created by Gen Xers like John Romero and John Carmack.

Anyway, a little over a year ago (as reported by GameSpot), Valve took a step to make the subgenre just a little more official when it added Boomer Shooter as a tag on Steam.

After the news broke, composer Andrew Hulshult took credit for popularizing the phrase during the development of Dusk:

A few years before it was added to Steam, Boomer Shooter felt like it emerged from the ether as a fully-formed entity. No matter where the words were written, or even when, everyone knew exactly what they meant.

But where did it come from? And, as PC Gamer asked in a 2023 editorial, why can’t we call this subgenre of games something else?

The latter question is beyond my grasp, but I’ve spent the last year trying to answer the former.

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Rolling Stone Picks Zelda: Breath of the Wild as #1 in “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time”

Rolling Stone has been in the listmaking game for a very long time, first publishing “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” all the way back in 2003. But as we move into 2025, they’ve finally turned their editors loose on video games and published a new list of “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time“.

In creating their list, Rolling Stone decided to shy away from including dozens of sequels from the same franchise, and to ask how well the classics of yesteryear still hold up today:

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The Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 Finds Room for Super Smash Bros., Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and 40 Other Games

The whole world is getting ready to close the book on 2024, which means that it’s also time to meet the newest inductees to the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

A total of 42 new games were added to the Hall of Fame this year, most coming from the great gaming year of 1999. The Shacknews Hall of Fame runs on a 25-year eligibility window and only games released on or before December 31, 1999 can be inducted.

So which games made the cut? The list includes multiple titles from Valve (Counter-Strike, Half-Life: Opposing Force, and Team Fortress Classic), Sega (Crazy Taxi, Samba de Amigo, Shining Force, and Sonic Adventure), and Nintendo (Mario Golf, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros.). But Shacknews didn’t stop there, as they also enshrined Sqauresoft’s Final Fantasy VIII, Crystal Dynamics’s Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment, Namco’s Soul Calibur, and Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

All told, excluding duplicates, alternate editions, and expansion packs, the Shacknews Hall of Fame now includes 233 unique titles. And they haven’t even reached the first year of the new millennium yet!

All of the titles included in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of next year’s update.

The Game Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today

The Game Awards have been produced and hosted since 2014 by journalist Geoff Keighley. The annual ceremony is held each December and recognizes games released during the previous 12 months.

The nominees are selected by an international panel made up of more than 95 media outlets and influencers. This same jury, along with the aggregated results of an online fan vote, also determines the winners each year. The final ballot is weighted with 90% of the vote coming from the panel and the remaining 10% coming from the general public. Contrary to popular belief, Geoff Keighley has no say in selecting the nominees or the winners.

The Game Awards are a direct continuation of the Spike Video Game Awards, which Keighley produced for Spike TV from 2003 until 2013. After the cable channel declined to sponsor the show in 2014, he chose to move forward with The Game Awards as an independent production.

All the “Game of the Year” winners from The Game Awards and the Spike Video Game Awards can be found here…

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Astro Bot is “Game of the Year” at the 2024 Game Awards

Is this a new era for The Game Awards? Geoff Keighley, the producer and host, seemed to take the many complaints about last year’s show to heart.

Many viewers were bothered by the excessive amount of “World Premiere” trailers in 2023, as well as the scant amount of time the winners were given to speak. Leaning into this criticism, the 2024 Game Awards seemed to be packed with more trailers than ever, shifting the balance of the show to operate more like a Winter E3 with the actual awards serving as a secondary segment. And that’s okay. There are lots of awards shows out there. The Game Awards can be the fun one while the GDC Awards, the DICE Awards, and the BAFTAs give out the real “Game of the Year” honors.

Keighley also received criticism from the press and the public about his lack of concern for the huge number of layoffs that ravaged the video game industry in 2023. This year saw even more job losses, and The Game Awards responded by creating the “TGA Game Changer” award, which was given to Amir Satvat for his curation of Amir Satvat’s Games Community, a website that offers support, mentorship, and job postings for game developers.

Keighley’s introduction to this part of the show was particularly good:

“The sad reality is that over the past few years the gaming industry has suffered significant and unprecedented industry-wide layoffs. Those affect the games we get to play and even more importantly, the people who make the games we love. We can debate and certainly disagree with the reasons why, and honestly, as a show, we kind of struggle how to address these topics in a constructive way. But this year, inside of these challenges, we found greatness. I’m proud to share with you the story of a single individual who saw developers in need and did something truly extraordinary.”

Even the awards themselves felt different this year, as Team Asobi’s Astro Bot won the “Game of the Year”. Astro Bot is the first family-friendly game to win the top prize in the ten-year history of The Game Awards, beating out flashier competition such as Black Myth: Wukong, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. All of those games got their chance to shine, but it was Team Asobi’s night, as the developer also won “Best Game Direction”, “Best Action/Adventure Game”, and “Best Family Game” for Astro Bot.

Not only is Astro Bot an extreme outlier among previous Game Awards winners, but so is the next most-honored game of the night. Balatro didn’t win “Game of the Year”, but developer LocalThunk did collect statuettes for “Best Independent Game”, “Best Mobile Game”, and “Best Debut Indie”. Atlus’s Metaphor: ReFantazio also picked up three statuettes last night, winning for “Best Narrative”, “Best Art Direction”, and “Best Role Playing Game”.

Black Myth: Wukong parlayed its strong fan support into wins for “Best Action Game” and the public-voted “Player’s Voice” award. While Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had to settle for the statuette for “Best Score and Music”.

Finally, let’s talk about that lineup of “World Premiere” trailers, because it really was pretty impressive this year. There were blockbuster sequels, which included The Witcher IV, Elden Ring: Nightreign, Borderlands 4, The Outer Worlds 2, Dying Light: The Beast, and Slay the Spire 2. There were the shocking returns of long-forgotten franchises such as Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Turok: Origins, Virtua Fighter 6, and Okami 2. And there was plenty of new stuff including Warren Specter’s Thick As Thieves, the currently untitled next game from Fumito Ueda, Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and the absolutely bonkers Shadow Labyrinth (which is being pitched as a Pac-Man spinoff). It was almost overwhelming.

And that’s it for the 2024 Game Awards. A complete list of all the winners and nominees, as well as a full replay of the ceremony, can be found after the break.

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