More Lists – Video Game Canon

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 New York Game Awards (January 21st), the DICE Awards (February 13th), the GDC Awards (March 19th), BAFTA Games Awards (April 8th), and a few others. But you can find all the games fighting for 2024’s “Game of the Year” honors after the break.

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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, has 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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GOTY Flashback: 2014 Game Awards

The Game Awards has seen its share of ups and downs, but the Geoff Keighley-hosted awards show is celebrating its tenth anniversary this Thursday, December 12th. While we wait to see which game will take the coveted “Game of the Year” statuette this year, let’s look back at the first Game Awards.

After the dissolution of the Spike Video Game Awards a year earlier, Keighley rebranded the show and produced it himself as an independent production. With questions about whether the show could continue beyond 2014, he chose to carry over multiple aspects from his previous gig, including a similar slate of categories, a star-studded lineup of special guests, and a heavy focus on “World Premiere” trailers (including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt).

Eschewing a celebrity host, Keighley even took over hosting duties for the 2014 Game Awards, but he found himself in the middle of an awards show attempting to honor a strange year for gaming.

The industry was going through a console transition, as the PS4 and Xbox One had launched the year before. Many of the year’s biggest games were also released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 and many players had yet to make an investment in new hardware. This industry identity crisis was present in the “Game of the Year” nominees, which included two cross-generation games (Dragon Age: Inquisition and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor), From Software’s Dark Souls II (which wasn’t available on the PS4 or Xbox One at the time), and the mobile-focused Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

Meanwhile, Nintendo was floundering, though you wouldn’t know it from the Wii U’s performance at the show. Super Smash Bros. For Wii U (“Best Fighting Game”) and Mario Kart 8 (“Best Family Game” and “Best Sports/Racing Game”) both took home statuettes, though neither was nominated for “Game of the Year”. Instead, the Nintendo-published and Platinum-developed Bayonetta 2 earned the final spot on the “Game of the Year” ballot.

On top of all this, a coordinated harassment campaign against developers and journalists was growing in the worst corners of the Internet. Popularly known as GamerGate, we’re still dealing with the aftereffects of the campaign and probably will be for a long time. But what else can you really say about GamerGate at this point?

Ultimately, BioWare’s Dragon Age: Inquisition was named “Game of the Year” at the 2014 Game Awards, sandwiched between the aforementioned Breath of the Wild premiere and a trailer for Eve Online.

Rewatching bits of the show, I’m struck by how little The Game Awards has changed from 2014 to today. Then as now, you’ve got a lot of rapid fire awards montages, short speeches from the winners, musical performances, and “World Premiere” trailers.

The “Game of the Year” contenders can even be said to represent similar slots as subsequent years, in any given year, the “Game of the Year” category will include the flashiest action games (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor), at least one action RPG (Dark Souls II and Dragon Age: Inquisition), a representative from Nintendo (Bayonetta 2), and a smaller game that captured the zeitgeist (Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft). You could easily map this year’s nominees onto the same template.

But after ten years, you have to wonder if it’s time for the show to freshen things up a little, but this is probably the way that Keighley likes it. And as he’s said in the past, the commercial realities of producing a show like this practically require him to seek outside sponsors and publishers willing to pay for the placement of their “World Premiere” trailers. Though it’s hard to know if any of that is true.

But other big winners during the very first Game Awards were Destiny (“Best Score/Soundtrack” and “Best Online Experience”), Far Cry 4 (“Best Shooter”), Shovel Knight (“Best Independent Game”), and Grand Theft Auto V (in the since-abandoned “Best Remaster” category). It was a strange year for gaming, but as always, we got a lot of great games.

You can find a replay of the full ceremony for the 2014 Game Awards and a complete list of winners and nominees after the break.

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“The Eurogamer 100” is a List of the 100 Best Video Games to Play Right Now

Eurogamer has been doing a lot of interesting stuff this year to celebrate their 25th birthday (I hope you got the chance to try out the Theme Switcher to see what the site looked like through the years). And about six weeks ago they even attempted to capture “the best games to play in this specific moment” with “The Eurogamer 100”:

Welcome to the Eurogamer 100, a list of video games that aims to reflect their ever-changing nature. Rather than ranking games by their influence or significance, the below list is a suggestion of the very best things you can play at this moment, according to us. We’ve aimed to cover the full breadth of what modern video games can be – and in doing so were reminded, suddenly, that 100 games really isn’t very many at all – while everything on the list must be legitimately obtainable at the time of writing on current-generation hardware. And crucially, it has to currently be brilliant.

Our hope is that this list will be as useful as it is conversation-starting, be that through suggesting exceptional games that may not be on everyone’s radar already, reminding you of long-running classics that have remained timeless, or highlighting those that have found themselves with renewed energy and form.

The key element of “The Eurogamer 100” is that the games included have to be “legitimately obtainable” on “current-generation hardware” to be eligible, which helps make the list a fantastic overview of the last decade (more-or-less) of video games. You’ll find Game of the Year heavyweights (Breath of the Wild at #5, Baldur’s Gate 3 at #6, and Elden Ring at #8) sitting alongside indie darlings (Tunic at #12, Hades at #34, and Animal Well at #36), but I think the Top 3 (Tetris Effect at #1, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at #2, and Outer Wilds at #3) really does capture what video games are about right now.

And thanks to an avalanche of re-releases and the rise of forever games, you’ll also find a few titles that debuted outside that ten-year window, including 2011’s Minecraft (#28) 1991’s Super Mario World (#72), and 2009’s League of Legends #73.

But with such a wide timeframe and such an abundance of choices (100 really isn’t a lot), the number of omissions is staggering. That includes big favorites from recent years (neither Red Dead Redemption is present), as well as one of my personal favorites that’s still available even though it’s nearing it’s 20th anniversary (that would be Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2).

But maybe that’s for a future update of “The Eurogamer 100”. Deputy Editor Chris Tapsell said that we should expect the list to be a dynamic list, and that updates will be made yearly:

Unlike most lists out there, the Eurogamer 100 isn’t a list of the greatest games of all time, but of the best games to play in this specific moment.

We’ll then come back to the list and update it once per year, adding particularly brilliant new games that might have launched, old games that have found new life, and replacing those that may have found themselves in something of a dip.

The rest of “The Eurogamer 100” can be found after the break.

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2023 GOTY Scoreboard: Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake II, Tears of the Kingdom, and More

How do you even begin to talk about what happened in the video game industry in 2023?

From January all the way through to December, 2023 was one of the best years for games ever. New classics literally appeared out of nowhere, while dozens of other hotly-anticipated new releases absolutely lived up to the hype. But it was hard to celebrate last year’s triumphs without also looking back at the seemingly endless parade of developers who lost their job in 2023. Multiple times per week, we would hear about a mass layoff or studio closure at yet another company.

Farhan Noor, an artist who previously worked with Telltale and Activision, has been tracking these job losses at Game Industry Layoffs and he estimates that at least 10,500 people were laid off in 2023. The final tally is most likely quite a bit higher and things don’t seem to be slowing down as we head into 2024.

One outlet, But Why Tho?, directly confronted this grim reality by selecting “The People Who Make the Games Industry” as their “Top Video Game.” Picking the developers, artists, and writers who lost their jobs over any of the games they played in 2023, it’s hard to argue with their reasons for making this choice:

Many of the games on this list and on lists across games media were made by people who are no longer employed by the studios that developed, published, or are the owners. We saw the shuttering of not only studios but also of websites dedicated to covering video games. We can not celebrate a stacked year of fantastic games without trying to honor those who deserve to be respected as talented people who have given us hours and days of play in fantastic worlds. They matter, their futures matter, and the beauty of the video games we love so much is only possible when the developers are respected, cared for, and fought for, too.

So with that in mind, let’s take every chance we can to honor the actual people behind our favorite games, and the fabulous work they did in 2023 while mired in chaos.

Any discussion of 2023 will begin with a trio of games… Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake II, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Fans spent years waiting patiently as each game slowly moved through the development process and all three delivered (including a full sweep of the major “Game of the Year” awards for Baldur’s Gate 3).

Larian (including Director Swen Vincke, Producer David Walgrave, and a talented troupe of voice actors) first unleashed Baldur’s Gate 3 in Early Access in 2020, but the expansive RPG still seemed to come out of nowhere. Likewise, Sam Lake and Remedy had been slowly building out a sequel to Alan Wake since that game’s launch in 2010. Most of this work was done away from the public, but it likely won’t take 13 more years to get the next chapter in Alan Wake’s story.

And then there’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Eiji Aonuma and his team at Nintendo EPD poured everything they had into this Breath of the Wild sequel and redefined what a console like the Switch can offer players in its waning days. Its seemingly-limitless world mesmerized critics and players, and left other developers wondering exactly how Nintendo was able to pull it off.

But dozens of other games also competed for attention and accolades, including Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, Geometric Interactive’s Cocoon, Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4, Tango’s Hi-Fi Rush, Square Enix’s Final Fantsasy XVI, From Software’s Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, Blizzard’s Diablo IV, Mintrocket’s Dave the Diver, and on and on and on.

Even the long shadow of Wordle continued to inspire new daily browser-based games, including the time-gobbling Connections, Puzzmo, and Immaculate Grid.

Altogether, more than 25 games received some form of “Game of the Year” accolades by at least ten publications (that’s a win, a nomination, or a selection on an unranked list), and a total of more than 200 games appeared on at least one list. It was truly an historic year for video games, and you can see how it all shook out by viewing the 2023 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

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BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has presented the BAFTA Games Awards almost every year since 2003 (they skipped 2005 for some reason). “The BAFTAs” are one of the game industry’s most prestigious awards, and they’re awarded each Spring, honoring games released during the previous calendar year.

Since 2016, the BAFTA Games Awards ceremony has coincided with the London Games Festival.

A secret ballot cast by the British Academy’s membership, which includes “experienced games industry practitioners from a range of backgrounds in game development and production,” chooses the nominees and winners each year. A variety of sponsored awards are also offered by the BAFTAs, and the winners are typically decided by a public vote.

All the “Best Game” winners from the BAFTA Games Awards can be found here…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Completes the Sweep After Winning “Best Game” at 2023-2024 BAFTA Games Awards

More than The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Alan Wake II or Super Mario Bros. Wonder or any of the rest of 2023’s biggest games, it often felt like all anyone wanted to talk about last year was Baldur’s Gate 3.

The RPG’s uncanny ability to become the center of the conversation has continued throughout awards season, as it won “Game of the Year” honors at The Game Awards in December, the DICE Awards in February, and the GDC Awards in March. Could we be looking at another sweep of the major year-end awards? The first, and only, time that happened was when Sony Santa Monica’s God of War took home all the “Game of the Year” trophies in 2018.

I could try to draw the suspense out a little more… but if you saw the headline you know… the development team from Larian Studios did indeed complete their sweep at the 2023-2024 BAFTA Games Awards. Baldur’s Gate 3 was the big winner of the night, not only winning “Best Game”, but also a handful of other statuettes as well. The RPG’s tally also includes awards for “Narrative”, “Music”, “Performer in a Supporting Role” (for Andrew Wincott portrayal of Raphael, and the fan-voted “EE Players’ Choice”.

While Baldur’s Gate 3 won a lot last night, the three aforementioned games also took home a few trophies. Remedy’s Alan Wake II was honored with “Artistic Achievement” and “Audio Achievement” awards. Playing together was at the heart of Super Mario Bros. Wonder‘s victories for “Family” and “Multiplayer”. And The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom took home yet another “Technical Achievement” award at this year’s BAFTA Games Awards.

Comedian Phil Wang led the ceremony in London last night, but the membership of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts also decided to reveal the competition’s Longlist for the first time. Focusing on the “overwhelming proof of the tremendous creative talent prevalent across the industry”, the 60 titles chosen provide a great overview for one of the best years for video games ever.

You can view a replay of the ceremony after the break, along with a complete list of all the nominees and winners from this 20th edition of the BAFTA Games Awards.

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GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today

Chris Crawford opened the doors to the very first Computer Game Developers Conference after welcoming two dozen other developers into his living room in 1988. The annual gathering has grown considerably in the years since (including being rechristened the Game Developers Conference in 1999), though Crawford bowed out of organizing the event in 1994.

UBM TechWeb, a company that specialized in trade shows and conferences, took over organizing the Game Developers Conference in the 1990s and they launched the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDC Awards) in 2001. Informa Tech, a British publishing company, took over as the organizer of the Game Developers Conference in 2020.

The GDC Awards are awarded every Spring at the Game Developers Conference, and both the nominees and the winners are selected by a group of “leading game creators from all parts of the industry.” Membership in this panel, which is known as the International Choice Awards Network, is available by invitation-only.

Before the creation of the GDC Awards, the Game Developers Conference hosted the Spotlight Awards from 1997 through 1999.

All the “Game of the Year” winners from the GDC Awards and the Spotlight Awards can be found here…

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Baldur’s Gate 3 Cruises to its Third “Game of the Year” Award of the Season at the 2023-2024 GDC Awards

The voters at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards have thrown their lot in with the biggest RPG of the year for the second straight year, bestowing “Game of the Year” honors on Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 earlier this week at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco.

This is the third major “Game of the Year” trophy that Larian has collected this season (including the DICE Awards in February and The Game Awards in December). We’ll know if they can complete the sweep after the conclusion of the BAFTA Games Awards in a few weeks.

That said, Larian wasn’t quite done with the 2023-2024 GDC Awards. Members of the development team took the stage an additional three times to collect “Best Design”, “Best Narrative”, and the “Audience Award”. But Baldur’s Gate 3 couldn’t win them all, and there were six other awards up for grabs during this year’s ceremony.

Two of those prizes went to Nintendo for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which took home the “Best Technology” trophy and the “Innovation Award”. Venba, from Visai Games, also bested the competition in a pair of categories. The game’s story of an immigrant family and the food they cook to preserve their culture won “Best Debut” and the “Social Impact Award”.

That leaves just two awards, and they were split between a pair of impressive titles. “Best Audio” went to Tango Gameworks’s Hi-Fi Rush, while “Best Visual Art” belonged to Remedy’s Alan Wake II.

The 2023-2024 GDC Awards were hosted by Alanah Pearce, and you can view the ceremony, along with a complete list of all winners, nominees, and honorable mentions, after the break.

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