Back on December 12th 2024, Geoff Keighley returned to host the 10th annual Game Awards, a celebration of the best recent gaming releases as well as a chance for developers to show off upcoming games.
This Game Awards nominations led to some controversy with the regulations being changed to now allow Downloadable Content (DLC) to be eligible for Game of the Year (the top award). This led to the Elden Ring DLC being nominated in this category. An Independent developer game Balatro also got nominated which sparked discussion online as to whether it was deserving to be able to win Game of the Year compared to the other, more high budget games. Sony saw success as their single player platformer game Astro Bot was able to beat the competition and win Game of the Year. The game has also received critical and public acclaim. It also won Best Game Direction, Best Action Game and beat out Nintendo to win Best Family Game.
In other categories, Sega/Atlus’s latest entry/spin off to the Persona series Metaphor: ReFantazio won multiple categories including, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction and Best RPG. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth surprisingly only won Best Score/Music despite how popular the game and franchise are. Fortnite once again failed to secure any awards with Sony’s Helldivers 2 winning best Ongoing and Balder’s Gate 3 winning Community Support. The aforementioned Balatro was able to win in all the Indie game categories as well as Best Mobile Game. In the realm of real life, Caseoh won Best Content Creator and Fallout won the new Best Adaptation (into a movie or show) category beating Arcane.
There was also several showcases of future games and updates with a first look at the highly anticipated 4th entry into the Witcher series. Tekken 8 also continued the tradition set by its predecessor by announcing a Final Fantasy crossover with content from FF16 being added to the game. There was also brief looks at Borderlands 4 as well as a new Warframe game. Fighting game franchise Virtua Fighter also joins Fatal Fury by getting a revival in 2025.
Overall, I think this Game Awards may have potential to change game companies views on what they should be focusing on. It is no secret that there has been a push for far more ‘live service’ (online multiplayer) games, however, the top award winners were mostly single player games like Astro Bot. Sony is already changing pace, with them recently cancelling several ‘live service’ games that were in development including one based of God of War. I do however think there will still be focus on giving games DLC especially following the rule change allowing them to win more awards. The 2025 awards are likely to be completely dominated by GTA6 which is expected to be the best-selling game of all time, and it won the Most Anticipated Game award at these 2024 awards.
Image Credit: Unsplash.
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