A Leg Up for the Little Guy

Well let’s get to the real meat of why you are here: Who exactly won Game of the Year?

The following are some of big winners of the night:

• EA Sports FC 25 for Best Sports/Racing Game,
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Innovation in Accessibility
• Neva for Games for Impact
• Frostpunk 2 for Best Sim/Strategy Game
• Batman: Arkham Shadow for Best VR/AR Game
• CaseOh, formely known as randomsimplestuf35, for Best Content Creator
• Amazon’s Fallout for Best Adaptation
• Melina Juergens’ performance as the titular Senua for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II for Best Audio Design.
• Baldur’s Gate 3 for Best Community Support
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for Best Score and Music
• Continuing to the butt of many memes, Grand Theft Audio VI is Most Anticipated Game

Tekken 8 wins Best Fighting Game, later coupled with the announcement that Clive Rosfield from Final Fantasy XVI will be added to the game.

League of Legends was most represented in all respective Esports categories, winning Best Esports Game, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok  for Best Esports Athlete, and T1 for Best Esports Team.

Helldivers II won Best Mutiplayer Game and Best Ongoing Game.

Black Myth: Wukong won Best Action Game and the vote for Player’s Choice. Developers Game Science went on to complain they didn’t win more.

Balatro won Best Mobile Game, and took the gold for indies winning both Best Debut Game and Best Independent Game. Otherwise, the game’s team is currently at odds with PEGI, the European video game content rating system, for giving the game an 18+ rating.

Metaphor: ReFantazio won Best Roleplaying and Best Art Direction.

In spite of Sony’s recent blunders, Astro Bot won Best Game Direction, Best Family Game, and ultimately took home the gold for Game of the Year.

Laura Carter was recognized as a Global Gaming Citizen, co-founder of TreesPlease Games, a studio aiming to create games and develop initiatives to combat climate change.

Amir Satvat, a game developer and currently Business Development Director at Tencent, wins the new Game Changer award for his ongoing efforts in creating and sharing resources in response to the continuing, astronomical layoffs and job losses that are plaguing the industry—an issue that was surprisingly acknowledged during the show. That said, some have critiqued the introduction of the award in the absence of the Future Class program this year, with some past inductees and alum having raised complaints over the lack of actual support they ended up receiving and several of the program’s shortcomings.

Show Spotlights

We seemingly cannot ever escape anticipating what bombastic moment is going to happen at The Game Awards every year.

While our host Geoff Keighley was getting roasted by puppets for the whole duration, the show was once again mostly peppered with mostly trailers, teases, and showcases over what is to come.

Man of the hour, Josef Fares, once again was in attendance of the show with much vigor and foul-mouthed enthusiasm. Founder of Hazelight Studios, he took the stage to introduce another co-op game in the works, titled Split Fiction.

A new Indiana Jones game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, is slated to arrive Spring 2025. In introducing the game, performer Troy Baker and Todd Howard were joined by Harrison Ford, transitioning into the Best Performance category.

Keighley also gave dedicated spotlight on a new sci-fi IP in the works called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. While showing a tease of potentially impressive graphics, the big reveal (unfortunately) is that the game is being developed by Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann. Further details about the game’s plot, relayed from Druckmann himself, already has us apprehensive about it. We already were annoyed hearing about The Last of Us getting “remastered” for the upteenth time.

Snoop Dogg was also hyped as the big climatic musical performance of the night, a tie-in with his appearance now added to the next season of Fortnite Festival. He will be joining musical likes such as Lady Gaga and The Weeknd. Leaks suggest Vocaloid superstar Hatsune Miku will be dropping in come next year.

But most importantly, flute guy makes his return to the fray once more.

Following much pomp and circumstance, Swen Vincke, founder and CEO of Larian Studios, was presenter for this year’s Game of the Year, after Baldur’s Gate 3’s Game of the Year win in 2023. Before ultimately passing on the torch to Astro Bot, Vincke took his time to make a scathing joke at being told, among others, to “wrap it up” last year.

Sequels and Reboots Galore

But overall, the nostalgia cycle is in full force!

While there was a sliver of some potential new, original hits that are expected to land in gamers’ hands next year, teases of releases were mostly updates to ongoing games, sequels, and reboots, and revisits of IPs new and old.

Koei Tecmo is putting out a new Ninja Gaiden title, to be called Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound.

While RGG Studios is working on a new title, Project Century, they’re taking the lead with handling a new Virtua Fighter.

There will be yet another Double Dragon game, a new installment to the Onimusha franchise slated for 2026, and the big drop of the night: Hideki Kamiya jumping off the burning ship that is Platinum Games to make a sequel to beloved PS2/Wii Classic Okami! (But never mind all that, we also got a new Turok game baby!!!)

Apart from just full on reboots, tonight also showcased some more current continuations: CD Projekt Red unveiled The Witcher 4 with a full focus on Ciri as the protagonist.

Enemy of the site Randy Pitchford also pulled up to announce Borderlands 4, a shocker to those of us who wanted to forget Borderlands 3 was out in the world. Potentially, there might be less “toilet humor.”

Both The Outer Worlds and Slay the Spire are getting sequels.

We also got a surprise taste of what is going to be a new Sonic Racing game!

Tales of the Shire, a cozy-looking Lord of the Rings game that seems to focus on peaceful Hobbit life is coming for the Switch.

There are also two new games in the works set within the Dungeon & Fighter universe: teased earlier last year, the gristly, bloody, and dark The First Berserker: Khazan, and the more lighthearted-looking, anime-stylized open RPG, ARAD.

Highly anticipated is Mafia: The Old World, the newest installment in the Mafia franchise set in 1900s Sicily.

Oh yeah, and there was also this cat game that most obviously looks like it is some suspicious AI-generated shlock. The developers have hastily thrown up a “gameplay” trailer in defense of the game’s first impressions

Movements in Mobilization

Studio People Can Fly, known for Outriders, goes through its second wave of layoffs this year.

Developer of Gotham Knights and additional support to Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad, WB Games Montreal lays off 99 developers.

Meanwhile, ZeniMax Online Studios, have officially unionized with the CWA.

Workers at 2K’s Motion Capture Studio, with numerous games credits such as the NBA 2K and WWE 2K games, have voted to unionize. The shop will be represented under IATSE. This is the first successful unionization of a motion capture studio in the video games industry.

In other news…

Video game-inspired anthology series Secret Level is renewed for another season.

itch.io was briefly down due to a AI tool used by Funko Inc. falsely reporting their domain to their registrar for phishing. itch.io’s domain has since been reinstated, but the issue also escalated to the point that a Funko representative allegedly went as far as calling itch.io’s founder’s mother.

Shuhei Yoshida is leaving his post at Sony come January of next year. He joined the company in 1993 at the height of the first PlayStation’s development.

Tencent is ending Nintendo Switch eShop services to the Chinese version of the console in 2026. This most likely does not mean it will be down forever, the current agreement the two companies had will lapse, and Nintendo may go with another avenue for Switch and Switch 2 in China.

And yes, Skibidi Toilet is coming to Fortnite.

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