More Lists – Page 2 – Video Game Canon

Zelda: Breath of the Wild is #1 in “The 100 Greatest Games of Edge’s Lifetime”

The magazine racks at your local bookstore (or even your local Barnes & Noble) are mostly empty these days. And that’s doubly-true for game-focused publications like Nintendo Power, GamePro, and Electronic Gaming Monthly, all of which closed down more than a decade ago.

Those three (and many others) might be gone, but Edge endures. The venerable UK-based magazine launched in October of 1993, and it’s come back again and again to deliver thousands of pages of outstanding game journalism to readers in all the months since.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, the editors at Edge did what they do best… they put together another Best Games list. But rather than reach all the way back to Pong and the beginning of the video game industry, they kept things simpler and tried to determine “The 100 Greatest Games of Edge’s Lifetime” in Edge 390.

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Lists From the Past: The First Ten Years of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Video Game Acquisitions”

Are video games art? It’s a question that has dogged players, developers, and critics for decades, and even now, it’s one without an easy answer.

This cultural dustup was at its most brutal in 2010, after film critic Roger Ebert declared that “video games can never be art” in an opinion piece on his website. It was a familiar drumbeat from Ebert, but this round of vitriol was in reaction to a TED Talk delivered by Kellee Santiago, a developer who was working on the then-upcoming Journey at thatgamecompany. While praising Santiago as “bright, confident, [and] persuasive,” everyone’s favorite film critic ultimately objected to every one of her arguments, sparking a huge backlash of counter-opinions in the gaming press.

After several months of sniping, the two warring factions reached a truce (or at the very least, a ceasefire) in July when Ebert invited everyone to “play on [his] lawn” and admitted that games could be art. It was a nice gesture, but it didn’t entirely put the question to bed, and it’s something we’re still talking about today. Want proof? Look no further than the recent HBO adaptation of The Last of Us and the argument that it contains “the greatest story that has ever been told in video games.” Many people agree… and many people absolutely do not.

But Ebert’s reaction was just a preview to the main event. So let’s jump to November 2012, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired a collection of 14 games to form the core of their Applied Design exhibit (which would open in 2013), and seemed to settle the question once and for all.

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A Few Final Fantasy XVI Developers Shared Their Favorite Final Fantasy Games

Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XVI is finally available on store shelves, and it has instantly entered the “Game of the Year” conversation, with the early reviews describing a game that takes the franchise in a bold new direction.

But how did the development team navigate the creation of this new path? And what titles rom the franchise’s 35-year history did they look to for inspiration in designing the game?

IGN recently sat down with six members of the development team, including Director Hiroshi Takai and Producer Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, to tease out their favorite Final Fantasy games.

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2022 GOTY Scoreboard: Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, God of War: Ragnarok, and More

After wandering in the wilderness during the early part of the PS4 era, the God of War franchise came back in a big way with God of War (2018). With a new pantheon to slay, Kratos slashed his way into our hearts, and he helped Sony Santa Monica collect a decent chunk of accolades from reviewers and players alike during the 2018-2019 “Game of the Year” season (including a sweep at all five of the major year-end awards shows).

But it’s been five long years since Kratos first brought his unique brand of godly violence to the Norse realm, what could the Ghost of Sparta do for an encore?

God of War: Ragnarok, which was released this past November, answered that question with spectacular battles against the one-eyed Allfather, Odin, and the Mighty Thor himself. But not even the end of the world could topple From Software’s Elden Ring, which has steamrolled the competition.

Elden Ring was named “Game of the Year” by dozens of publications and took home the statuette at three major awards show. Only one game managed to break through From Software’s stranglehold on voting bodies across the industry, with Poncle’s Vampire Survivors taking the last major year-end award.

You can see more of last year’s most-acclaimed titles in the 2022 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

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Vampire Survivors Snaps Elden Ring’s Streak and Wins “Best Game” at the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards

Sony Santa Monica’s God of War (2018) is the only game in history to win “Game of the Year” honors at all five major year-end shows.

With the SXSW Gaming Awards off the calendar, and after Elden Ring‘s victories at The Game Awards, the DICE Awards, and the GDC Awards, it was looking extremely likely that Kratos would soon have some company. But it was not to be… and God of War: Ragnarok wasn’t even the one to snap the streak.

Instead, “Best Game” at the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards went to Poncle’s Vampire Survivors.

The retro-styled “bullet heaven” shooter has been steadily picking up steam since it was released in early access in December 2021, and won over even more converts after its official launch in October. I’m sure a lot of people will look at this as an unlikely victory, but the membership of the British Academy has always tended to go their own way (most famously in 2017-2018 when it chose What Remains of Edith Finch over The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). To further push that point home, Vampire Survivors also won the “Game Design” statuette.

So what of Elden Ring? From Software’s dark fantasy also won two awards, “Original Property” and “Multiplayer.”

Believe it or not, the biggest winner of the night was actually Sony Santa Monica and God of War: Ragnarok. The conclusion to Kratos’s Norse adventures took home six total awards, including three for the developer (“Animation,” “Audio Achievement,” and “Music”), both performance awards (Christopher Judge for “Performer in a Leading Role” and Laya DeLeon Hayes for “Performer in a Supporting Role”), and the fan-voted “EE Game of the Year.”

The complete list of winners and nominees from the 2022-2023 BAFTA Games Awards, as well as a replay of the ceremony, can be found after the break.

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Elden Ring Wins “Game of the Year” at 2022-2023 GDC Awards

Hold on to your hats, but From Software’s Elden Ring is now three-for-three at the major year-end awards after it collected a total of three awards, including “Game of the Year,” at the 2022-2023 Game Developers Choice Awards. In addition to the top prize, the development team will need to find room in their trophy case for the “Best Design” and “Best Visual Arts” statuettes.

“Three” was the theme of the night as things definitely happened in threes during the ceremony, starting right at the top with the hosting duties of Leslee Sullivant, a triple threat Game Producer, Writer, and TikTok creator (you’ve absolutely seen at least one of her “stories from the games industry” videos).

The other big winner last night was Sony Santa Monica’s God of War: Ragnarok, which also won three awards. The godlike technical feats performed by Kratos netted “Best Audio” and “Best Technology” for the developer, while a public vote secured the “Audience Award.”

Finally, four other awards went to four very deserving games (the theme suffers when your program has ten awards). Obsidian’s tale of medieval murder, Pentiment, won “Best Narrative.” Immortality‘s innovative use of video was the snared an “Innovation Award” for Half Mermaid. BlueTwelve continued their streak with another “Best Debut” award for Stray. And Citizen Sleeper was given the “Social Impact Award.”

Congratulations also to John Romero, who was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Doom, Quake, and a laundry list of other games; and to the family of Mabel Addis, who was posthumously awarded the Pioneer Award for her work on The Sumerian Game.

The full list of winners, nominees, and honorable mentions from the 2022-2023 GDC Awards can be found after the break.

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SXSW Gaming Awards: All the Winners from 2013 to 2022

The SXSW Gaming Awards were previously given out each Spring as part of the South by Southwest festival, honoring games released during the previous calendar year. The ceremony was first held in 2014, but games and gaming have a long history at the Austin festival.

South by Southwest, also popularly known as SXSW, first opened its doors in 1987 as a regional music festival organized by The Austin Chronicle. After quickly growing in prominence over the next few years, SXSW expanded its scope in 1994 with the addition of a Film Festival. A Multimedia track focusing on technology and games would launch a year later.

SXSW’s celebration of games and game creators would get its own section, Screenburn, in 2006. That name was clearly a vestige of early 2000s “xtreme” culture, and it gave way to the more familiar SXSW Gaming in 2013.

Nominees for the SXSW Gaming Awards were chosen by festival staff with assistance from an advisory board. After the nominees were announced, the public helped determine the winners by participating in an online vote to help select the winners, which was weighted alongside another vote from festival staff and the advisory board.

The SXSW Gaming Awards were discontinued in 2023.

Every “Video Game of the Year” winner from the SXSW Gaming Awards can be found here…

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GOTY Flashback: 2013-2014 SXSW Gaming Awards

The organizers of South By Southwest have closed the doors on yet another festival within the Austin city limits, but for the first time in nearly a decade, they did so without the SXSW Gaming Awards. According to a spokesperson for the event, the Gaming Awards were discontinued this year in an effort to “streamline our festival a bit more.”

But rather than wonder whether SXSW’s jury would have chosen Elden Ring or God of War: Ragnarok, let’s look back at the winners from the very first SXSW Gaming Awards ceremony in 2013-2014.

The inaugural program from the SXSW Gaming Awards honored the best games from 2013 and you’ll find a very familiar name at the very top of the list. The Last of Us, which has since spawned multiple re-releases, a sequel, and a live-action adaptation, was the most-awarded game of the night, collecting “Game of the Year” honors for Naughty Dog, as well as three other statuettes (“Narrative,” “Musical Score,” and “SFX”).

While The Last of Us edged out some tough opposition for the big prize at the first SXSW Gaming Awards, almost all of the other titles competing for “Game of the Year” came away with something.

▶ The “Excellence in Gaming Marketing” award went to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for promoting a life of piracy.
▶ The patriotic imagery of Columbia snared the “Excellence in Art” award for Irrational’s BioShock Infinite.
▶ Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, which has also been re-released multiple times in the last decade, received the “Excellence in Technical Achievement” award.
▶ The chaotic multiplayer of Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D World won “Best Multiplayer Game.”
▶ And the origami world of Media Molecule’s Tearaway won “Excellence in Design and Direction.”

The full list of winners and nominees from the 2013-2014 SXSW Gaming Awards (as reported by the Austin Chronicle) can be found after the break.

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An “Expert Jury” Made Some Odd Choices When Picking “20 Best Video Games of All Time” for The Times

The Times delivered its first daily edition to the people of London all the way back in 1785. The newspaper has reported on some of the biggest stories the world has ever seen in the nearly 240 years since, and they’ve given space to pieces from a very distinguished array of writers over the centuries, including Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and Albert Einstein.

But earlier this week, their editorial staff decided to wade into the debate surrounding the best video games of all time.

Jake Helm, a Culture Reporter for The Times, assembled a “jury of experts” to choose the “20 Best Video Games of All Time,” and some of the selections are a bit on the wild side.

Some of gaming’s biggest franchises (including The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Final Fantasy) went unmentioned, but Sonic Adventure 2 (#20) and Far Cry 4 (#15) both made the cut. The panel also picked Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (#16), but overlooked World of Warcraft.

All that is certainly odd, but the top half of the list features most of the big blockbusters you expect to see on a Best Games list. Doom (1993) is #6, Tetris is #4, and a combo pick of The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II is #2. Another two-for-one selection, Portal and Portal 2, teleported its way into the #1 spot.

So who was on this expert panel? That would be Charlie Brooker, former game critic and the creator of Black Mirror; Lucy Prebble, a writer on Succession; Daniel “DanTDM” Middleton, a popular YouTuber; and Helen Lewis, a writer for The Atlantic and a “self-confessed video game fan.” All of the panel’s picks can be found after the break.

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Elden Ring Wins “Game of the Year” at 2022-2023 DICE Awards

From Software’s Elden Ring has gone two-for-two during the 2022-2023 awards season after the RPG captured “Game of the Year” honors at the conclusion of last night’s DICE Awards ceremony. The RPG’s distinctive dark fantasy aesthetic was honored with four other awards, also winning for “Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction,” “Outstanding Achievement in Game Design,” “Outstanding Technical Achievement,” and, of course, “Role-Playing Game of the Year.”

It was a good night for From Software, though the mighty God of War was not always so easily toppled.

Before the show, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences bestowed a dozen nominations on God of War: Ragnarok. But while it might have missed the big prize, Kratos and company collected more statuettes than any other game at the DICE Awards. Developers from Sony Santa Monica would climb up on stage seven times, starting with the award for “Adventure Game of the Year.”

The team would also be honored for their narrative work (“Outstanding Achievement in Story” and “Outstanding Achievement in Character” for Kratos himself), graphical prowess (“Outstanding Achievement in Animation” and “Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction”), and audio work (“Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition” and “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design”).

The only other game to win multiple awards at the 2022-2023 DICE Awards was Vertical Robot’s Red Matter 2, which was triumphant in both immersive reality categories (“Immersive Reality Technical Achievement” and “Immersive Reality Game of the Year”).

Many of the remaining awards were distributed amongst some of the biggest surprises from 2022. The vampire-less Vampire Survivors sunk its teeth into the “Action Game of the Year” award. The full-fledged Premium Edition of Dwarf Fortress paid off more than 15 years of anticipation with a win for “Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year.” And the addictive Marvel Snap was named “Mobile Game of the Year.”

You’ll find a replay of last night’s ceremony, which was hosted by Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller and IGN’s Stella Chung, after the break, along with a full list of winners and nominees.

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