More Lists – Page 2 – Video Game Canon

GOTY Flashback: 2015-2016 DICE Awards

Because everyone loves round numbers, let’s take a look back at the 2015-2016 DICE Awards, which celebrated games that were released exactly ten years ago.

Operating on a slightly different wavelength than 2015’s The Game Awards, the voting panel from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences chose to award Crystal Dynamics’s Rise of the Tomb Raider with the most nominations… though the second entry in Lara Croft’s rebooted series of adventures only managed to score a single win (“Outstanding Achievement in Character”).

Instead, Bethesda’s Fallout 4 was the most-awarded game of the night as it took home the “Game of the Year” statuette, as well as “Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction” and “Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year”. However, it also had to share the stage with a trio of other games that won a trio of awards.

The unique audio/visual experience of Moon Studios’s Ori and the Blind Forest contributed to its victories in the “Animation”, “Art Direction”, and “Original Music Composition” categories.

Psyonix’s vehicular soccer game, Rocket League, embraced its status as a crowd-pleaser by winning the “DICE Sprite Award” (the previous name of the “Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game” award), as well as “Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay” and “Sports Game of the Year”.

Finally, Geralt of Rivia (or rather, the development team from CD Projekt Red) stomped on stage to collect three statuettes for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The expansive RPG was the recipient of Outstanding Achievement awards in “Game Design” and “Story”, as well as “Outstanding Technical Achievement” for its depiction of The Continent.

A handful of other games were winners at the 2015-2016 DICE Awards, including Star Wars: Battlefront (“Action Game of the Year” and “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design”), Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (“Adventure Game of the Year”), Super Mario Maker (“Family Game of the Year”), Mortal Kombat X (“Fighting Game of the Year”), and more.

Speaking of Hideo Kojima, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences inducted the always colorful developer into their Hall of Fame, and Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work leading Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015.

A complete list of all the winners and nominees from the 2015-2016 DICE Awards, as well as a replay of the ceremony, can be found after the break.

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Zelda: Breath of the Wild is #1 in Giant Bomb’s “The 100 Best Games of the 21st Century” Community Vote

Giant Bomb decided to piggyback off of the New York Times’s massive “The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century” feature with their own take on “The 100 Best Games of the 21st Century“.

The site’s editors opened up the voting to their community, and began collecting ballots a week and a half ago. Each voter was given the chance to choose any ten games released after 2000, and ranking a game higher up on the list ensured it received more points in the final tally.

After receiving a total of 3171 ballots, Giant Bomb unveiled the final list this morning, and it features many of the heavy hitters we’ve come to know and love over the last quarter century. So what made the cut? Please read on to find out…

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The BAFTA Games Awards Polled the Public and Shenmue is “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time”

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts did more than select the winners of the 2024-2025 BAFTA Games Awards last month (once again, congratulations to Astro Bot).

In the leadup to this year’s ceremony, the group gave the public a chance to vote for “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time“. With all the votes now tallied, Sega’s Shenmue appeared at the top of the list, and it was followed by 20 additional titles.

Chris Schilling, formerly of Edge Magazine, helped introduce the breadth of games on display:

As more than one responder said, it’s unfair to have to choose just one. Do you pick the pioneers that shaped the early days of the medium, the innovators that were ahead of their time, the ones that proved formative to your own creative journey, or simply the ones that made you most emotional? As might be expected, among the extraordinary number of responses we received was a staggering variety of games — ranging from titles that launched the industry to contemporary giants released mere months ago. The top ten alone spans multiple genres, from platformers to shooters, sandbox adventures to simulations.

Shenmue launched to near universal acclaim in 2000 and is ostensibly about Ryo Hazuki’s search for his father’s killer. But the game also works as a massive life simulation, giving players the opportunity to also play arcade games, chat with NPCs, and even drive a forklift. It’s a bit of a surprising choice for the top spot, but also not, as you can see the ripple effect that Shenmue‘s open world design and focus on minigames caused in the 2000s (and beyond). Shenmue‘s influence can be seen clearly in subsequent games in the Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza franchises, but also in Animal Crossing, Final Fantasy, and the games of Quantic Dream.

“The Most Influential Video Game of All Time” is actually a pretty solid list top to bottom, with foundational games like Pong (#13), Tetris (#11), and Super Mario Bros. (#3) sitting alongside newer classics like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (#20) and Baldur’s Gate 3 (#16). Doom (1993) (#2) and Half-Life 2 (#9), two games that often make the cut on lists like this, were also well-represented in the top ten.

Though I have to admit, I was a bit baffled that you’ll also find Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (#7) sandwiched between Super Mario 64 (#8) and Minecraft (#6) in the top ten. Warhorse’s sequel has received some fantastic reviews so far this year, but it’s also only two months old and hasn’t influenced much of anything yet.

The complete list of games from BAFTA’s “The Most Influential Video Game of All Time” can be found after the break.

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2024 GOTY Scoreboard: Astro Bot, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, More

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.

The year’s biggest success story might be the most surprising, as Team Asobi’s Astro Bot collected the most “Game of the Year” hardware from journalists and players, as well as three of the four major awards (The Game Awards, the DICE Awards, and the BAFTA Games Awards). But there was plenty to celebrate from 2024, with a dozen other games earning at least one “Game of the Year” accolade and dozens more appearing further down the lists.

That cohort includes LocalThunk’s Balatro (which won “Game of the Year” at the GDC Awards), Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Atlus’s Metaphor: ReFantazio, and MachineGames’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

The latest adventure starring everyone’s favorite archeologist is an interesting case, as it released so late in the year that many outlets (including The Game Awards) were unable to properly evaluate it. Will its recent launch on the PS5 give a boost to its 2025 GOTY Scoreboard crusade? I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’s possible that Nintendo’s shiny new Switch 2 will steal this year’s spotlight.

But that’s a conversation that won’t begin until December. For now, you should definitely check out more of 2024’s most-acclaimed games after the break.

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The 2024-2025 BAFTA Games Awards Goes With the Flow as Astro Bot is Named “Best Game”

The voting body behind the BAFTA Games Awards has gained something of a reputation as a group that is always interested in the road not taken. Just look at these examples…

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a certifiable phenomenon at this point, but the BAFTA Game Awards chose to honor Portal 2 as the “Best Game” from 2011. And while we all got swept up in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017, the “Best Game” statuette at the BAFTAs went to What Remains of Edith Finch. Even two years ago, while everyone else was gushing over Elden Ring, it was Vampire Survivors that won “Best Game” at the BAFTA Games Awards.

But what happened at the 2024-2025 BAFTA Games Awards? This year, the folks who make up the British Academy chose to join the crowd and give the “Best Game” statuette to Team Asobi’s Astro Bot. Sony’s robotic mascot took home four additional awards last night, including “Animation”, “Audio Achievement”, “Family”, and “Game Design”.

Did any other games win some awards last night? You bet!

The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes the Deep led the rest of the pack with wins in three categories (“New Intellectual Property”, “Performer in a Leading Role” for Alec Newman, and “Performer in a Supporting Role” for Karen Dunbar). Arrowhead’s Helldivers II also picked up a pair of awards (“Multiplayer” and “Music”) during the show.

And then there was Balatro.

The game’s pseudonymous developer, LocalThunk, was a no-show at the BAFTA Games Awards, but he sent actor Ben Starr (dressed as Balatro‘s Jimbo the Joker) to the show in his stead. So it was Starr who accepted the “Best Debut” statuette for Balatro on LocalThunk’s behalf and delivered an acceptance speech for the ages:

“I can say having met him personally, LocalThunk is really rich now. He has shoes made of gold and he thanks you for making him that way. He says here at the bottom, he wishes he could thank more people, but if he’s being honest, it was just him who made it. Everyone else is a freeloader, especially you, PlayStack.”

It was all fun and games until the end, when Starr closed by saying, “Play more independent games like Animal Well. They are the lifeblood of this industry and they deserve your respect.”

The 2024-2025 BAFTA Games Awards marks the end of awards season, and you can find a replay of the ceremony, as well as the rest of the winners and all the nominees, after the break. The extended Longlist, which includes more than 60 titles, is also available on BAFTA’s website.

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Balatro Draws “Game of the Year” Honors at the 2024-2025 GDC Awards

It was a tale of two games last night in San Francisco at the 2024-2025 Game Developers Choice Awards. As they’ve done throughout awards season, Team Asobi’s Astro Bot was competing head-to-head with Localthunk’s Balatro in most categories, including “Game of the Year”.

Astro Bot was victorious at The Game Awards and the DICE Awards, but the little automaton couldn’t go three-for-three as Balatro won “Game of the Year” at this year’s GDC Awards. The poker roguelike also went all in to collect the “Innovation Award”, “Best Design”, and “Best Debut”.

But don’t worry, Team Asobi didn’t go home empty handed last night. Astro Bot was the only other game to win multiple awards as it took home two statuettes for “Best Technology” and “Best Audio”.

The rest of the ceremony spread a handful of awards among some of 2024’s most acclaimed titles including Black Myth: Wukong (“Best Visual Art”), Metaphor: ReFantazio (“Best Narrative”), Life Is Strange: Double Exposure (“Social Impact Award”), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (“Audience Award”).

Balatro has reshuffled awards season with the BAFTAs still ahead of us, and it’ll be interesting to see if it and Astro Bot can continue their winning ways in London.

A complete list of all the nominees and winners from the 2024-2025 GDC Awards, as well as a short video montage of the winners, can be found after the break.

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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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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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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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