It seems like the long journey to Astro Bot has paid off. Released in September to universal acclaim—including ours—the 3D platformer now has an even stronger title: Game of the Year.
After 10 years in the making and a series of smaller iterations and demos, Astro Bot finally came out to celebrate PlayStation’s 30th anniversary. Over the 90 levels, 60 planets, and six galaxies, the game takes players on a journey through gaming history. It uses up all that the new console generation has to offer. And although it is a PlayStation exclusive, which makes sense given all the context, Astro Bot has managed to win the hearts of most gamers.
]]>The Game Awards 2024 has arrived, and with it, we finally know whose past year of hard work has paid off by taking over one of the nearly 30 awards on offer at the night, including the coveted Game of the Year award.
On top of the awards, fans witnessed a slew of new game announcements from developers and publishers worldwide, and the odd surprise reveal and spectacle. But if you missed the show or just want to know who won what, then look no further.
]]>The Game Awards has arrived, and like previous shows, there are a bunch of huge game reveals throughout the night that’ll appease fans across the globe.
If you aren’t able to watch the show or are from Europe and are waking up the next day, don’t panic! We have collected all the most significant announcements from the night to bring you up to speed. Equally, if you don’t want to watch the show and only care about what was announced, this list should also help you there.
]]>It’s been over a decade since The Game Awards began highlighting the best developers, artists, narrative designers, and players in the industry. But with the 2024 edition just around the corner, there’s one category of workers in the gaming world that remains largely left out of that celebration: translators.
The work of a good translation and localization team can make or break a game’s worldwide success, whether that means bringing a Chinese hit to the massive English-speaking audience or adapting an American title to the passionate community in Brazil and Latin America. And developers seem to be aware of that—just perhaps not enough to credit all the people responsible for it, of course.
]]>Gamers have noticed that gacha titles have taken up three out of five top spots in The Game Awards’ Players’ Voice category, and now many of them are saying that players no longer deserve a voice.
The anticipation surrounding The Game Awards 2024 show hosted by Geoff Keighley has seemingly peaked ahead of its December 12 stream, however, that hasn’t come without its own set of controversies. This year, titles have taken top spots in key categories even though many believe they don’t deserve the hype. On Dec. 9, Keighley announced the final five nominees for The Game Awards’ Players’ Voice category were locked in. Though many fans were satisfied to see their favorites make the list, others noticed that of the five games, three of them were gacha titles that offered game rewards for their success in this category. Plenty expressed concern over what felt like companies buying gamers’ votes for a category they otherwise wouldn’t land. There’s a lot of outright disdain, with some suggesting people shouldn’t be listening to the gamers’ voices anymore.
]]>E3 is officially dead, and all around the world, gamers can hear Geoff Keighley tap-dancing with joy on its grave. Now, more than ever, we need something to fill the void left behind by the convention, and the Game Awards and Summer Game Fest don’t fit the bill.
While TGA and SGF may seem great for gamers at first glance, they don’t offer nearly as much as E3 did. TGA and SGF, along with all the PlayStation, Nintendo, and Microsoft directs, only let us see what corporations want us to see; a sanitized reel of trailers and hype, with no room for interrogation or first-hand experience. I know a lot of capital ‘G’ Gamers hate all us woke, lefty, snowflake journalists who can’t even complete a no-hit run of the entire FromSoftware catalogue, but taking a peek behind the industry’s curtain is necessary. These new show formats don’t give us that opportunity.
]]>Over half the TGA Future Class of 2023 signed an open letter calling for recognition of the games industry’s role in dehumanizing people from South-West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), yet Geoff Keighley remained his usual silent self on the issue.
Thousands of developers and journalists also signed the letter, which urged The Game Awards to break the industry’s silence regarding its complicity in creating games that “dehumanize and vilify Muslims, Arabs, and the many brown and black people living in the regions of South-West Asia and Northern Africa.”
]]>Video games take a long time to make. Longer than films and books (unless you’re George R. R. Martin). This means they don’t have any time to react to trends. If you start developing based on what’s popular now, you’ll be old news by launch.
First revealed in 2017, Ubisoft Singapore’s Skull and Bones has sailed through some treacherous seas to get to where it is today. It’s now slated for a Feb. 16, 2024 launch date, but when I watched the latest trailer, I just couldn’t see the point of it—and I’ve got an anchor tattooed on my ribs, so if I’m not excited by the pirate game, who will be? What does Skull and Bones offer that Sea of Thieves hasn’t been doing for years? Reportedly in development since 2013, it will launch 11 years later, when the golden age of piracy has truly faded for gamers.
]]>Tonight, during The Game Awards, a remake of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was announced. It’s a delightful game made by the bad boy developer Josef Fares, but why is it getting a remake?
Brothers is the debut game from Hazelight Studios, run by Josef Fares, the man who infamously said “fuck the Oscars” at The Game Awards. Like all of his games, it features two characters who have to navigate a world by cooperating to solve puzzles. It’s deeply touching, but I worry about an industry where even indies are now getting remade.
]]>We just wrapped up The Game Awards 2023, a three-and-a-half-hour (if you include the preshow) event that’s touted as the Oscars of gaming. We’ve always said the show was more about ads than games—this year proved how little respect for developers Geoff Keighley actually has.
2023 has been a phenomenal year for games, but an awful year for developers. We’ve seen scores of layoffs and studios shut down. Embracer bought up every studio under the sun only to lay off hundreds, Bungie laid off 100 developers to avoid being fully subsumed by Sony, and studios keep getting shut down. Even in game media, people are being laid off across the board. This has been a truly terrible year for the industry at large.
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