The Game Awards 2024

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Game Awards 2024 took place before a live audience at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on the 12th of December 2024. It was the eleventh ceremony hosted by Geoff Keighley, the Canadian games journalist who created and produces the show. Keighley arrived with something to prove. The previous ceremony had drawn criticism, and reviewers would later judge how he answered it. This documentary follows that night from several angles. Who decided the winners, and how much did the public count? Which game took the biggest prize, and what records fell along the way? Why did a brand-new honor split opinion, and how did two speeches get tangled between languages?

  5121006326

• 2. Counting the Votes

  ›

  Nominees were announced on the 18th of November 2024, drawn up by a jury of members from more than 130 media outlets around the world. Their ballots were due by the 12th of November. Any game released to the public by the 22nd of November was eligible, and the rules explicitly covered downloadable content, expansions, remakes, remasters and seasonal updates. Specialized juries chose the nominees for categories such as accessibility, adaptation and esports.

  Winners came from a blend of 90 percent jury votes and 10 percent public votes. The public ballot ran through the official website and Discord until the 11th of December. Players' Voice was the exception, a publicly voted award whose voting opened on the 2nd of December. Best Esports Coach and Best Esports Event were discontinued, and an honorary prize called Game Changer was added. Roughly 112 million public votes were cast overall, a 25% increase from 2023.

  From the 25th of November to the 11th of December, fans could also vote inside Fortnite. As in the year before, the show partnered with map developer Studio 568 and the artists Nighttimes and Spiral House to build a hub world. Players picked a favorite among ten user-created islands, chosen by Keighley and his team. The winner was revealed during the ceremony.

  The hub greeted visitors with a photorealistic MetaHuman model of Keighley. He had been scanned into Unreal Editor for Fortnite at 3Lateral in Manchester. Several critics found the result strange and uncanny. Keighley described the whole event as "a prototype" for blending the Game Awards with in-game worlds. One publisher, Sony Interactive Entertainment, would turn out to gain the most from all those ballots.

  2133789143

• 3. Astro Bot's Night

  ›

  Astro Bot, made by Team Asobi and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, won Game of the Year and finished the night with four wins. It had entered with seven nominations, tying Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for the most. Metaphor: ReFantazio followed with six.

  The win carried a long Sony history. Astro Bot became the third Sony-published Game of the Year winner, after God of War in 2018 and The Last of Us Part II in 2020. Its nomination was Sony's ninth consecutive year in the category and thirteenth overall. It was also only the second Best Family Game nominee to take the top prize, after It Takes Two in 2021.

  Sony collected six awards in total and 15 nominations, and it led the show for the fourth time, more than any other publisher so far. Balatro, published by Playstack, and Metaphor: ReFantazio, published by Sega, each won three awards. Black Myth: Wukong, Helldivers II and Senua's Saga: Hellblade II won two apiece.

  Several nominees made history without winning the top prize. Balatro, created by LocalThunk, was the first solo-developed Game of the Year nominee and the second card game after Hearthstone in 2014. Black Myth: Wukong was the first Chinese-developed nominee. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree was the first piece of downloadable content ever nominated for the award.

  Other categories produced repeat winners. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth took Best Score and Music, the series' second in a row and third overall, following VII Remake in 2020 and XVI in 2023. Melina Juergens became the first two-time Best Performance winner, having won for the same role in 2017. Nomada Studio won its second Games for Impact award with Neva, after Gris in 2018.

  In esports, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok won Best Esports Athlete for the second year running and the third time overall. League of Legends won Best Esports Game, Riot Games's sixth consecutive win and the game's fourth overall. Writers would later call the top prize deserving, and Astro Bot's sales rose after the ceremony.

  4648519529

• 4. Stage and Sound

  ›

  LeRoy Bennett, the creative director and production designer, filled the 2024 stage with more LED displays than any earlier show. Changing the look each year was his deliberate choice. Kimmie Kim joined Keighley as an executive producer, Richard Preuss returned as director, and Michael E. Peter joined as co-executive producer. The ceremony celebrated the show's tenth anniversary and streamed on more than 30 platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Steam, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter and YouTube.

  YouTube also carried alternative streams with American Sign Language and audio descriptions. Sydnee Goodman hosted the 30-minute preshow, titled Opening Act. Public tickets had gone on sale on the 1st of November.

  Harrison Ford, Hideo Kojima and Aaron Paul were among the celebrity guests. Statler and Waldorf, the heckling puppets, performed comedy skits throughout the evening. Their jabs at Keighley made Kotaku's Zack Zwiezen name them the highlight. TheGamer's Tessa Kaur felt their appearance acknowledged the show's problems without addressing them.

  Outside the Peacock Theatre, SAG-AFTRA and the Game Workers of Southern California handed out leaflets about the ongoing video game strike. Keighley and his team had tracked that strike while booking celebrity guests. They let each guest choose how to take part.

  Lorne Balfe conducted the Game Awards Orchestra, which included the flautist Pedro Eustache, dubbed "Flute Guy". Balfe followed new game releases all year so he would know the music once nominees were announced. He worked with David Campbell on an arrangement of songs from the second season of Arcane. NME's Surej Singh called that performance an "emotional and stirring medley".

  The orchestra also played "Live Gloriously" for Civilization VII and "Rising Sun" for the untitled Ōkami sequel. Singer d4vd performed "Remember Me" for Arcane, Royal & the Serpent played "Wasteland", and Twenty One Pilots played "The Line". Snoop Dogg debuted a new song called "Thank You" and also performed "Gin and Juice". Several of the night's biggest moments, though, were trailers rather than songs.

  6160563100

• 5. Reveals and Rivals

  ›

  On the 10th of December, two days before the ceremony, Wholesome Games and the Latin American Games Showcase held broadcasts with announcements of their own. Day of the Devs and the Women-Led Games Showcase followed on the 11th. The Game Awards then focused almost entirely on games rather than film and television. A preview of Squid Game's second season aired, but it took second place to promotion of the game Squid Game: Unleashed.

  The new reveals included Elden Ring Nightreign, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and The Witcher IV. An untitled Ōkami sequel, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Split Fiction, Dispatch and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds also appeared, along with Turok: Origins and an untitled Virtua Fighter game. Updates arrived for Borderlands 4, Palworld, Tekken 8 and Helldivers 2, among others.

  Many writers thought the announcements surprising and among the best to date. The Guardian's Keza MacDonald compared the lineup to "an old-school E3 conference". Viewers responded negatively to the reveal trailer for Catly. Its developer denied claims of generative AI and blockchain technology and shared a draft version of the trailer with journalists.

  On the 13th of December, one studio answered the show's cost with a joke. Pengonauts Studio lacked the budget to promote its game at the Game Awards, so it joined Joystick Ventures to stage the Game Awards for Games Who Can't Afford the Game Awards, abbreviated TGAGWCAGA. The ceremony showcased more than 70 games out of 600 submitted. Its award names included "Most Likely to Make You Quit Your Job and Become an Artist". Many viewers, however, would name an honor that did not exist the year before as the real highlight of the night.

  139115498

• 6. Game Changer

  ›

  Amir Satvat received the inaugural Game Changer award for helping an estimated 3,000 developers find jobs amid mass layoffs. Many viewers considered his emotional acceptance speech the highlight of the show. Rolling Stone's Issy van der Velde took the award as a sign that Keighley was taking criticism seriously.

  A second honorary prize went to Laura Carter, founder and chief executive officer of TreesPlease Games. She was named a Global Gaming Citizen for her work on climate action. TreesPlease partnered with the Eden Reforestation Projects to plant real trees through its games.

  The Future Class tells a different story. Introduced in 2020, it is an annual list of 50 people from the industry who best represent its future. Organizer Emily Bouchac said no new members would be inducted in 2024, with the program instead focusing on valuing existing alumni.

  TheGamer's Tessa Kaur called the omission "a loss for the industry". Digital Trends' Giovanni Colantonio saw a troubling sign that Keighley wanted to avoid controversy, citing an open letter that Future Class inductees wrote before the 2023 ceremony. Kaur and her colleague Stacey Henley felt that introducing Game Changer in the same year gave the appearance of honoring one person to reduce a collective voice.

  Some Future Class members worried the new prize had replaced their program. One said it was "easier to control one person's message than the message of multiple years Future Class members". Some viewers also said Satvat's role at Tencent made him "part of the problem" with layoffs. Four days after the show, Satvat said he had received "countless hateful messages", including antisemitic comments directed at his wife. Another speech that night, from Swen Vincke, would also be read in ways its speaker never intended.

  2849859486

• 7. Debates and Misreadings

  ›

  Within days of the nominations, sales figures were moving. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth saw weekly sales rise by 268% and Metaphor: ReFantazio by 172%. Balatro had its second-highest-earning week on mobile and a 100% increase in concurrent players on Steam. Critics were pleasantly surprised by Balatro's nominations, given its genre.

  Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree stirred the loudest argument. The show's website was updated before nominees were announced to clarify that downloadable content was eligible, which many predicted was preparation for divisive nominations. Some viewers wrongly accused Keighley of changing the rules. Others argued eligibility meant Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed had been snubbed in 2023. They suggested a dedicated DLC category, though TheGamer's Henley argued there are too few annual releases to justify one.

  Black Myth: Wukong drew its own debate. At 81 out of 100 on Metacritic, it is the lowest-scoring Game of the Year nominee in the show's history. Kaur compared its success to Barbie's Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Vice's Dwayne Jenkins criticized journalists who questioned its deservedness on reviews alone. He argued that journalists should act as neutral intermediaries, since the awards have no objective criteria.

  Swen Vincke, whose game is Baldur's Gate 3, won praise for a speech criticizing publishers who chase "arbitrary sales targets" instead of making games "they want to play". Some viewers read it as an attack on Black Myth: Wukong, partly because of a poor Chinese translation. A few then tried to review bomb Baldur's Gate 3 on Steam and Astro Bot on Metacritic.

  Alanah Pearce said a Black Myth: Wukong developer cried after losing. Charles Young, former IGN China editor-in-chief, said he sat with the developers at the show and none cried. The game's producer Feng Ji wrote, "I feel like I came all the way here for nothing!" Some foreign media took this as criticism of the Game Awards. The blame fell on machine translations that missed the original text's self-deprecation and humorous tone. Feng Ji added that he had written his acceptance speech two years earlier.

  7774756697

• 8. Verdicts and Viewers

  ›

  The Washington Post's Gene Park called the ceremony "the best show put on by the Game Awards so far this decade", though he wanted better curation of categories. Engadget's Mat Smith wrote that "the Game Awards delivered". VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi thought Keighley "redeemed himself". Push Square's Sammy Barker said Keighley deserved credit for responding to past criticism, even if some problems remained.

  Digital Trends' Colantonio called it "the best possible version" of the show, yet criticized moving important awards to the preshow. Van der Velde made a similar complaint about esports winners announced in quick succession without speeches. Kaur found the show too long and padded with boring advertisements, but found the reveals surprising "for the first time in a long time". Several commentators did appreciate the extra time given to acceptance speeches.

  An estimated 154 million viewers watched, the most in the show's history and a 31% increase on the previous year. That beat the Super Bowl's average audience by 30 million. It was sevenfold the Academy Awards, ninefold the Grammy Awards and tenfold the World Series. Reggie Fils-Aimé called it "the biggest global entertainment event of our time". Kaur called that claim disingenuous, pointing to the FIFA World Cup finals and the Olympic Games. She also noted that events like the Super Bowl are generally watched in groups.

  Streams Charts reported a peak of over four million concurrent viewers, a 10% increase from 2023, spread across 1,498 channels. Streams on Twitch drew 397,000 viewers at the peak. More than 15,900 creators co-streamed the event, including over 11,000 on Twitch and a record 4,500 on YouTube. On Twitter, the hashtag #TheGameAwards rose 150% in use, with more than 1.59 million posts earning 6.79 billion impressions.

  6310012510