Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth led the nominees with seven each, and the former led the show with four wins, including Game of the Year. The inaugural Game Changer award honored Amir Satvat for helping workers in the industry find jobs amid mass layoffs. Several new games were announced, including Elden Ring Nightreign, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and The Witcher IV. The show was viewed by over 154 million streams, the most in its history. Journalists praised the game announcements, developer speeches, and deserving winners, though the eligibility of downloadable content led to mixed responses.
Background
As with previous iterations of the Game Awards, the 2024 show was hosted and produced by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley. He returned as an executive producer alongside Kimmie Kim,[1] while Richard Preuss returned as director and LeRoy Bennett as creative director and production designer,[2][3] and Michael E. Peter joined as co-executive prdoucer.[4] The presentation, celebrating the show's tenth anniversary, took place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on December 12, 2024,[5] and was live streamed across more than 30 online platforms,[2] including Facebook, Instagram, Steam, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube.[6] Alternative live streams offering American Sign Language and audio descriptions were also available on YouTube.[2]
The 2024 stage featured more LED displays than its predecessors, an intentional choice by Bennett to change the show's look each year.[3] Sydnee Goodman returned as host of the 30-minute preshow, titled Opening Act.[7][8] Public tickets became available for purchase on November 1.[5] Future Class organizer Emily Bouchac indicated that the Future Class initiative—an annual list of 50 individuals from the industry who best represent its future, introduced in 2020—would not induct new members in 2024, instead focusing on valuing existing alumni.[9]
Announcements
Preceding the Game Awards, several announcements were made during broadcasts by Wholesome Games and the Latin American Games Showcase on December 10,[10][11] and Day of the Devs and the Women-Led Games Showcase on December 11.[11][12] Fewer film and television announcements were made during the Game Awards 2024, instead focusing almost primarily on games; a trailer for Squid Game's second season was aired, but considered secondary to the promotion of the game Squid Game: Unleashed.[13] Announcements on released and upcoming games were made for:[14]
To promote its own game without the budget necessary for the Game Awards, Pengonauts Studio created its own humorous show with Joystick Ventures: the Game Awards for Games Who Can't Afford the Game Awards (TGAGWCAGA). The ceremony on December 13 showcased more than 70 games out of 600 submitted, with specific awards like "Most Likely to Make You Quit Your Job and Become an Artist".[15][16]
Winners and nominees
Nominees for the show's 29 categories were announced on November 18, 2024.[17][18] Any game released for public consumption on or before November 22 was eligible for consideration,[19] including DLC, expansions, remakes, remasters, and seasonal content.[20] The nominees were compiled by a jury panel composed of members from over 130 media outlets globally;[21] ballots were due by November 12.[19] Winners are determined between the jury (90 percent) and public voting (10 percent); the latter was held via the official website and on Discord[a] until December 11.[1][22] The exception is the Players' Voice award, fully nominated and voted-on by the public, for which voting opened on December 2.[23] Specialized juries decide the nominees for categories such as accessibility, adaptation, and esports.[24] Two awards—Best Esports Coach and Best Esports Event—were discontinued.[25][26] Approximately 112 million public votes were cast overall, a 25% increase from 2023.[27]
As with the preceding year, the Game Awards partnered with map developer Studio 568 and artists Nighttimes and Spiral House to create an in-game hub world in Fortnite, available from November 25, allowing players to vote until December 11 for their favorite user-created islands among ten nominees selected by Keighley and his team; the winner will be announced during the ceremony.[28][29] The hub world opens with a photorealistic "MetaHuman" model of Keighley,[30] for which he was scanned in to Unreal Editor for Fortnite at 3Lateral in Manchester.[31] Several critics found the model strange and uncanny.[30][32][33] Keighley saw the event as "a prototype" for blending the Game Awards and in-game worlds.[34]
The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on December 12, 2024.[35]Astro Bot became the third game published by Sony Interactive Entertainment to win Game of the Year (after God of War in 2018 and The Last of Us Part II in 2020); its nomination marked Sony's ninth consecutive year in the category and thirteenth nomination overall.[36] It was the second Best Family Game nominee to win the top prize (after It Takes Two in 2021).[37] Melina Juergens became the first two-time Best Performance winner, having won for the same role in 2017.[38][39] The 2024 ceremony introduced the Game Changer award, for those who have positively impacted the industry. The inaugural honor was awarded to Amir Satvat for helping an estimated 3,000 developers find jobs amid mass layoffs.[40][41][42]Faker's Best Esports Athlete win is his second consecutive and third overall,[43][44] and League of Legends's Best Esports Game win is Riot Games's sixth consecutive and the game's fourth overall.[25]
Awards
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).[35]
Astro Bot led the show with four wins (and its publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment with six), followed by Balatro (Playstack) and Metaphor: ReFantazio (Sega) with three.[47][48] The 2024 show was Sony's fourth time leading the Game Awards.[37]
Geoff Keighley (top) hosted the main show while Sydnee Goodman (bottom) hosted the preshow.[1][7]
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or introduced trailers. All other awards were presented by Keighley or Goodman. Statler and Waldorf also performed comedy skits throughout the show.[14][49][50] Keighley and his team monitored the ongoing SAG-AFTRA video game strike when booking celebrity guests and allowed them to choose how they would participate in the show.[3][51]SAG-AFTRA and the Game Workers of Southern California distributed leaflets outside the Peacock Theatre.[52]
The Game Awards Orchestra, conducted by Lorne Balfe, performed during the ceremony,[53] including Pedro Eustache, dubbed "Flute Guy".[54] Balfe remained updated on new game releases throughout the year to ensure he was familiar with their music when the nominees were announced. He worked with David Campbell to arrange a performance of songs from the second season of Arcane.[53][55]Snoop Dogg debuted a new song during the show.[53]
The following individuals or groups performed musical numbers.[53][55][56]
Several games saw increased weekly sales following their nominations, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by 268% and Metaphor: ReFantazio by 172%,[59] and Balatro had its second-highest-earning week on mobile and a 100% increase in concurrent players on Steam.[60][61][62]Balatro's nominations pleasantly surprised critics due to its genre,[63][64][65] though some felt other indie games remained overlooked outside of their dedicated categories.[65][66]TheGamer's Stacey Henley appreciated that Games for Impact "can finally feel like part of the show" as, unlike previous years, some of its nominees were also named in other categories,[67] though The Guardian's Keza MacDonald found its nominees incongruous and criteria confusing.[68] Some felt three of the five Players' Voice nominees being gacha games justified the lack of more audience-voted categories.[69][70]
The omission of Future Class was criticized; TheGamer's Tessa Kaur called it "a loss for the industry",[71] and Digital Trends's Giovanni Colantonio considered it a troubling indication that Keighley was attempting to avoid controversy and placate the audience in light of an open letter written by Future Class inductees before the 2023 ceremony.[69] Some critics were puzzled by Silent Hill 2's Best Narrative nomination as it is a remake of a 2001 game.[65][72]Dragon Age: The Veilguard, EA Sports College Football 25, and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom were considered among the biggest snubs by some critics and viewers.[64][73][74]
Many journalists and viewers criticized Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's Game of the Year nomination—the first for a DLC expansion—as it overshadowed other games,[63][75][76] though some felt it was justified by its quality and size.[64][72][77] The show's website was updated before nominees were announced to clarify DLC's eligibility, which many predicted was in preparation for Shadow of the Erdtree's divisive nominations;[20][76][78] some viewers erroneously accused Keighley of changing the rules to make it eligible.[79] Others also felt its eligibility meant DLC was snubbed at previous shows, like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed in 2023,[80][81][82] and suggested a new category dedicated to DLC would be more appropriate,[64][83][84] though TheGamer's Henley argued there are too few annual releases to justify it.[85]
Some journalists considered Black Myth: Wukong an outlier in the Game of the Year nominees and were surprised by its success;[73][75] it is the lowest-scoring Game of the Year nominee in the show's history, with 81 out of 100 on review aggregator website Metacritic.[86][87]TheGamer's Tessa Kaur felt the game's biggest accomplishment was its popularity, comparing it to Barbie's Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards.[88] Conversely, Vice's Dwayne Jenkins criticized journalists who questioned its deservedness based solely on its critical reception, despite the positive player response; he argued that such discussions are more appropriate for audiences rather than journalists, who should serve as neutral intermediaries, since the awards have no objective criteria.[89]
Ceremony
The Washington Post's Gene Park called the 2024 ceremony "the best show put on by the Game Awards so far this decade", though he felt the categories required better curation,[90] and Engadget's Mat Smith wrote that "the Game Awards delivered".[91]VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi thought Keighley "redeemed himself" after criticism of the previous ceremony,[39] and Push Square's Sammy Barker felt he deserved credit for responding to past criticism, even if some remained.[92]Digital Trends's Colantonio called it "the best possible version" of the show, though he criticized the relegation of important awards to the preshow.[69]Rolling Stone's Issy van der Velde similarly criticized that the esports winners were announced in quick succession during the preshow without acceptance speeches,[93] and TheGamer's Kaur felt the show remained too long and padded with boring advertisements, though found the reveals surprising "for the first time in a long time".[94]
Journalists deemed the winners deserving, including Astro Bot's Game of the Year award considering its polished and joyful gameplay,[37][90][91] and many considered the game announcements surprising and among the best to date.[69][91][93] Viewers responded negatively to Catly's reveal trailer; many suspected it was AI-generated and some doubted the game's existence,[93][95][96] though the developer denied the involvement of AI and blockchain technology, and shared a draft version of the trailer with journalists.[97][98][99] The musical performances were praised;[69][100]NME's Surej Singh called the Arcane performance an "emotional and stirring medley".[100] Several commentators appreciated the additional time for acceptance speeches, following criticism at the previous ceremony.[69][93]Kotaku's Zack Zwiezen considered Statler and Waldorf the highlight for their humorous interjections and heckles directed at Keighley,[101] though TheGamer's Kaur felt their appearance acknowledged the show's issues without addressing them.[102]
Many considered the introduction of the Game Changer award and Amir Satvat's emotional acceptance speech the show's highlight;[52][69][90]Rolling Stone's Van der Velde thought the award meant Keighley was taking criticism seriously,[93] though TheGamer's Kaur and Henley felt the award's introduction in the same year as Future Class's removal gave the appearance of awarding individuals to reduce the voice of a collective group.[102][103] Some Future Class members were concerned the award had replaced the program as "it's easier to control one person's message than the message of multiple years Future Class members".[104] Some viewers suggested Satvat's role at Tencent made him a "fraud" and "part of the problem" with layoffs.[104][105] Four days after the show, Satvat said he had received "countless hateful messages", including antisemitic comments directed at his wife.[105][106] Journalists praised Swen Vincke's speech criticizing publishers who chase "arbitrary sales targets" instead of making games "they want to play".[52][69][102]
Some viewers interpreted Vincke's comments as criticism towards Black Myth: Wukong, which was partially attributed to a poor Chinese translation of his speech; there was subsequently an attempt to review bomb Vincke's game, Baldur's Gate 3, on Steam,[107][108] as well as Astro Bot on Metacritic.[109]Alanah Pearce said that a Black Myth: Wukong developer cried after failing to win Game of the Year,[110][111] though former IGN China editor-in-chief Charles Young said that he was with the developers at the show and none cried.[112][113] Following the ceremony, the game's producer Feng Ji expressed disappointment over the loss and confusion about the award's criteria, writing "I feel like I came all the way here for nothing!";[l] he said he had written his acceptance speech two years earlier.[110][111][115] Some foreign media interpreted Feng Ji's comments as criticism of the Game Awards,[115][116][117] which was attributed to machine translations misconstruing the meaning, self-deprecation, and humorous tone of the original Chinese text.[118][119][120]
Viewership
An estimated 154 million viewers watched the ceremony, the most in the show's history and a 31% increase from the previous year.[4] Its figures surpassed the average viewers of the Super Bowl by 30 million, the Academy Awards sevenfold, the Grammy Awards ninefold, and the World Series tenfold.[121] Referencing the viewing figures, Reggie Fils-Aimé called the show "the biggest global entertainment event of our time",[122] though TheGamer's Kaur considered the claim disingenuous, citing the FIFA World Cup finals and Olympic Games, and the fact that shows like the Super Bowl are generally viewed in groups rather than individually.[123]
According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at over four million concurrent viewers—the most in its history and a 10% increase from 2023—across 1,498 channels, including 1.25 million viewers on the official YouTube broadcast and 397,000 on Twitch.[4][124] More than 15,900 content creators co-streamed the event, including over 11,000 on Twitch and a record 4,500 on YouTube.[121] On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.17 million concurrent viewers (a 28% increase), with over 1.3 million on official channel (a 35% increase).[125] On Twitter, usage of the hashtag #TheGameAwards increased by 150%, with more than 1.59 million posts receiving 6.79 billion impressions.[126]
^Lin, Anjohn (December 18, 2024). "《黑神話：悟空》團隊因沒拿下TGA年度最佳遊戲落淚？IGN China前總編反駁：「根本沒人哭」" [The Black Myth: Wukong team tears up for not winning TGA's Game of the Year? IGN China's former editor-in-chief refutes: 'No one cried at all.']. Yahoo Games (in Chinese). Yahoo! Inc. Archived from the original on December 18, 2024. Retrieved December 19, 2024.
^"外媒谈冯骥"批评"TGA评选：我希望是翻译所致的误解" [Foreign media on Feng Ji's 'criticism' of TGA selection: I hope it was a misunderstanding caused by translation]. GamerSky (in Chinese). December 16, 2024. Archived from the original on December 17, 2024. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
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