Astro Bot won the coveted Game of the Year award at The Game Awards Thursday night. Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio were all up for Game of the Year 2024.
Astro Bot wins Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024
Here’s what won the big award of the night
Image: Team Asobi/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Ana Diaz (she/her) is a culture writer at Polygon, covering internet culture, fandom, and video games. Her work has previously appeared at NPR, Wired, and The Verge.
The award is a testament to the ongoing achievements of developer Team Asobi. The studio is known for the Astro Bot series, a franchise of games that has historically been used to demonstrate PlayStation tech. The free game Astro’s Playroom showed off the unique capabilities of the PlayStation 5, and was released as a free game on the console. Astro Bot, a standalone title that built upon the team’s work in Playroom, showed that a smaller PlayStation studio was capable of creating a platformer that could rival the best Nintendo games.
There wasn’t a clear frontrunner for the Game of Year award in 2024. The list of nominations collected an eclectic group of games. This year, the jury nominated the indie card game Balatro, alongside the DLC for Elden Ring. Sony had a strong year since two first-party games, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Astro Bot were nominated. Astro Bot and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth led the pack with seven nominations each. Before the show, Polygon predicted that the PlayStation-branded 3D platformer, Astro Bot, would win.
The Game Awards jury is composed of video game publications and influencers from across the globe. In 2023, the jury awarded Game of the Year to Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.
As to be expected with The Game Awards, there was plenty of non-awards-related news as well. From new game announcements to flashy celebrity appearances, here is the full rundown of all the other news from the night.
Most Popular
- Dozens of amazing board games are buy 1, get 1 half off at Target
- Hot Wheels Unleashed is free today on Epic Games Store and today only
- The Sonic movies keep getting better thanks to each new Little Guy
- Why queer characters often feel ‘too safe’
- Naughty Dog co-founder says ‘ballooning budgets’ drove it to a Sony acquisition
