Game of the Year 2024 contenders aren’t clear yet — at all

This is a strange year in gaming. We knew it would be like this, but it’s still strange. The industry is seeing record layoffs in tandem with widespread game cancellations and cuts to development budgets. The release schedule for major games is sparse. PlayStation, as a first-party publisher, is kind of sitting this one out. Nintendo’s Switch 2 (or whatever it will be called) has reportedly been delayed into 2025. Xbox is, bewilderingly, both a dominant publisher and a fading hardware platform at the same time. Publishers and developers are struggling with ballooning development time and budgets.

The lack of major video game releases is particularly evident in the time-honored ritual of game-of-the-year (or GOTY) discussion, a hobbyist’s hobby within the gaming community. We’re well past the halfway point of 2024 already and no consensus is forming at all, either around already-released games or forthcoming titles.

But, hang on — why are we talking about this, anyway?

What do we mean by Game of the Year?

Other entertainment industries, especially the movie industry, devote months of their annual calendar, millions of dollars, and huge amounts of energy to the awards season; the community around an artform, from artists to critics to audiences, gets together to debate and celebrate the best that artform has to offer. It’s competitive, often silly, deeply commercialized, and usually structured around one big awards-giving event — in film’s case, the Oscars — that hands out the final accolades according to a relatively narrow definition of taste. But this circus serves an important purpose too: it stimulates conversation, promotes good art, and gives businesses more reason to make good things.

In games, things are a little different. GOTY is a diffuse idea; everyone has their own pick. There’s no structured season of awards ceremonies to speak of. Hundreds if not thousands of publications like Polygon deliberate on their choices according to their own criteria. Publicists appreciate awards, but aren’t about to dig deep into their pockets to campaign to get them. At the same time, the concept still has serious cultural currency within games — everyone in gaming knows what “GOTY contender” means, and pays attention when it’s invoked. If the buzz coalesces around the right game at the right time — last year’s Baldur’s Gate 3 is a great example — it creates a phenomenon that brings a majority of gamers together in a way that’s really exciting.

Photo: JC Olivera via Getty

And now, thanks to gaming’s hype-man-in-chief Geoff Keighley, the medium does have its Oscars — sort of. The Game Awards, which takes place every December, has many flaws (just like the Oscars!). The ratio of advertising to celebration is off, and the amalgamated taste of its voting body (mostly media, but also fans) is pretty conservative. But it’s unquestionably the biggest video game award of the year, and it’s done a lot to recognize video game actors in particular. Keighley’s ambitions for the event are clear: “People still talk about the Oscars and the Grammys in a different way than The Game Awards. And I think it’s changing, but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he told NPR in 2022.

If there’s a definitive award, then — like it or not — the Game Awards’ Game of the Year is it.

The possible 2024 contenders

Usually, by this point in the year, we’ve already played a Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or an Elden Ring or a God of War — games of the quality, scope, and profile that immediately make them a fixture of GOTY chat. This year hasn’t been like that.

It’s not that 2024 is without contenders. It’s just that most of them have an asterisk against them. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth delighted fans, but its bloated design didn’t convince everyone else, and it apparently failed to meet Square Enix’s sales expectations. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is wonderful, but at the end of the day, it’s an expansion pack (which disqualifies it from several awards, including Game of the Year at the Game Awards). Dragon’s Dogma 2 made bold choices that wowed critics but divided players. Helldivers 2 is a sensation, but it’s running through the live-game cycle of boom, bust, review-bomb, and reinvention even faster than most. Palworld was a smash, but it was dogged by criticism of its unoriginality (among other things).

Perhaps the major game with the most uncomplicated reputation for being just good is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but as the eighth mainline Yakuza/Like a Dragon game, it comes with a lot of series baggage. It also wasn’t a huge seller by the standards of these other games, and it came out in January, meaning it needs to stay front-of-mind for a whole year if it’s still going to make its presence felt when the accolades are being handed out.

Image: Capcom

In the indie world, things are less complicated. There are at least three indie games on the board in 2024 that have enjoyed universal acclaim, and enough attention to break through the overwhelming noise of the crowded indie release schedule: poker roguelike Balatro, mysterious Metroidvania Animal Well, and even more inscrutable puzzle adventure Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. In a just world, these would be obvious GOTY frontrunners — and they probably will be at Polygon and among many other like-minded players.

But the sad fact is that an indie release needs to have incredibly broad appeal to break through in the wider gaming culture and shoulder its way alongside the year’s big beasts. Hades is the best example of this to date, and Hades 2 could certainly repeat the trick — but it will remain in early access until next year, which does not rule it out for most awards, but does count against it. There’s that asterisk again.

Look ahead, and the asterisks are back in force. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom looks utterly charming, but will seem small next to Tears of the Kingdom (itself a clear 2023 frontrunner that ended up unexpectedly overshadowed by Baldur’s Gate 3 in the end). Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Assassin’s Creed Shadows belong to series with somewhat checkered development histories, and both have much to prove. Star Wars Outlaws looks fine but, you know, it’s a Star Wars game; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will also have to work doubly hard to overcome the mild stigma that still lingers around licensed games, irrespective of Insomniac’s Spider-Man series. Avowed is by Obsidian, a wonderful studio that habitually delivers games that fall just short of their promise. STALKER 2 is maybe the most interesting prospect — its Ukrainian developers have earned massive goodwill during that country’s war with Russia, and it has an old-school PC gaming energy that’s currently the height of fashion.

Image: BioWare/Electronic Arts

It’s not that 2024 is a historically weak year for mainstream GOTY contenders. Even within recent memory, there was 2021, a year overrun with reissues and remakes, bereft of heavyweights, and graced with a smattering of great indies that didn’t quite break through. It was the year that It Takes Two won Game of the Year at the Game Awards, that Inscryption was Polygon’s top pick, and that everyone played and loved Forza Horizon 5 (but no one would dream of nominating a racing game for GOTY).

It was truly scattershot. So far, 2024 has been something else: a year of almost-theres and not-quites. It will be fascinating to see if that narrative can change in the next few months.

Why should we care?

Because conversation about good art is almost always constructive and interesting. And if the dominant conversation has blind spots — like the Oscars’ ignorance of genre films, or the Game Awards’ undervaluation of indie games — then it’s helpful, and maybe even important, to point out those blind spots by studying and critiquing how these things work.

That’s why Polygon is starting a new column called GOTY Watch. Distinct from our own game of the year ranking, which reflects our taste, GOTY Watch is all about the general conversation around Game of the Year. We’ll track and analyze awards, including the Game Awards, identify frontrunners, predict nominees, dig into categories — and also point out and champion the games that get snubbed.

The idea is that, by taking GOTY seriously, we can help elevate the conversation around it, maybe even expand the range of games considered for it. Also, like all punditry, it’s just fun!