Honestly, looking back at the game awards nominees 2024, it’s easy to think it was just another night of Geoff Keighley standing in a spotlight while the world waited for a GTA 6 trailer that—let’s be real—was never going to be the main event anyway. But something felt different this time. We had a platforming robot, a gambling-addicted deck-builder, and a massive DLC all fighting for the same trophy. It was weird. It was brilliant. And naturally, it made a lot of people very angry.
The nominations list for 2024 wasn't just a tally of high-budget releases. It was a snapshot of an industry that is currently, well, kinda confused about what it wants to be. Is it a cinema? Is it a sport? Or is it still just about a little guy jumping on platforms?
The Year the Little Guy Won Big
When the list for Game of the Year (GOTY) dropped, the internet did what it does best: it started a civil war. We had the heavy hitters like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the visual powerhouse Black Myth: Wukong. But then there was Astro Bot.
A lot of people saw Astro Bot and thought, "Oh, it's just a tech demo grown up."
Wrong.
The game awards nominees 2024 proved that polish and pure, unadulterated joy still carry weight. While Black Myth: Wukong was breaking concurrent player records on Steam and Final Fantasy was stretching the limits of how much story you can cram into a hundred hours, Astro Bot was busy being perfect. It eventually took home the big prize, but the journey there was messy.
Why the Nominations Sparked a Row
You've probably heard the "DLC shouldn't be here" argument a thousand times by now. When Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree appeared as one of the nominees for Game of the Year, it felt like FromSoftware had brought a gun to a knife fight.
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Is it fair?
Some say no. They argue that an expansion, no matter how massive, shouldn't compete with full, standalone experiences. Others pointed out that Shadow of the Erdtree has more content than most $70 games released in the last decade. It’s a nuance that the Game Awards committee decided to lean into, setting a massive precedent for the future. Basically, if you make it big enough and good enough, the "DLC" label doesn't matter anymore.
Balatro and the Indie Takeover
If you haven't played Balatro, you’ve at least seen the memes. It’s a poker roguelike. Sounds simple, right? It’s not. It’s digital soul-sucking addiction in the best way possible.
Seeing Balatro sit next to Metaphor: ReFantazio in the GOTY category was a moment for the history books. It wasn't just a "Best Indie" pity nomination. It belonged there. LocalThunk, the solo dev behind the game, basically showed the world that you don't need a thousand-person staff and a billion-dollar marketing budget to dominate the conversation.
The game awards nominees 2024 list was actually quite diverse in terms of studio size.
- Team Asobi (Astro Bot): A small-to-mid-sized team within Sony.
- Game Science (Black Myth: Wukong): A Chinese studio that literally shook the global market.
- LocalThunk (Balatro): One person. One.
That variety is what made the 2024 cycle so fascinating. It wasn't just the "Year of the Sequel" or the "Year of the Remake." It was the year of the unexpected.
The Most Anticipated Snubs
Every year, people focus on who made the cut. We should talk about who didn't.
Helldivers 2 was the story of the spring. It was everywhere. It was the "managed democracy" the internet couldn't stop talking about. While it cleaned up in the "Best Ongoing Game" and "Best Multiplayer" categories, the fact that it didn't snag a GOTY nomination left a lot of fans feeling like the committee ignored the biggest cultural moment of the year.
Then there's the Silent Hill 2 remake. Bloober Team actually pulled it off. They took a masterpiece and didn't ruin it. It snagged several nominations, including Best Narrative and Best Performance for Luke Roberts, but it felt like it was overshadowed by the JRPG juggernauts.
A Record-Breaking Spectacle
Let's talk numbers because they are actually insane. The 2024 show hit an estimated 154 million global livestreams. That is a 31% jump from 2023.
Why the spike?
Black Myth: Wukong. The audience in China is massive, and for the first time, they had a horse in the race that could actually win. Even though it didn't take the top trophy, it won "Best Action Game" and the "Players' Voice" award. That public vote was a battlefield. Fans were aggressively campaigning on social media, turning the awards into a global popularity contest that surpassed anything we’ve seen before.
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What This Means for 2025 and Beyond
The 2024 nominees gave us a roadmap of where gaming is headed. We are seeing a shift where the lines between "Indie" and "AAA" are blurring. When a card game and a 100-hour epic RPG are viewed with the same level of prestige, the industry wins.
We also saw the return of the "World Premiere" as a legitimate cultural event. The Witcher 4 reveal? Naughty Dog's Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet? These aren't just trailers; they are the anchors for the next five years of the hobby.
If you’re looking to catch up on what you missed, here is the move:
- Play Astro Bot first. It’s the closest thing to a perfect 10/10 platformer since Mario Odyssey.
- Lose a weekend to Balatro. Just don't blame me when you start seeing poker hands in your sleep.
- Finish Shadow of the Erdtree. Regardless of the DLC debate, it is some of the best level design FromSoftware has ever done.
The game awards nominees 2024 showed us that the "safe choice" isn't always the boring one. Sometimes, the safe choice is just the one that reminds us why we started playing these things in the first place. It wasn't about the graphics or the teraflops. It was about how it felt to pick up the controller.