AstroBot Must Win Game of the Year, or the Games Industry is Doomed
Why are two-thirds of GOTY contenders RPGs?
Every year, the gaming community collectively comes together to share snark and disgruntledness about Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards, the awards show that has become the de-facto Oscars of gaming. For all its faults, I’m grateful to Geoff for putting on the show and providing a flashpoint for us to celebrate—and heatedly debate—the games of the year.
Last year, the Game of the Year winner was Baldur’s Gate 3, a massive RPG with an epic scope that takes 100+ hours to finish. The year before that, the award went to Elden Ring — another huge RPG of 100+ hours playtime.
This year? The pattern of RPGs shows no signs of abating: 4 out of 6 of the GOTY contenders this year are RPGs. That’s two-thirds. (And one of these games isn’t even a new game but DLC to Elden Ring, the 2022 winner.)
Don’t get me wrong. I liked Elden Ring. And some of my favorite games have been RPGs. I don’t mean to cast shade at Baldur’s Gate, either — despite it being a beloved game that I tried and failed to get into, I can recognize that it just wasn’t made for mindless doomscrollers like myself.
But surely the many games released in 2024 go beyond just RPGs. Would it not be curious if, for the third year, a huge RPG wins the top prize in gaming again? We would seem to have a bias problem, if that is the case. Why does no one appear concerned about this?
Why are 4 out of 6 Game of the Year nominees RPGs?
To fix this issue, I’ll cut to the chase—the award needs to go to AstroBot. Yes, the plucky platformer (no, not that plucky platformer!) that won our hearts and thumbsticks and knestled into our gamer souls right beside Super Mario 64 and Celeste. If AstroBot does not win, the Game Awards, and the broader games industry, is doomed.
Why Astro? The little AstroBot-that-could rekindled the joy of the PS2 and Gamecube era of gaming: an emphasis on poppy, colorful aesthetics, cartoon characters and shots of joy-concentrate injected directly into the bloodstream. AstroBot is a game that is impossible to hate. And it is a “quick” game, by today’s standards: completing the main quest line takes about 10 hours. I was able to “100%” the game (collecting all the bots) even with a busy schedule, and felt immensely satisfied by the end of it.
In a sea of 100+ hour RPGs and social media sites clawing for our time, a game like AstroBot sticks out. AstroBot had the gall to not overstay its welcome. It didn’t need to. It walked right in, delighted us, then left, leaving us wanting more.
Choosing AstroBot is not easy. Balatro deserves tremendous accolates. It is a masterclass in game design that should be taught in schools. It proved (again) what a lone developer with a vision can do. It proved successful games can be written entirely in Lua. It deserves to be on a shelf next to the games like Super Mario Bros, Portal, and RockBand.
But for Game of the Year, I think there is something to be said for AAA development team that showed us what love can do, given the sad and depressing state of the games industry. Not just the game itself, but AstroBot’s production process deserves to be lauded: a happy team with minimal crunch and a more democratic development structure. A perfect foil to Bethesda’s recent managerial collapse. And a lesson for the rest of the gaming industry: that it doesn’t have to be this way. That great games, and great products, can be constructed with love, without mass layoffs and knee-jerk firings at 3am on a Sunday.
Team ASOBI’s vision and execution of AstroBot were impeccable. As one reviewer put it, “‘AstroBot is so good that it single-handedly reminded me why I enjoy video games in the first place.” This is a game that is literally flawless. If that’s not good enough to win GOTY, I don’t know what is.
I’ll be honest — I have not played some games on this GOTY list. (No, DLC does not deserve to be on the list; it should be a separate category.) Metaphor: ReFantazio is on my backlog, and I have viewed many reviews and gameplay videos of it. It deserves to be nominated, surely, but does it breath fresh air into the games industry? Was it an example of something we haven’t seen for quite some time? With no disrespect to the developers, I don’t think it innovates to that level, compared to AstroBot. A similar case can be made for FFVII Rebirth: again, probably a great game. But also a spin-off of an existing franchise with a well-established developer who doesn’t need the accolates, in a crowded genre, with a heavy dose of nostalgia. (And for those who claim, “AstroBot had nostalgia too” — well, I didn’t grow up playing PS games, so AstroBot’s references flew over my head. I didn’t love AstroBot for the veiled references to Sony characters. I loved it for the gameplay, the aesthetics, the ideas, the sound, the graphics, the blazing fast FPS. I loved it because it could be enjoyed by all.)
So I hope to god that AstroBot wins Game of the Year. Because if not — if an RPG like Elden Ring DLC wins — it will be a failure not just for the awards, but for the gaming industry as a whole. A sign that we aren’t ready to appreciate progress and love and joy. A sign that we’ve become stagnant and dare I say elitist in our picks — not representing the many but only the opinions of a few. And that’s not a games industry I’d prefer to exist in.
~Ian Arawjo