2022 was an intense year for gamers and game studios. Players worldwide got the chance to live the experiences of their favorite characters, go on crazy adventures and take part in grueling combat, matches, and competitions with this year’s releases. And what better way for this community of gamers to conclude this year than with their most anticipated event; The Game Awards 2022.
The event was hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of The Game Awards, and was held to an invited audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 8, 2022. The preshow ceremony was hosted by Sydnee Goodman and the entire event was live-streamed across more than 40 digital platforms. The ceremony features performances from Halsey, Hozier, and Bear McCreary, and presentations from celebrity guests including Reggie Fils-Aimé, Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, and Ken, Roberta Williams and The Godfather star, Al Pacino.
Over the past few years, the awards have had a clear favorite by gamers’ choice and this year’s seemed to be Santa Monica Studios’ God Of War: Ragnarok. The sequel to the 2018 PlayStation exclusive was released on the 9th of November, 2022 and despite its short time in the market, the players seem to have a soft spot for it. With voting closed and the results compiled, God Of War: Ragnarok ended the night with six awards: Best Action Adventure, Best Audio Design, Best Narrative, Best Score and Music, Innovation in Accessibility, and Best Performance awarded to Christopher Judge, reprising his role as Kratos. Judge on receiving his award mentioned gave a heartfelt speech thanking his momma, his brother, his children, his director the dev team, coworkers on the sound team, a lot of which he mentions by name, and his co-star and fellow nominee, Sully Suljic who plays Kratos’ son Atreus/Loki to whom he concludes the speech with an important reminder for; “Never forget the two things I hopefully gave you: ‘hire me, don’t be a douchebag!'”
God Of War, however, did not dominate the night as Bandai Namco’s Elden Ring, received 4 awards including the highly coveted Game Of The Year along with, Best Roleplaying, Best Art Design, and Best Direction. Elden Ring had sold over 16 million copies over its 8 months of release and taken the world by storm. Months prior to the awards, Game director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, stated “Honestly, I haven’t analysed it much. It’s true that sales were higher than those of our previous games, but I have no idea what the reason was. So even if I wanted to reproduce that success, I wouldn’t be able to. I try not to think about it too much because I think it would be a bad idea to analyse it deeply and to consciously try to replicate it in another game.”
On receiving the award, Miyazaki stated, “We have faced so many difficulties while developing this game … so I’m really relieved. I haven’t made up my mind to create even more interesting games than this one. As for ‘Elden Ring,’ we still have more things we want to do, so getting this Game Of The Year award really, really encourages us.”
Other winners of the night included:
- Stray
- Best Independent Game
- Best Debut Indie Game
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Best Ongoing Game
- Best Community Support
- Bayonetta 3
- Best Action
- Gran Turismo 7
- Sport / Racing Game
- Genshin Impact
- Players’ Voice
- Arcane
- Best Adaptation
For the full list of winners, click the link below
By Chidinma Nwannevu