Best Multiplayer of 2024

The king of party games vs the viral hit from early in the year - that was the contest for this brand new (for us) category. The winner got just under 40% of the vote, and runner-up just under a quarter. There was also a strong showing from third place, which managed 16.87%.

Stellar Blade with best Action game!. Fuvk yeah. So deserved to get praise somewhere. Such a fun game.

Best Art Direction of 2024

The closest result this year: there was a literal tied vote on the user side of things (24.1% each), and the third place game was only 0.7% off that (23.4%). That tied result was broken by the staff, but even on that side of the equation the result was very close.

Best Original Music Score of 2024

Interestingly, first place here happened to get 38% of the vote with both users and staff. This was mostly a competition for the runner-up spot, which was claimed with just over a fifth of the vote.

Best Supporting Performance of 2024

Vote cannibalisation is always a risk when a single game has two or more nominees in the final round of voting for the Performance awards, but that didn’t happen here: the winner and runner-up came from the same game. And the two were pretty evenly matched as well: the winner got 28.085% of the vote, the runner-up 23.965%.

Best Lead Performance of 2024

Another close-run Best Performance contest. The winner got 31.155% of the vote, 2nd place got 28.055%, and third wasn’t far behind at all on 25.235%.

Best Narrative of 2024

Alongside Most Anticipated this category set the record this year with nine games making it through to Final Voting. With the vote split among so many games, it was a comfortable win for the victor despite the game 'only' receiving 31% of the vote. Second place was quite a ways behind on 18.46%.

Most Innovative Game of 2024

One of our new awards this year (well, returning, after a very long absence). I wasn’t even sure what the favourite was to take this category, and almost all but two of the seven shortlisted titles got 10% or so of the vote, so it seems like a broadly competitive addition to our awards.

Most Disappointing Game of 2024

Well there was no shortage of candidates for this award in 2024, but the top two were fairly clear from the start of voting. The ‘winner’ got 42.97% of the vote – double the vote share of the ‘runner-up’, which got 21.87%.

Best Surprise of 2024

A very close result here, despite eight games making it through to Final Voting. The winner got 31.165%, runner-up 29.165%.