Winners of the 2022 Game Awards

Game of the Year: Elden Ring

Dylan Buehner Business Manager

Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok were the heavyweights in the 2022 Game Awards. Both games took home multiple awards for their studios, with Fromsoft (Elden Ring) winning four awards and Santa Monica Studios (Ragnarok) winning six. But ultimately, it was Elden Ring who took home the headline spot of Game of the Year.

Fromsoft is known for it’s hardcore, swordplay games. Darksouls I, II, and III are considered one of the hardest trilogies of games to come out in the 2010s. These games focus on slower, more punishing combat, where attacks take longer to play out, and moves must be planned to avoid a nice red "YOU DIED" screen.

Fromsoft thrives on making action-roleplaying games, where customization is at the forefront of gameplay, Allowing players to approach their games in new and unique ways. This design philosophy keeps players coming back for more, even if the difficulty gets too much at times. Even with their revolutionary gameplay being what they're most known for, Fromsoft’s art design has also been praised, with their grim, gothic environments mixing amazingly with their over-the-top boss designs that taunt the player.

Best Indie: Stray

Stray was one of six games nominated for Game of the Year, with many brushing it aside for that award. Ragnarok and Elden Ring were the sure winners, so Stray had to take a backseat to that fight. But while the top dogs fought, this sly cat went along and snagged the Best Indie Game and Debut Indie awards, solidifying it as a true gaming daring

BlueTwelve Studios (Stray) are a independent development group, breaking away from Ubisoft in 2015 to work on Stray. BlueTwelve was originally just two developers, with the team expanding to seven later in development. For seven years, this small team put months of work into Stray. It is their only project to date, and their dedication to it shows. Interestingly, The lead director stated that their inspiration for the setting of Stray was the Kowloon Walled City, a massively compact micro nation within China that boasted over 50,000 people in an area smaller than 7 acres.

The core of this game is that players are a cat that is wandering around the dense complex the designers created. All characters within this world are cats or robots, creating a relaxed environment compared too many other games.

Jumping, crawling, and climbing are core loops found within Stray, as exploration is the one and only gameplay goal. Throughout the journey, new environments will be uncovered, from dense apartments to overgrown industrial areas, all creating a cohesive art direction for the player to be emersed in.

Stray is a simple yet endearing game, that swooned the hearts of indie lovers everywhere, sweeping the independent categories throughout the night.

Best Action: Ragnarok

Overall, the studio has been pushing the envelope for decades, leading up to the release and awarding of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is the spiritual successor to the Dark Souls game, Embracing everything that makes the Souls games amazing. The environments are darkly beautiful, mixing open pastures with gothic architecture, all the while allowing the player to explore this beauty without limitations.

The customization swings back harder, with advanced character creation and loadout creation allowing players to adventure in any way they want. This adventure isn’t easy either, as the gameplay stays just as brutal as its predecessors. Bosses are big, Attacks slow, and all the while your character is rolling around with giant swords and armor that barely protect him from the brutality of Fromsoft’s world.

In combination with their Game of the Year win, they also took home best Art Direction, Game Direction and Role-Playing Game, all for the reason mentioned previously. Elden Ring followed in the shadows of its forefathers, to become its own pillar in the gaming hall of fame.

While not taking home the crown of Game of the Year, God of War: Ragnarok, blew through many of the categories throughout the night. From Best Narrative to Best Innovation in Accessibility, Ragnarok showed up and took home awards nontheless.

Santa-Monica Studios (Ragnarok) is a custom-made development organization put together by Sony. They make the God of War games, putting all their effort into making each game the best it could be. Their last trip to the game awards can with God of War 2018, a groundbreaking game in terms of story telling, performaces and art direction.

It took home 8 awards during the 2018 game awards, reenforcing the development chops of Santa-Monica Studios. The design philosophy of this studio rests on groundbreaking cinematics and heartwrenching stories that push players to beat each area.

Santa-Monica pulled out all the stops when it came to Ragnarok’s art direction. They created a fully-realized world filled with fantastic locations and areas to progress through. Throughout a players time within Ragnarok, the music and sound design envelopes the world, providing great set dressing for the adventure. A key feature of all God of War games are their over-the-top boss battles, which Ragnarok puts on full display. Fighting norse gods is an indepth process, and this game fully brings it into the modern age.

Winning Best Narrative, Best Score and Music, Best Audio Design, Best Action/Adventure, Innovation in Accessibility and Best Performance. While not taking home the central prize, Santa-Monica received high for their game.

Best Fighting: Multiversus

A relatively short-lived game, Multiversus took the gaming scene by storm over the summer, providing a take on the fighting genre. It had an easy time taking the number one spot in the fighting genre, with its opponents not having the wider appeal that brought so many into the game. It hosts a vast list of characters from across multiple different mediums, from Batman to Lebron James, players had a rather easy choice with this category

Player-First Games (Multiversus) was a custom-made studio for the purpose of making Multiversus. Warner Brothers, the owner of many IPs within Multiversus, wanted to put their foot into the ring of the fighting-game craze that took over in late May. They were in mediocre company, as many nongame-focused companies tried (and failed) to make fighting games with their quirky characters. So with the money and ideas of the Warner Brothers, Player Games tried their best to make a cohesive experience for players, and it was commercially successful for them.

Beating up iconic pop-culture figures with your friends seemed to grab many over the summer. With the dauls, coop matches, and 4 man brawls, and multiverse gameplay allowed for fun to be had by all. Both casual and competitive players had a good time fighting it out online. What really sweetened the pot for this game, and what pushed it to the number one spot in this category, was that it was free. While other games in this category were more polished peices of media, Multiversus' free & easy to start model pushed it to the forefront of this category, and ultimately gave it the win.

Pitchfork Standout: Escape From Tarkov

Battle Royales (BRs) are a genre of online games in which players spawn into a set map and collect randomly generated loot. This loot comes in the form of weapons and healing supplies, which scale in power as the round progresses. The core feature of BRs is that once you die, all the loot you gather goes away, and you start from scratch. This formula allows for faster, more diverse gameplay, where each round plays out differently from the last.

Military Simulators (Mil-Sims) are another genre of online games in which groups of players reenact war-type events over the course of actual hours. Gameplay is much slower, with weapons being more intricate, healing more prolonged, and vehicles functioning truer to life in the most demanding way possible. Everything is much more complicated, and mistakes can cost players actual days of backtracking.

These two Genres merge into a fantastic indie game out of St. Petersburg called: Escape from Tarkov. Escape for Tarkov (EFT) is a self-proclaimed “hard- core, realistic, online first-person, action RPG” branching off into its own unique genre. Most within the EFT community call this type of game an Extract-Shooter, based on the core gameplay loop. To start, players load into a round (what the game calls raids) on one of 8 maps. They spawn in a random location and must make their way across the map to an “Extraction Point” where they can load out of the raid. On their way to these extraction points, players can enter abandoned homes and shops to collect a wide variety of loot.

If a player extracts from a raid, all the items, weapons, and equipment they collected carries over to their “Stash”; an out-of-raid inventory for players. In other BRs, even if a player wins a round, they still lose all their gathered gear. Tarkov differs from that formula, allowing players who survive to continue using the gear they gathered in future raids. All items on a player -From backpack and ammo rigs that increase inventory space, to helmets and armor that protects from attacks- can be kept between raids. But once a player dies, all that loot is gone forever, creating a delicate balancing act between the quality of gear and the risk of losing it.

In Tarkov, there are two main types of run-ending foes: AI Enemies and Player Made Characters (PMCs). The AI in Tarkov is diverse, with there being 4 different types of AI, each spawning in different amounts with varying types of gear. Scavs are your baseline, scavenger enemy, having very little in the way of loot. Raiders are more experienced scavs, having better loot & much better-attacking power. Rouges are just the US Military. And Boss Scav are special characters that don’t change between raids. All these fellas roam around their respective maps, doing their own thing, until players stumble across them, causing them to become aggressive. PMCs, on the other hand, are always violent, as gamers are the worst.

Combat with these foes is also unique, as damage occurs over multiple parts of a player's body. Falling from a high place will break a PMCs legs, causing their character to move at a snail's pace. Getting hit in the arm causes it to shatter, leading to decreased control over a character's arms. As mentioned previously, armor and helmets can block damage in certain areas, but a direct hit to the head or chest is a definite game over.

All these features make the game a formidable timesink for some and a rewarding slug-fest for others. But its hard nature draws in players like no other, and provides a unique experience compared to the mainstream option currently out.