SU esports members reveal their Games of the Year

The Game Awards for 2024 drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers on Thursday during which Astro Bot won Game of the Year in a surprise finish. The Playstation exclusive beat out Black Myth: Wukong, the much anticipated DLC to Elden Ring, Shadow Of The Erdtree and the indie hit Balatro.

Syracuse University esports club members did not seem to agree with the Game Awards pick, even though they don’t discredit Astro Bot as a notable favorite among gamers.

Esports club treasurer and Noah Whitfield said his favorite game of 2024 was Final Fantasy VII Rebirth but thought Black Myth: Wukong should have won “purely because of the numbers.”

Black Myth: Wukong launched in August and drew more than 2 million concurrent players on Steam, the most of any single player game in Steam history.

Whitfield said that the third-person action game based on 16th-century Chinese literature was, “so easy to get into.”

“It’s very tough but it’s still very simple,” the accounting sophomore said. “It’s an easier game to pick up and play.”

Esports club team manager Rayshawn King said his pick was Japanese role-playing game Metaphor: Refantazio. King said he is a “RPG kind of guy” and felt Wukong lacked “content” compared to other nominees.

The computer science sophomore said he is drawn to games with an emphasis on character development of both the player and characters featured in the game. Astro Bot, while “unique,” didn’t offer what he was looking for out of a Game of the Year winner.

“It’s not more of bringing in new characters and new stories, you just go around collecting Playstation characters,” King said.

Storytelling was something that Metaphor: Refantazio excelled at, King said.

“It’s like watching a show while playing a game,” he said. “You’ll be able to bond with these characters and probably even personally relate to at the very least one of them.”

Esports Club content director Brianna Nechifor had Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as her personal game of the year and would have voted forWukong as well for the Game Awards.

While Nechifor appreciates indie games and has played Balatro, a card game which won Best Independent Game on Thursday, she knows it can be hard for indie games to win awards against AAA games produced by major publishers such as Nintendo, Sony and Xbox

“Final Fantasy VII has all the graphics and voice-acting, Balatro really pales in comparison to that,” Nechifor said, an esports communications and management junior. “As an indie game it’s fantastic, but going up against all the mainstream creators is not going to work. A lot of indie games usually don’t have the same funding.”

Whitfield said the GOTY nomination for Balatro was “ambitious” but feels that indie games are integral to the gaming as a whole. 

“I personally love seeing indie games [get nominated], especially since I believe they are really carrying the industry at the moment,” Whitfield said. “A lot of AAA games are just mid nowadays.”

No matter who wins, Nechifor said the attention that comes from the show can only be a good thing for games.

“It brings rise to some already-famous people but also the non-famous ones, and well, it’s helpful no matter what.”