The Golden Joystick Awards, one of the oldest and biggest public-voted gaming accolades, returned for its 42nd year
Over 12 million votes had been cast to crown the favourite games, companies, and personalities
The Ultimate Game of the Year award has gone to Black Myth: Wukong
Both Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Helldivers 2 have bagged the most awards, each nabbing four
Check out the full list of the 24 awards here
Image source, AmazonFallout, the iconic RPG first released in 1997, has been adapted into a TV series this year.
The series starring Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten has received high praise from critics, earning an 8.4 out of 10 on IMDb.
The Steam Deck, Valve's latest gadget, is a handheld gaming computer that lets you dive into the vast ocean of games available on Steam.
Its new OLED model hit the shelves in 2023.
Can you believe a poker-themed game is still making breakthroughs? This is Balatro.
It's chosen by a panel of journalists handpicked by the awards' organiser.
Image source, Anegar GamesThe winner, Chained Together, is picked by a panel of content creators and streamers.
This tricky 3D platformer sees players - you guessed it - chained together as they attempt to leap across increasingly difficult and improbable platforms to reach a far, far away goal high above.
Image source, Mojang StudiosDo I need to explain Minecraft? Those pesky Creepers are practically lurking in supermarkets these days.
Image source, miHoYoNot many Chinese games are making waves at the Golden Joystick Awards this year (except for Black Myth: Wukong). But that doesn't mean China isn’t a big player in the gaming world.
Take Honkai: Star Rail, released last year by miHoYo. It’s still going strong with fresh content and has a firm player base.
Image source, ZeekerssDesigned by a single developer, Zeekerss, initially for Roblox, Lethal Company gained popularity in 2023 when the cooperative survival horror game was released for early access.
Its numerous mods and thriving community have kept it going ever since.
Image source, Golden Joystick AwardsThe third-person co-op shooter game from Arrowhead Game Studios, published by Sony, is available on PC and PS5. Players can team up with friends or strangers to blast away at big insects and robots.
Naoki Hamaguchi is the director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The game's music is crafted by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu from MONOMUSIK Inc.
This remake of Final Fantasy VII (1997) features brand-new compositions, along with fresh spins on Nobuo Uematsu's original melodies.
Image source, Golden Joystick AwardsThe Tokyo-based independent studio, part of Sony’s PlayStation Studios, is the creator of Astro Bot.
Why is the studio called "Asobi"? It means "play" in Japanese.
Image source, PlaystackBalatro is the first indie title to win the Ultimate Game of the Year award without the backing of a major publisher in the history of the Golden Joystick Awards.
Created by a solo developer known as LocalThunk, the card game Balatro - named after the Latin word for jester or buffoon - is one of the year's biggest success stories.
Players create poker hands to score points, but the real magic comes from its 150 joker cards, which modify the rules and multiply scores in various ways.
PS: Well, it seems LocalThunk has decided to give the stage a miss after all!
Image source, Aggro CrabThe action-adventure game takes the challenging mechanics of Dark Souls and places them in a colourful underwater world of crustaceans and fish.
It's scuttled its way onto PlayStation 5, Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Image source, Bandai NamcoShadow of the Erdtree is the expansion for Elden Ring, a 2022 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware.
The game was directed by Japanese designer Hidetaka Miyazaki, with worldbuilding by American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin. It's a rare type of collaboration in the gaming industry.
And it turns out to be very successful - Elden Ring has sold an impressive 25 million units before the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree on 21 June 2024, and the expansion has sold five million copies within just three days of its release.
The 2024 3D platform game developed by Team Asobi and published by Sony for PS5 is a sequel to Astro's Playroom (2020)
The game was released in September and as of 3 November, it had sold 1.5 million units, according to Sony. The inventive platformer has also got a score of 94 in Metacritic.
Get to know this game more from this piece: Astro Bot: Could the old-school hit reshape PS5's future?
Image source, Golden Joystick AwardsThe third-person co-op shooter game from Arrowhead Game Studios, published by Sony, is available on PC and PS5. Players can team up with friends or strangers to blast away at big insects and robots.
By the way, the insect foes are known as Terminids, who are out to destroy Democracy, while the robots, dubbed Automatons, have a vendetta against Freedom.
They certainly deserve a bit of shooting, don't they?
Image source, Game ScienceThe action role-playing game (ARPG) crafted by Chinese company Game Science draws its inspiration from the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West.
In a blockbuster debut, the game shifted 20 million units in its first month, catapulting it into the ranks of the fastest-selling games ever.
Image source, Square EnixThe story of this game harks back to the original Final Fantasy VII from 1997, a classic that's brought who-knows-how-many gamers to tears.
And many have dreamt of changing the fate of our beloved Aerith Gainsborough…
Andrew Rogers
BBC Newsbeat, reporting from the awards venue
As we've mentioned, the Golden Joystick Awards have been around since 1983, but the categories haven't remained the same.
Speaking to Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up To Money programme, Chris Dring, the head of GamesIndustry.biz, external, says these awards do a good job of reflecting how the way people play games has changed.
“It used to be that people buy a game, they play it, complete it and move onto the next game. Now games exist for months, and years, they get expanded and added to. People are still playing Fortnite and Minecraft, games that came out ten years ago or longer.”
He points to the Best Game Expansion and Still Playing categories as good examples of this, and says he’ll be watching their results closely.
Tinshui Yeung
Live page editor
As we gear up for the awards ceremony, let's also take a peek at the UK's - shall we say - mixed gaming industry situation.
Research by The Independent Game Developers' Association (Tiga), external reveals that the UK games development sector has grown from April 2023 to May 2024, despite the global downturn.
Here are some standout figures for April 2023 to May 2024: