Our ongoing announcements for #TheGoodies2020 continue with our only game-centred award, an award for fan creation, and one for indie coverage.

It’s all here.

IMPACT

The IMPACT Award is our equivalent of Game of the Year. It’s not for a game we necessarily loved the most. Instead, it’s for the game that inspired the pieces we appreciated the most, those pieces that we just couldn’t get out of our head. It is, in every way, an award celebrating games media: This game serves as a muse.

Several games did exactly that in 2020. Cyberpunk unleashed a torrent of pieces, from reporting on the game’s crunch to critical examinations of its marketing. Blaseball fascinated us to the point we read more on it in a short window of time than pretty much anything else – thanks Eric Van Allen!

There was The Last of Us Part II, of course, with writers like Natalie Flores and Kenneth Shepard surprising us regularly with nuanced takes, though they certainly weren’t alone. Ghost of Tsushima and Miles Morales each generated works that were masterful–see here and here for instance–locking up Sony’s domination over this category.

In the midst of a global pandemic, however, it was Animal Crossing: New Horizons that ruled the roost, with a mix of pieces, criticism and otherwise, that constantly captured our attention. There was a piece on stock trading in the literal sense; our Evan McIntosh wrote many words arguing Tom Nook is something of a socialist while Astrid Johnson at Polygon seemingly disagreed on every count with a communist critique of the game; commentary on abandoning our islands hit us; accessibility continued to be a mainstream conversation and Animal Crossing got in on it; connections were sought and made vis a vis the game; our list is getting out of hand at this point and we have another dozen or so pieces we featured through the year.

Animal Crossing was in many ways inescapable escapism. It drove discussions–particularly around gaming in the pandemic, particularly on publications that don’t generally consider gaming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is our IMPACT Game of the Year.

CURATOR’S CHOICE: FAN CONTENT

Throughout the course of researching and engaging with the best games writing we come across a ton of fan made content. We’re talking things like fan art, in-game creations, custom plush, game re-creations, comics, and so much more.

The one thing we kept coming back to, again and again, was a series of videos blending Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s Harv Island with Hamilton. Both were undoubtedly major creative forces for creatives in the summertime–seeing the blend of the two materialize, again and again, song by song, was a treat.

We specifically want to honour “Right Hand Man” for the little nods it gives. When Washington (Phil) sings of there being an elephant in the room there’s literally an elephant. The moods and expressions, varied as they are in the song, are delivered masterfully. “Satisfied” is, in our opinion, the best piece in all of Hamilton, and while it’s done well in Animal Crossing, it doesn’t carry quite the same weight as the original. Not so for one of Washington’s big moments as the game so readily lends itself to telling the story.

INDIE GAME COVERAGE

You voted on the award that should be featured here and you chose indie game coverage. This is one of those beats that doesn’t get enough respect and we want to recognize two websites we trust on the beat: BigBossBattle and The Indie Game Website. Both were shut out of the shortlists by our panel but our curators regularly visit each site to find the latest and greatest indies. Check them out.

The panel had a difficult task, however, as the quality of coverage out there continued to rise, with pieces from sites big and small tackling indie games, and YouTubers leaving an indelible mark on the category.

People Make Games is always quality but its take on Hades’ dialogue was fascinating — the timing of its release paired with more information being released from Supergiant.

Only two of our other nominees focused on individual games. Kaile Hultner’s essay on The Convience Store dovetails with his own experience in the service industry while critiquing the psychological horror elements.

More shocking than any of the creepy goings-on at this convenience store in Japan, at least for me, was how quickly I fell back into this mode of thinking and working. It wasn’t instantaneous, the switch flipped and then there was a delay, but it wasn’t much of one. And then I was back in my smock and stained khakis, rubbing spilled soda out of the floor mats. I went about familiar tasks, restocking missing items, killing rats and, at one point, getting a guy five cans of light beer and a pack of cigarettes (muttering “get them yourself” under my breath as my playable character did).

There’s also Nicole Carpenter’s review of If Found… — a game that piqued our interest a few times throughout the year — in which Carpenter makes erasing central to her interpretation of the game, both a mechanic to cover and an allegory to extend.

We should mention, here, Jack Yarwood’s piece on Soon, Only the Ocean, as it is remarkably novel, both the game and the writing. The game itself still exists, we suppose, but it’s not the experience you’d get had you played it in its first days (for more on that, read the article). Yarwood’s writing, then, feels like something of a dispatch, a take on a limited series that won’t be seen again, and it reminded us immediately of Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube?, a game that also had a defined end period.

The rest of the nominated pieces tackled multiple games to weave together a broader narrative arc. We enjoyed Corrupted Save’s video on service jobs (a wonderful complement to Hultner’s piece above) and were challenged by Molly C. Beer’s reporting on efforts to reinvigorate Indigenous languages and cultures.

Ultimately, our panel was torn, with votes coming for each nominated piece: a testament to the quality of work in this category.

That the winner was a piece that asks a provocative question–“Where Are All The Fat Queer Video Game Characters?“–doesn’t surprise us, as many of the above pieces, and the games they’re attached to, do just that. This is a piece that forces us to confront our expectations on games in an unexpected way, while building off other works with generous references to those pieces. It asks us to consider a major release in Hades while contemplating The Waylanders.

The LGBT+ community in video games has grown over time – just look at the inclusion of Dina in The Last of Us Part 2, and the various characters in The Waylanders – but the fact is that attractiveness is only considered that when the characters are thin. It’s a problem that’s rife in real-life queer spaces, so it’s certainly isolating to see progressive game studios stating that they are doing well in regards to representation when every queer character shown may not look like you at all.

We hope to see more pieces that push forward conversations such as this throughout 2021. This is the start we needed.

As #TheGoodies2020 roll on to their second day the number of awards ticks up. We’re recognizing Best Sports Coverage, Family Gaming Coverage, and by reader choice, naming the Extended Form winner.

Sports

Covering sports games and their derivatives is no easy task. Consider the case of reviewing a juggernaut franchise like FIFA or NHL: it is as important to know something about the sport being played as it is to intimately know the franchise, its quirks, its failures, and its iterations. Both Wesley Yin-Poole and Kat Bailey are experts in this regard. From Yin-Poole’s FIFA review:

Alas, while EA continues to make bank out of FIFA as it is, I can’t see much changing, even with the next-gen opportunity over the horizon. So, for now, we have another FIFA, as it has been this generation, and how, I fear, it will be on the next.

Then there’s the even more niche games in the genre covering sports like snowboarding and skateboarding. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remastered was the pre-eminent release in 2020 and, as a remaster, understanding the culture of skating, the context of the original release, and the implications today are all important. Michael Higham and Cole Henry both proved they could handle such a hefty task.

Then there’s Blaseball. It’s hard to describe what, exactly, it is, but both Sam Greszes and Eric Van Allen contributed to our understanding of the surrealist game.

Writing for Polygon, Sam Greszes’ essay/review of Ring Fit Adventure immediately stakes a claim for its audience, situating it for those fixated on their body’s flaws, dissecting just how Ring Fit subverts our expectations on fitness plans and our own ideals. The game’s antagonistic forces are perfect foes:

Later on, Dragaux betrays and alienates even the people he has brainwashed into joining his quest for world domination, absorbing their powers and casting them aside in an effort to get even stronger. Yet despite the fact that the dark influence is supposed to mask his weaknesses and make him stronger, Dragaux still spirals into self-hatred whenever he’s beaten, berating himself for being too weak to win. His accomplishments are never enough.

Like the above pieces, this one relies on knowing a sport (personal fitness) and numerous iterations (other fitness plans), despite not being a review on a mega-franchise. Congratulations!

Family Gaming

Another award that requires an awareness of factors we often overlook, in this case, an awareness of audience. Family Gaming coverage is difficult to define, though, as covering a family friendly game can simply be enough if done well, as is the case with these pieces on Paper Mario, Pokémon Sword & Shield, and Clubhouse Games.

Good pieces can stake out their audience appropriately, as cnet‘s Mark Serrels does, listing the best family friendly games around.

Family gaming can be about bridging the gap between generations, as Lavinia Liang manages while examining her relationship with several horse-themed MMORPGs, a launching-off point for rich conversations on the games we play, and the games we played.

Like Liang’s piece, Kaity Kline manages to create an intergenerational discussion, reminiscing about her first experiences with the Animal Crossing franchise, while successfully reviewing Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

After a particularly tough day in the land of self isolation, I opened the game for the first time. The stress immediately melted away from my chest as I was greeted by Tom Nook’s twin nephews, the big eyed Timmy and Tommy, perched behind a travel counter. They were there to help me jet off to a new life on Nook’s dime, and part of my goal on top of paying my debt was to develop a deserted island into a thriving community.

The pairing of reminiscing with useful information–a careful explanation of being locked to one island per console, no matter the number of games purchased–is the type of context that’s needed for average consumers who may not be following the daily grind of news coverage. The notes about reconnecting with old friends are the type of info even jaded gamers can buy into. It’s a wonderful piece.

Extended Form

The extended form category is a difficult one to distill into only a few short words: After all, we aren’t praising brevity, but we are ensuring every word counts.

Matt Leone’s oral history of Street Fighter 3 feels absolutely essential for members of the fighting game community, Capcom-obsessed fans, arcade lovers, and so many more. He allows his subjects to speak, as the authorities they are, and the piece is better for it.

Also at Polygon, Kazuma Hashimoto’s sprawling analysis of Ghost of Tsushima invokes modern Japanese politics, claims raised by the dev team during the promotional cycle, and, of course, the influence we heard about again and again, venerated filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Masterfully weaving these themes together, Hashimoto asserts:

The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.

Over on Wireframe, Alexander Chatziioannou examines the trend of elderly protagonists at last getting their due, detailing the origins and evolution of the trend, bringing us up to modern takes and their influences. The breadth and depth of the games covered made us wonder if we’re about to enter an, ahem, golden age of these types of games, as smaller narratives are championed just as these figures are prominent across short stories. One can hope.

Cian Maher similarly looks at a collection of games tackling a shared theme: climate change. Beyond Blue feels like it gets the lion’s share of the treatment–it’s a strong interview–but both Temtem and Bee Simulator are given their due, highlighting an issue we expect will continue to emerge across the entertainment landscape.

That it’s a profile that wins this award is in some ways surprising–we don’t do enough of these in games media–but in other ways very fitting. Much of gaming is based on personalities, now more than ever, and the figures that loom overhead are worth examining, both critically and with reverence, as Annie Vainshtein does with Jerry Lawson for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lawson’s contributions, like creating the prototype for the first digital joystick on consoles and being able to pause a game, are ones that we may well take for granted. Celebrating his work, and the work of our industry’s pioneers, is important:

Jerry Lawson, on the other hand, was mostly lost to history. […] “If you were to make a Mount Rushmore of games, he would absolutely have to be on that monument,” said Kahlief Adams, host of the podcast “Spawn on Me,” which spotlights people of color in the gaming industry. […] As society reconsiders its past, there’s an effort to ensure that Lawson, and his contributions to a massive industry, don’t stay invisible.

In creating such a profile, one that is immediately engaging and filled with sweet remembrances, Vainshtein manages to help ensure his place in history, telling a story that hasn’t been told often enough.

Congratulations!

As #TheGoodies2020 get underway we wanted to start with pieces that brighten our days and maybe even yours.

When we think of a List Feature we often think of them as throw-away pieces meant only to drive outrage (or whatever emotion du jour) and little more. The idea that they’re clickbait-y is often bandied about–in fact, that criticism has been made of much of our list–but that discounts important elements of lists:

• They are a type of service writing and denigrating lists is the same as denigrating other work, like guides work, that pays bills.
• Lists are often places writers get let off the leash and can frolic with glee. Yeah, it’s a metaphor, but we’re sticking with it.
• Lists DO drive engagement and often spark dialogue with readers that’s more positive than, say, a contentious (*gasp*) 7/10 review.

The lists nominated for this award embody some of these traits. Fanbyte‘s pair of nominations, written by Aiden Strawhun and Ty Galiz-Rowe, fall into a bit of a trope–what this character says about you–just as Jeremy Peel’s piece at PC Gamer does, but they’re all wonderful, fun pieces that we saw people chattering about with delight for days. That means something.

A “best of” list can do a lot of things and reveal a lot about a site and its writers both in what it includes and what it excludes. Morgan Shaver’s indie round-up is conventional in many ways but it surfaced indies that may have been overlooked by pairing them with veritable titans; it captures the essence of the games while serving as a breezy read. If you’re new to Good Games Writing, we consider breezy a compliment, and mean it.

Anthony McGlynn’s take on FFVII, the original, blends nostalgia with knowing winks to the remake, showcasing that content doesn’t need to be fresh to, well, be fresh. It’s the very definition of evergreen content in an easily digestible format.

Kate Willaert takes all the elements described above and blends them into this year’s champion. Yup, it’s definitely service writing, cashing in on The Game Awards. Yeah, it’s a little experimental, weaving together gifs, magazine excerpts, and expert analysis. People were talking about this–who wouldn’t be?–and we can’t wait to bust out the knowledge we learned from the list at parties…once those are allowed again.

Here’s Kate’s take on Computer Golf:

Here’s another fun thing we take for granted today: zooming in from a map overview to a close-up “action” view. Did golf games inspire the overworld maps of JRPGs? Also, I think this might be the first game to give the player character some sense of a personality? The golfer’s temper tantrums seem like a precursor to the playful idle animations of the ‘90s.

Congratulations to Kate and the Video Game History Foundation!