It’s the end of the year, and it’s that time of the year where we at Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters announce the Game Of The Year Awards.
2024 continues to be a terrible year for video game developers, as the pandemic-induced consolidation honeymoon is over and game companies are cutting costs. These companies forgot that the developers that poured their soul is what makes games games. On the brighter side, the result of such talents shine bright, as 2024 has countless great games of various scales.
We’ll be updating this hub page with all the announced winners. Check back every day at 9PM GMT +8 for new award winners. Game Of The Year will be announced on December 28.
GM GOTY Awards 2024 Rules
Here are some ground rules that the Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2024 adhere to:
- The judging panel comprised of all the editorial team of Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters (which currently consists of three people)
- The shortlisting of the Top 30/Best 30 games is done before deliberations start
- At least five other games, separate from the Top 30, are nominated for the Trashfire Award, highlighting the disappointing releases of the year
- The cut-off date for eligible games for this year is December 9, 2024. Games released on December 10 onwards will qualify for next year’s awards.
- Games must be released in full (no Early Access games)
- Games that made an impact during Early Access in previous years can get nominated after their full 1.0 release
- At least one panellist must vouch for a game that is in the Top 30
- Games that no panellists have played (but followed closely via streams/socials/community sites/etc.) are still eligible
- Each award can only have one winner and at most four runners-up, making a total of five nominations
- Deliberations for each category winner are done as part of an episode on dia.log – The Gamer Matters Podcast
- The shortlisted Top 30 games also get its own episode prior to the deliberations, justifying why the games made the list
- Winners of awards are entirely subjective. Results are subject to the many biases and preferences of the individuals in the editorial team
- It reflects the overall sentiment of the game within Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters. These are our favourite games of the year
- Review scores are entirely ignored during deliberations
GM GOTY Awards Game Of The Years
- 2023: Armored Core VI Fires Of Rubicon
- 2022: Need For Speed Unbound
- 2021: Psychonauts 2
- 2020: Yakuza: Like A Dragon
- 2019: Control
- 2018: Monster Hunter World
- 2017: Nier Automata
GM GOTY Awards 2024 Award Categories
2024 has one interesting shake-up: we replaced Best Racing Game, the only permanent genre-based award category, with another genre-based award: Best RPG. There were not enough good racing games released this year and the team played a bountiful amount of RPGs, as reflected in the Top 30 list.
Best Game On Game Pass has evolved to be Best Game On A Game Sub. With the proliferation of more game subscription services, and Game Pass bringing less new game each month, we’ve expanded the scope of the award to allow other gems offered on a “game sub” as we call it, a chance to shine.
This year’s wildcard category is Best Soundtrack. Good music was mostly discussed in the context of the bigger Best Aesthetic category, but we feel this year has produced amazing original soundtracks that we feel deserve a spotlight.
Here are all the award categories available on GM GOTY Awards 2024:
- Best Game On A Game Sub (changed)
- Best Meme Generator
- Best RPG (changed)
- Best Soundtrack (Wildcard)
- Best Aesthetic
- Best Story
- Best Indie Game
- Trashfire Award
- Game Of The Year
Top 30 Games Of 2024
- 1000xResist
- Astro Bot
- Baladins
- Balatro
- Buckshot Roulette
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Content Warning
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Frostpunk 2
- Golden Lap
- Granblue Fantasy Relink
- Helldivers 2
- Indiana Jones And The Golden Circle
- Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Metaphor: ReFantazio
- MLB The Show 24
- Mullet Madjack
- Persona 3 Reload
- Rise Of The Ronin
- Satisfactory
- Schim
- Sonic X Shadow Generations
- STALKER 2 Heart Of Chornobyl
- Stellar Blade
- Tekken 8
- Unicorn Overlord
- Visions of Mana
- Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2
- Zenless Zone Zero