The best games that dominated our conversations, social media, and shitposts throughout the year.
This award is less about the game, and more about the community surrounding it. This is to celebrate the year’s of shiposts, memes and silly talk surrounding the games community that has either got us engaged, lmao’d and following where the inside jokes go.
2024 took a nosedive in how much quality memes and shitposts we saw, as social media (in particular that site many still refer as Twitter) is now filled with negative vitriol dominating discourses about some games. It’s bad enough that we can’t name enough games with a healthy, fun, community discourse on our radar throughout the years that we had to bring in the previously banned Yakuza/Like A Dragon series entry of the year to come seat at the table of nominees.
Past Winners: Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon (2023), Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (2022), Resident Evil Village (2021), Like A Dragon (née Yakuza) series (2020), Untitled Goose Game (2019)
Best Meme Generator Nominees
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Helldivers 2
- Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Metaphor: ReFantazio
- Tekken 8
How The Winner Is Decided (Deliberations Summary)
The year started strong with A-class meme-game from the Tekken community. From the relentless “I’m not going to sugarcoat it” posts to fans fawning/gawking/speculating on newcomer Reina. On let’s not forget those self-affirming QTEs.
The Like A Dragon games are a limitless well of meme potential. The most impactful one isn’t really someone crafting a shitpost, it’s just the game transitioning into a battle while letting you know the enemy type, and they are labelled as “Assholes”. Though that one account supposedly by the lad himself Ichiban Kasuga is unreal. Glad to know dude managed to pick up that new Dragon Quest game, but is that a really dedicated fan or an RGG employee doing those posts?
(Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is allowed to be on the nominations list this year, but as per the ban, the series is not allowed to win this award anymore, otherwise there won’t be any new other winners!)
The next months after was also going strong, with Final Fantasy fans losing their minds with the abundance in fanservice Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had in store for them (shoutout to that one guy who lost it after seeing Cloud being kissed). And everybody was blown away by Helldivers 2 existing. From gamers putting out Hollywood-grade performance over voice calls to gamers bickering which left they are referring to, it’s all good fun. And Malevelon Creek is now the stuff of legends, you needed to be there in Space Vietnam to feel the horror.
But after that, the social media sites felt like it was poisoned, burying down all the fun fan art, silly shitposts and memes as some folks feel that there’s an agenda in pushing a specific worldview has dominated the gaming world. Doing so in a not-fun way at that, too.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is one of the few that managed to still have a safe space for memes in the later part of the year. Those no-fun-havers couldn’t stir the pot of a unabashedly politically charged game, and so the fun memes and posts are still easily found without having to read some dumb take by someone who probably didn’t even play those games they’re criticising.
But when deciding the winner of this, it was a unanimous decision, there’s one game that truly benefited from the power of memes, generating PlayStation’s fastest-selling game ever. It lost its ways months after, but that initial boom of interest is still a highlight of 2024.
Best Meme Generator Winner
Congratulations for Helldivers 2 for winning Best Meme Generator! The Ministry Of Truth has done a tremendous job in spreading propaganda the good word of Managed Democracy. And now is still a good time to do your part as a Helldiver. For freedom, for prosperity, for Super Earth!
Check out the Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2024 hub for full list of awards.