The 2024 Game Awards recap: All winners and most surprising reveals

Updated December 13, 2024 at 09:26 AM ET

For a round up of our favorites of 2024, check out NPR's Games We Love.

Astro Bot claimed four wins, including Game of the Year, at the 2024 Game Awards.

The PlayStation 5 exclusive has players run, hover-jump, and rocket-blast to collect stranded robots across a cartoony galaxy. While the game celebrates three decades of Sony's console history, Studio Director Nicolas Doucet credited Nintendo in a misty-eyed acceptance speech (though he avoided mentioning the competitor by name):

"I was a kid in 1989, I got a gray box and there was a game packed in — it was called Super Mario Brothers and it was really, really great," said Doucet. "I want to pay tribute to the company who really showed us innovation and quality consistently, and inspired us to make the game that we made."

Playstack /

Nintendo, meanwhile, went home empty-handed after a night defined by sweeps, surprise reveals, fourth-wall breaks and celebrity appearances from the likes of Harrison Ford and Snoop Dogg.

Balatro, a poker-style game from solo-developer LocalThunk, won "Best Debut Indie," "Best Independent Game" and "Best Mobile Game." Despite this dominance, the representative who accepted awards on LocalThunk's behalf tried to shout out the indie scene more broadly, calling out pixel western Arco by name.

Big-budget games otherwise stole the spotlight. The ceremony began with an official reveal trailer for The Witcher 4 and the surprise announcement of Elden Ring: Nightreign, a co-op spinoff to the 2022 hit. The studio head behind 2021 Game of the Year winner It Takes Two also unveiled the two-player adventure Split Fiction, out next March.

Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul and renowned voice actor Laura Bailey showed off the next game they performed in: a tongue-in-cheek superhero story named Dispatch. And just when the show seemed fresh out of revelations, The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog dropped a cinematic trailer for an entirely new franchise, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

The Game Awards /

Host Geoff Keighley also acknowledged mass layoffs in the industry — something critics lambasted him for ignoring in 2023's ceremony. He even announced a new "Gamechanger Award," which went to Amir Satvat, an employee of gaming tycoon Tencent who also runs a pro-bono support site for developers looking for work.

But it wouldn't be The Game Awards without the Muppets. Garrulous grumps Statler and Waldorf co-opted frequent criticisms of the awards in a series of running gags. After one rapid-fire battery of announcements, they jabbed that "it was like the game commercials with award interruptions!". But as the broadcast stretched toward its fourth hour, they also expressed the exhaustion many in the audience seemed to be feeling, "my Final Fantasy is for this show to be over."

Most decorated games

Astro Bot — 4 wins (including Game of the Year), 7 nominations

Metaphor: ReFantazio — 3 wins, 6 nominations

Balatro — 3 wins, 5 nominations

Black Myth: Wukong — 2 wins, 5 nominations

Helldivers 2 — 2 wins, 4 nominations

Bandai Namco /

Senua's Sage: Hellblade 2 — 2 wins (including lead actor Melina Juergens' win for Best Performance), 4 nominations

A quick note before listing the full winners: NPR is one of the more than 130 outlets that contributed ballots to The Game Awards, which picked winners based on those tallies and an open online voting system.

Full Winners

Game of the Year

• WINNER: Astro Bot
• Balatro
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Metaphor: ReFantazio

Best Game Direction

• WINNER: Astro Bot 
• Balatro
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Metaphor: ReFantazio

Best Narrative

• WINNER: Metaphor: ReFantanzio
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Silent Hill 2

Best Art Direction

• WINNER: Metaphor: ReFantazio
• Astro Bot
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
• Neva

Best Score and Music

• WINNER: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth 
• Astro Bot
• Metaphor: ReFantazio
• Silent Hill 2
• Stellar Blade

Best Audio Design

• WINNER: Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2  
• Astro Bot
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Silent Hill 2

Best Performance

• WINNER: Melina Juergens, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Hannah Telle, Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Briana White, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Humberly González, Star Wars Outlaws
• Luke Roberts, Silent Hill 2

Innovation in Accessibility

• WINNER: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Diablo 4
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• Star Wars Outlaws

Games for Impact

• WINNER: Neva
• Closer the Distance
• Indika
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Tales of Kenzera: Zau

Best Ongoing Game

• WINNER: Helldivers 2
• Destiny 2
• Diablo 4
• Final Fantasy 14
• Fortnite

Best Community Support

• WINNER: Baldur's Gate 3
• Final Fantasy 14
• Fortnite
• Helldivers 2
• No Man's Sky

Best Independent Game

• WINNER: Balatro
• Animal Well
• Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
• Neva
• UFO 50

Best Debut Indie Game

• WINNER: Balatro
• Animal Well
• Manor Lords
• Pacific Drive
• The Plucky Squire

Best Mobile Game

• WINNER: Balatro
• AFK Journey
• Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket
• Wuthering Waves
• Zenless Zone Zero

Best VR/AR Game

• WINNER: Batman: Arkham Shadow 
• Arizona Sunshine Remake
• Asgard's Wrath 2
• Metal: Hellsinger VR
• Metro Awakening

Best Action Game

• WINNER: Black Myth: Wukong
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Helldivers 2
• Stellar Blade
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Best Action/Adventure Game

• WINNER: Astro Bot
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
• Silent Hill 2
• Star Wars Outlaws
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Best RPG

• WINNER: Metaphor: ReFantazio
• Dragon's Dogma 2
• Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Best Fighting Game

• WINNER: Tekken 8 
• Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
• Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO 
• Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics 
• MultiVersus 

Best Family Game

• WINNER: Astro Bot
• Princess Peach: Showtime!
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• The Plucky Squire

Best Sim/Strategy Game

• WINNER: Frostpunk 2 
• Age of Mythology: Retold 
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess 
• Manor Lords 
• Unicorn Overlord

Best Sports/Racing Game

• WINNER: EA Sports FC 25
• F1 24
• NBA 2K25
• Top Spin 2K25
• WWE 2K24

Best Multiplayer Game

• WINNER: Helldivers 2
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• Tekken 8
• Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2

Best Adaptation

• WINNER: Fallout
• Arcane
• Knuckles
• Like a Dragon: Yakuza
• Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

Most Anticipated Game

• WINNER: Grand Theft Auto 6
• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
• Monster Hunter Wilds

Content Creator of the Year

• WINNER: CaseOh
• IlloJuan
• Techno Gamerz
• TypicalGamer
• Usada Pekora

Best Esports Game

• WINNER: League of Legends
• DOTA 2
• Counter-Strike 2
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
• Valorant

Best Esports Athlete

• WINNER: Faker – Lee Sang-hyeok
• 33 – Neta Shapira
• Aleksib – Aleksi Virolainen
• Chovy – Jeong Ji-hoon
• ZyWoO – Mathieu Herbaut
• ZmjjKk – Zheng Yongkang

Best Esports Team

• WINNER: T1 (League of Legends)
• Bilibili Gaming (League of Legends)
• Gen.G (League of Legends)
• NAVI (Counter-Strike)
• Team Liquid (DOTA 2)

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