On December 19, 2021, Beijing time, the most important award in the science fiction industry, the Hugo Award, announced the list of winners this year. American author Martha Wells' novel "Network Effect" won the "Best Novel" award, in addition, "The Queen of Salt and Wealth" won the "Best Novella", "Two Truths and a Lie" won the "Best Short Story", "Metallic Blood in the Dark" won the "Best Short Story" award, and the "Best Story Series" award was won by Martha Wells's other work, "The Diary of a Killing Robot". But what has attracted the most attention from the gaming industry is that this year's Hugo Awards has added the "Best Game of 2021" award, the winner is "Hades", and the nomination is "Collection! Animal Friends," "The Last Survivor: Part II," "Final Fantasy VII: Remake," "Soul Ferryman," and "Blaseball." Touchle paid attention to this matter in April this year.
The Hugo Awards is an established science fiction award and the most prestigious award in the science fiction world. It takes its name from Hugo Gensbach, the founder of Amazing Story and the father of modern science fiction, and the inaugural Hugo Award was presented at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention in 1953. In 2021, the Hugo Awards decided to set up a temporary one-year game award, the "Best Game of 2021".
The 2021 Hugo Awards ceremony will be held on December 18, local time
According to Colette Fozard, co-chair of the 79th World Science Fiction Convention, which administers and awards the Hugo Awards, "since the beginning of 2020, many of us have spent more time on games than we expected," and this time the Games Awards were created to "give people an opportunity to reward meaningful, joyful and special games of the past year."
So far, the game award has only been decided to be awarded for one year, and considering that some of the games nominated have little to do with science fiction and fantasy, we prefer to understand it as a recommendation from the Hugo Awards judges. Whether The Winner of "Hades" in the end has more to do with fantasy, or whether the judges spent more time on this Roguelike game, we may never know.
In addition to the Hugo Awards, another traditional science fiction award, the Nebula Awards, is also positive about the game awards, and the Nebula Awards have established the "Best Game Writing Award" since 2019, which is intended to reward creators who narrate in science fiction games. The first year, the award went to "Black Mirror: Pandasnake", in 2020 to "Beyond the World", and this year it was "Hades" – in a sense, "Hades" can also be regarded as the "double winner" of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.
"Hades" won the Hugo Award for Best Game of 2021, and the main creator's award speech in the picture is mainly to say that there is a wonderful connection between the game and the fantasy work
A fusion of art forms
Originally, the Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards were both awards for science fiction, the former set up only one "Best Novel" award in the first edition, which was awarded to Alfred Best's "The Destroyed Man", the latter set up 4 sub-awards under the "Best Novel" project, according to "long story", "novella", "short story" and "super short story", and the first "Best Novel" award was awarded to the novel "Dune", which was brought to the big screen again this year.
"Dune" was once again brought to the big screen this year
In the years that followed, the awards also changed, with the Hugo Awards adding the awards for "Best Novella", "Best Novella", "Best Short Story", "Best Short Story" and "Best Fan Magazine" in the decade after its launch, and in 2009, the "Best Picture Story" award was added to the award for outstanding science fiction comics.
The Nebula Awards joined the "Best Screenplay" award in 1974, the Andre Norton Award in 2006 for outstanding, teen-oriented science fiction, the Ray Bradbury Award for theatrical performance in 2010, and the "Best Game Writing" award in 2018. We can see that with the development of creative forms, awards are also evolving, novels, dramas, comics, games, any creator who loves science fiction is likely to get these trophies.
That year's Nippon Nebula Awards Media Department Award was finally won by "Astra on the Other Side"
Awards are not just games
In fact, whether it is a Grammy or an Oscar, "academics" always hold the key position of the award, and people are more willing to believe in an academic award, but there is no common academic standard in the field of games. The closest is the Game Developers' Choice Awards, presented annually by the Game Developers Conference, but the awards are not as visible as the Grammys and Oscars — the most notable awards in the game world are the Game Awards, TGA, a commercial award selected by the media.
In recent years, the credibility of TGA's awards has also declined. The 2020 winner of The Last of Us: Part II is the pinnacle of TGA's skepticism, and from this perspective, we are both skeptical of the selection of business awards and confused about the public's behavior of "expressing love or dislike for games that have not been played." At present, the selection of awards, at least the selection of game awards, will be more or less controversial, and I prefer to regard these awards as "recommendations for some excellent works" rather than "really spelling out a first place".
To this day, The Last of Us: Part II remains controversial
From this point of view, the game awards set up by the Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards are easy to understand, recommending good works to people in a relatively peaceful way, endorsed by decades of fame and credibility. The only risk is that it seems to drain a little credibility of the Hugo Awards to some extent, and a serious fiction award would also be seen as "recommending a game we like by the way."
It wouldn't be a bad thing to have a delicate balance in it, and it wouldn't be bad to even put a game on the hugo awards list for a long time — but in terms of game design, is the Hugo Awards selection committee capable of selecting a good game? Will they focus too much on the plot and neglect the gameplay? To put it bluntly, if we really want to award, we need to give birth to a video game academy, and even come up with a set of quantifiable criteria – this is not necessarily a good idea, in the predominantly academic film and music field, people's doubts about film critics and music critics are gradually emerging, and some "stuffed money" deals have made them no longer as trusted as before. The gaming world has not yet reached the leading step of academics, but the doubts of players are still pervasive in every corner of the industry.
Is the player's voice believable enough? Not quite, the well-known game rating site Metacritic has caused a lot of controversy before. The media ratings and player ratings of The Last of Us: Part II in 2020 were polarized, with many media combining to give a high score of 94/100, while the average player voice was only 4.6/10 points. Objectively speaking, I can understand the voices of players who don't like it, but a score of 4.6 is obviously too low for a game like this. Looking at it again today, the game's player rating has become 5.7 – still not passing, but gradually rising.
In short, whether it is awards, ratings or player voices, we all have urgent problems to solve. If these awards are really needed, perhaps the voices from academia are indispensable. Until then, everything can only grow wildly, making everyone believe what they are willing to believe.