What are your biggest snubs for the 2024 Game Awards?

This is the tenth year of The Game Awards and Geoff Keighley’s baby has grown into an entire industry like the Oscars and Grammys. Like those other medias’ award shows the nominations — and the show itself — are not without controversy and while 2024 has been a little quiet gaming-wise there’s always going to be something upset gaming fans.

The curveball this year was the “clarification” last week that DLC and expansions can be evaluated and nominated as if they were normal titles. The reason for this clarification was made obvious when Elder Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree received a Game of the Year nomination (among others). This of course has led to some criticism, but frankly I don’t have an issue with it. I haven’t played either Elder Ring or the DLC but the reviews for the latter are impressive, and the game length is nothing to scoff at. If it was only five hours of additional story and a few collectibles I would think the criticism was warranted, but there seems as much effort put into it as other AAA titles.

The biggest snub I see is Persona 3 Reload which has received very favorable reviews and has expanded content not so dissimilar from what Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has done. I do feel there were two things working against it: one, the game released all the way back on February 1 and that’s a lifetime ago; and two, Atlus and its parent company Sega seem to be more inclined to promote the new IP of Metaphor: ReFantazio (which did garner six nominations). Still it seems an odd omission to not receive a single nomination.

Sometimes the fiercest fights are in the smaller categories

One title I wish had received more love was Tales of Kenzera: ZAU which is on my shortlist for personal Game of the Year. It did receive a nomination in the Games for Impact category — where it faces an uphill battle attempting to defeat the latest Life is Strange game — but didn’t get nods in Best Indie or Best Debut, both categories I felt it could compete in. It doesn’t help that the similar Prince of Persia the Lost Crown received a couple nominations and while it’s a good game there’s not as much to recommend it (in my opinion) as there is for Tales of Kenzera.

The category I have the biggest issue with is probably Best Ongoing Game. Look, I like Final Fantasy 14 a lot, it’s why I keep coming back to it. But Dawntrail is probably the weakest expansion FF14 has had since Stormblood, and I felt both Guild Wars 2‘s expansion Janthir Wilds  and The War Within were better experiences. Meanwhile the World of Warcraft team has added so much content and so many new play options in the past year it’s bizarre to think it doesn’t deserve a nomination. And before you accuse me — a writer at Blizzard Watch — of being a shill, I’ll point out that I don’t think Diablo 4 deserves to be nominated either.

Fortunately, the Player Choice category may give us a chance to undo some of these snubs; we’ll have to see which games’ fan bases are most motivated to mount a campaign.

Those are my thoughts on the award snubs. What about you? Which game(s) do you feel should’ve gotten more love and attention? Are you as upset as I am that Coffee Talk: Tokyo and Rift of the Necrodancer aren’t on the list for Most Anticipated? Or do you not care about awards shows at all?