I’ll be honest with you, I actually couldn’t think of any other thing to talk about aside from this atrocity and since I’ve been thinking about how Fortnite, game that came out in 2017, was able to win an award for 2018, I figured I’ll talk about it. The Golden Joysticks may have thought that because Fortnite is such an international sensation that they could make an exception but that undermines the entire point of the award in the first place and robs other games the opportunity to win, which I simply can’t agree with it.
So if you weren’t aware of this, The 36th Golden Joystick Awards 2018 took place on the November 16th and while most of the nominees and winners were, for the most part acceptable and probably deserved, one simple did not. Fortnite, a game that game out in 2017, was somehow able to out-best games like God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 to claim the Ultimate Game of the Year award for 2018. Now, when I first heard about this, I shrugged it off. I didn’t believe it and just assumed it won some other award of less significant. It wasn’t until I started seeing discussions creep up online of this that I decided to check it out.
I don’t care how “great” or “fun” Fortnite is as a game, the bottom line is that it did not qualify to earn that award and frankly I can’t recognize that victory. I understand that the Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People’s Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony that allows the general public to vote online, but my point is that Fortnite shouldn’t have been qualified to earn that award in the first place. By definition of its own name, the Ultimate Game of the Year implies that the award is given to the games that have been release in the same year of the award. Fortnite is an online video game first released in 2017, therefore already disqualifying it from being able to even be nominated in the first place.
So what, we’re bending the rules and making exceptions now when a game is popular?Had this been in 2017, I wouldn’t question it one bit (OK maybe if there was a better game) but this award took place in 2018, so only games that came out in that year should be qualified. It’s that simple and not hard to understand.
You know how in the Oscars, people would say that an actor or actress was robbed of an Oscar? Well, this is literally the same thing, God of War, Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption were robbed of an Ultimate of the Year award. I mean, what’s stopping Fortnite from winning again next year? There’s boundaries that need to be kept and honestly the integrity of this award has shifted in my eyes. Which begs the question, why did they even include it in the roster?
I will not acknowledge Fortnite as Ultimate Game of the Year 2018.
