This year’s Golden Joysticks, the gaming awards handed out by GamesRadar, have been announced and Fortnite has been named the Ultimate Game of the Year. The mobile battle game has been a global sensation this year, but the award comes as something of a surprise to many who expected the critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption 2 to take the top honor. Red Dead Redemption 2 wasn’t ignored, however — it did win the award for Critics Choice. Other notable awards are the Mobile Game of the Year which went to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile, Best Competitive Game which also went to Fortnite, and Esports Game of the Year which went to Overwatch.
These awards demonstrate that something of a divide is opening up between story-based and primarily single player games like Red Dead Redemption and multiplayer online battle games like Fortnite. The history of PC gaming has leaned strongly towards single player games, in part due to fast internet connections being less common in past years than they are now, but in the last decade multiplayer and mobile gaming have exploded in popularity. With the fact that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 does not have a single player mode on top of Fortnite becoming such a sensation, it seems like multiplayer is on course to win this battle in the long run.
There was an award specifically for story-based games given out as well though, and the Best Storytelling award went to God of War, which also picked up honors for Best Visual Design and Best Audio as well as being name PlayStation Game of the Year. The brimming and diverse category of indie games was recognized too with a Best Indie Game award for Dead Cells. Xbox Game of the Year went to Forza Horizon 4, PC Game of the Year went to Subnautica, and Nintendo Game of the Year went to Octopath Traveler.
The Golden Joystick awards are voted for online by members of the public and attract millions of voters each year. The ceremony this year was streamed on Twitch and was held at the Bloomsbury Big Top on 16 November 2018, hosted by Danny Wallace.
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