Supergiant’s mythological roguelike Hades is the first game to win a Hugo award for literary achievement.
The Hugo awards have been celebrating literary works of science fiction and fantasy since 1953, and this year they chose to include a “Best Video Game Category.” While this is currently a single-time award, a permanent Best Game or Interactive Experience is being considered.
Hades took home the award, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, The Last Of Us 2, and Spirirtfarer also up for consideration.
Wish I could have attended the #HugoAwards in person. I wasn't able to make an acceptance speech there on behalf of the team though did have a few words here. I'm grateful that the awards are recognizing work in this category, much less the work we did! pic.twitter.com/S9bfSp1i8H
— Greg Kasavin (@kasavin) December 19, 2021
“Since early 2020, many of us have spent more time gaming than we ever expected.” Co-chair Colette Fozard said, “This award will offer fans an opportunity to celebrate the games that have been meaningful, joyful, and exceptional over this past year.”
The official Twitter account for the event tweeted to say, “there is no permanent Hugo Award category to recognise this interactive form of storytelling with which so many fans of the genre create and engage.”
However, this may not always be the case, “The Hugo Study Committee is also considering Best Game or Interactive Experience as a potential permanent category.”
In August of this year, Hades also claimed nine awards from the inaugural Global Industry Game Awards. The event was created to highlight “outstanding achievements in fields related to art, writing and narrative, engineering and technology, audio, design, support, and miscellaneous categories.” Hades was awarded for 2D animation, 2D character design, UI art, voice acting, systems design, UI/UX, dialogue, narrative design, and representation.
In other news, it is believed that Mass Effect 4 will use Unreal Engine 5, according to a recent job listing. While the original trilogy of Mass Effect games used Unreal Engine 3, Andromeda used EA’s Frostbite engine, which was apparently hard to work with at the time of development.
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