Gamescom’s August 27th Opening Night Live 2020 stream was… quite a treat.
After the announcements of many major titles, The Sims 4: Star Wars Journey to Batuu and new details about the Dragon Age 4 title we really didn’t know what else to expect. Everyone was riled up for more announcements and awards and then the news came.
2 hours and 14 minutes in Cyberpunk 2077 was announced as the Best Sony PlayStation Game of 2020.
“Best Game” Winner is Unreleased?
Well… to us, fans of Cyberpunk 2077, this award is a pleasant recognition of what the game has achieved even while in development. Gamescom’s awards are based on user voting, so this nomination and award can be taken as community’s intuitive awareness of and excitement for Cyberpunk 2077. In that case, yes! The hype is real, PlayStation voters!
But, if we are to take the award at its stated value… how could “the best game” for any platform be an unreleased title? What is the criteria for such an evaluation? What gameplay do we evaluate against that criteria? Do demo footage snippets and rare testimonies (of those who got to play 4 hours into the game) count? How can participants judged that an unreleased game, a game that they have never got to properly experience, is the “best game”?
It’s understandable why for some this announcement only diminished the value of the award. If any game can be nominated and picked through a public polling process (through the website’s chat bot, as we have found out), why even bother? The results could be as chaotic and inaccurate as a Reddit poll.
Then, Does the Award Matter?
Even CD Projekt Red probably understands that beyond a cool story (“we got an award before the game was even released!”) this isn’t much to be bragging about. This award does not reflect what the community thinks about the final product, the released Cyberpunk 2077 coming in November, but more so about how invested a lot of PlayStation fans are in trying the game out.
Really, the award makes much more sense as “The Most Anticipated Game for Sony PlayStation 2020.”
But, as such, does this award mean much for the community? I think it does! Amidst discussions of the next Dragon Age title, Doom Eternal DLC, Fall Guys season 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, an amusing (if not a little ridiculous) The Sims 4 expansion, Cyberpunk 2077 announcement takes its deserved place amidst the largest and the most anticipated, even without any new footage or details to show (which is a bummer).
It’s not a new information by any means — we all understand just how much hype Cyberpunk 2077 has generated in the past few years. For some of us it’s quite annoying to hear people share wild expectations of the game’s scale or keep bringing it up without anything to add to the conversation.
And yet, Cyberpunk 2077’s Best Sony PlayStation Game award from Gamescom is… a bit of an odd piece. Something a bit controversial, but also something a bit amusing and inspiring. Against all logic, some Cyberpunk 2077 fans just don’t seem to care. For them the anticipation and the community interaction behind this game has already kind of become a fun experience of its own.
