On 21 November, the 42nd Golden Joystick Awards Ceremony was held at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in Central London. This year is arguably the time the longest-running video game award ceremony received the most attention from China. And all for one game, Black Myth: Wukong by Game Science, which won 2 awards: ‘Best Visual Design’ and the ‘Ultimate Game of the Year’ awards.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “Black Myth wins Golden Joystick Game of the Year Award” (#黑神话获金摇杆年度游戏奖#) shot to number 1 on the Hot Search list, garnering 43.07 million views within 24 hours. Many netizens quoted an earlier joke in their comments: now the Golden Joystick has proven itself.
The joke originated a few days earlier when the game was nominated at the Game Awards in 4 categories, including Game of the Year. Western video game media and commentators reported that the nomination was mostly focused on it having a Metacritic score of 81/100, the lowest in Game of the Year nominee history. Meanwhile, with the awards allowing expansions such as downloadable content (DLCs) to compete as games, this paved the way for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree to win Game of the Year. One commentator said that “it’s the awards that need to prove themselves, not Black Myth” in response to the pessimism for Black Myth’s prospect of winning.
The game put out an official statement thanking gamers for voting for Black Myth as the Golden Joystick Awards are won by popular vote alone. The huge fanbase, especially in China, is what propelled the game to the top of the Steam platform ranking and presumably helped with its win. However, even though the game was mostly well received, it was not without its criticism by Western critics, therefore it might be an uphill battle for Black Myth to win the same honour at The Game Awards.
