Live: The Game Awards 2024: Astro Bot, Call of Duty nominated for video game awards at Los Angeles ceremony

A special announcement to kick off the awards!

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound coming summer (in the US)  2025!

Josh reckons DLC yeah nah for Game of the Year

DLC shouldn’t be included, half the work of the game is already done and it’s still fundamentally the same game as the one that won GOTY in 2022.

– Jenson

Give DLC its own award Josh reckons

I think there should be a new category added for best new DLC / Expansion and also another category for best new Remake / Remaster. I think it would help more clearly define what would be eligible for GOTY nomination

– Josh

Damo reckons fair go on DLC up for GOTY

I don’t see why a full blown DLC can’t be up for the award. It’s only a talking point because the rest of the list is a bit ‘meh’ and Erdtree therefore has a real chance

– Damo

While the running order of the awards is under tight wraps, we do know some of the treats in-store for us!

Snoop Dogg will make an appearance with a new song, Twenty One Pilots will perform tracks from their soundtrack to Netflix’s Arcane … and an in-house orchestra will play renditions of some of the nominees from the best score and music categories.

Continuing with the long-running tradition, The Muppets are back.

In 2018 Pepe the King Prawn joined the line-up of presenters and ever since, a different character has the honour. This year, Statler and Waldorf will take the stage alongside Laura Bailey, Hideo Kojima and Aaron Paul. As always, the event will be hosted by Geoff Keighley.

Personally, I hope Laura Bailey will present exclusively as CR’s Jester.

Also, I thought there must be some lore to the repeat invitations to The Muppets, but I couldn’t find any origin story, maybe Geoff just really likes them?

With five minutes to go, there is no GOTY competition without some controversy and this year Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is up for the top gong. It’s a big expansion, no doubt, but it’s an expansion on a game that released a couple of years ago. It’s got people going like this

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Should DLC be eligible? Let me know in the comments. Just a reminder Elden Ring won Game of the Year in 2022.

Here are our contenders

• Astro Bot
• Balatro
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
• Metaphor: ReFantazio

Someone is hoping those Half-Life 3 rumours prove true, eh G-Man?

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I’ve been seeing rumours that a certain Gabe Newell may be present. Very intriguing if this turns out to be the case

-Rumour Fan

The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

-G Man

What’s the Games Awards without a big pot of rumour-stew? Well, we’re here to fan the flames and make that baby boil.

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Here are some of the alleged drops we’ll see today:

• Switch 2 release date
• It Takes 2 developer’s new game title reveal. (according to Dealabs it’ll be called Split Fiction)
• The second GTA6 trailer
• Borderlands 4 trailer
• Resident Evil 9 announcement
• Bloodborne new development. A sequel? A remake?

And before I could finish my list, Gianni yelled “HOLLOWKNIGHT” at me … let me COOK Gianni, I wasn’t done.

• Hollow Knight Silksong release date

You might be lucky Jenson, Mike Bodie, one of the actors, listed Ace Combat 8 on his resume and didn’t do a perfect job covering that up … whoops, but here’s hoping for your sake!

Yes! The Plucky Squire is a 2D-3D adventure game that was made by a small team, with one of the two co-founders based in Brisbane. They are nominated for Best Debut Indie Game and Best Family Game.

And you might be surprised to know that blockbuster Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was made in part by Sledgehammer in Melbourne, so we’ll count that as a local game just like we claim Russell Crowe and Sam Neill. COD: BLOPS 6 is up for four awards, vying for Best Audio, Multiplayer and Action game as well as Innovation in Accessibility.

We’ve still got a little bit of time until the festival of Geoff begins, so why not check out this story I put together earlier this year.

Did you know that there are more and more Australian made games that actually feature local towns and cities? These games are set in places like South Yarra, Merredin or little towns on the Sunshine Coast.

 Hi I’m Gianfranco Di Giovanni and I cover video games for the ABC. Today Rachel Stowers and I are excited to watch three hours of adverts interspersed with the occasional award. 

We’d love to hear from you today, make sure you leave us a comment as we go. What are you excited for?

One thing I’m sure we can predict is Geoff has just structured the event as a way to hang out with his best mate Hideo Kojima on stage, and I’m here for it.

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