Guest Post - Hugo Award Gamer Grab Bag 2025: Indelible Indies

We are pleased to share a guest blog post from friend of the blog N. 

The team behind Baldur's Gate 3 attended the
Hugo Awards ceremony in 2024.
(Image by Olav Rokne)

Last year saw the formal introduction of the Best Game or Interactive Work category to the Hugo Awards, set for re-ratification in 2028. This year saw beloved RPG title Baldur’s Gate 3 win the prize (accepted by an attending dev team!), showing that this category does indeed have juice.

Still, questions remain on logistics, and how Worldcon attendees can best evaluate games in the face of the sprawling gaming industry. That’s what we hope to tackle in this (sporadic) series of guest posts, in which we plan to highlight various genre titles worthy of Hugo consideration (and plain worthy of playing). Easing into this inaugural post, here are three acclaimed indie SFF video games of note released so far in 2024 that we think voters would enjoy:

1000xRESIST

Released: May 8

Platforms: PC (Steam, GOG); Switch

Despite being a 3D adventure game set in an ominous post-apocalyptic future with a high-tech aesthetic, 1000xRESIST has no combat. Instead, it is a purely narrative experience, unfurling its story in a way unique to the interactivity of the video game medium. You play as Watcher, a clone whose ALLMOTHER (once an adolescent girl named Iris) was granted immortality after extraterrestrial invaders carried with them a disease to which only she was immune. One of ALLMOTHER’s many clones who populate Earth under the Occupants’ rule, Watcher’s job is to traverse Iris’ memories in order to preserve them, a task that is suddenly given urgency when it becomes apparent that these memories are being tampered with. At its core, 1000xRESIST is a story of the complexities in the Asian diaspora, with allegory both political and personal, woven through a millennium-spanning tale that emerges as one of the most striking genre stories of the year in any format. A good title for a fan of cerebral genre fiction inexperienced in video games to try out.

Nine Sols

Released: May 28

Platforms: PC (Steam)

Nine Sols from Red Candle Games merges
cyberpunk with Taoism.
(Image via Red Candle Games)

The most beloved indie game of the year so far proudly wears its influences on its sleeve and turns them on their head. Nine Sols takes the Soulslike gameplay of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and seamlessly flattens it into a 2D Metroidvania, set in the world of New Kunlun, a futuristic yet barren realm that takes cues from traditional East Asian fantasies and taoism — a mix the game’s Taiwanese developer has dubbed “taopunk.” You play as Yi (named and modeled after the Chinese archer of legend), a vengeful warrior awoken after being in stasis, seeking to take down the titular nine Sols who rule New Kunlun with an iron fist. Nine Sols is a heartrending story about accepting that the past is immutable but realizing that the future isn’t, set against a stunning backdrop of hand-drawn art and colour and carried by lightspeed gameplay.

Tactical Breach Wizards

Released: August 22

Platforms: PC (Steam)

“Wizards with guns” would work as a summation of this game, but if one insists: this is a turn-based tactics game moves with the sensibility of a well-played tabletop campaign, filled to the brim with action-packed gameplay, colourful characters and an irreverent sense of humor, taking place in a genuinely intriguing urban fantasy setting. Fans of Terry Pratchett will get a lot out of this title. After a long disappearance, feared Chronomancer Liv Kennedy re-emerges to start a war with her former employer and allies, forcing her old partner Zan Vesker (a retired Navy Seer) and freelance witch Jen Kellen to assemble a ragtag team of misfit magicians. In line with its genre, Tactical Breach Wizards requires a fair bit of strategizing from the player — figuring out where to place characters, what powers to use, what choices to make. Don’t let that scare you off, though: TBW’s barrier of entry is forgiving, and its gameplay represents an innovative, more streamlined take on the genre. Its overall tone and package (and high amount of defenestration) make for one of the most fun experiences in this year’s flock of games.

Conclusion

In some discussions about Best Game or Interactive Work, there have been some fears about triple-A major studio games dominating the category, due to unfamiliarity with the wider video gaming scene. While these concerns aren’t unfounded, indie gaming has grown in stature and accessibility, and every year there’s rarely a shortage of key genre titles to seek out — they may just need to be highlighted.

Game Over

Last month, Forbes magazine published an article titled “The Best Science Fiction Books of All Time.” Given the superlative and sweeping absolutism of the title, and the narrow scope of his selections, the article was subject to much (deserved) ridicule on Twitter.

We loved Leviathan Wakes,
but is it really better than
The Dispossessed, Foundation
 Gateway or Babel-17?
(Image via Amazon)

Paul Tassi, the article’s author, normally covers video games for Forbes. A quick scan of his work in this area indicates a wealth of knowledge … about video games and the gaming industry. The nuance he brings to reporting on video games is absent in his list of Best Science Fiction Books. 

What Tassi’s poorly-researched listicle shows is that knowledge of one geeky subject matter (video games) does not confer expertise in another (science fiction literature).

This brings us to our main point: Worldcon is not a media convention, it is not a comic book convention, and it is definitely not a gaming convention. Worldcon is a literature-focused science fiction and fantasy convention, and the voters who select each year’s Hugo Awards reflect that. 

The knowledge of one geeky subject matter (science fiction and fantasy literature) does not confer expertise in another (games). It is for this reason that we do not support proposals to add a category for “Best Game Or Interactive Experience.”

Since 1969, scope creep has doubled the number of Hugo Award categories from 10 to 20 (including the two “technically not a Hugo” categories that are voted on and awarded with the rest). Some additions have obviously strengthened the award slate, while we would argue that other more recently-created Hugos are of dubious merit.

Ira Alexandre, who has been the driving force in arguing for a Best Game Hugo, has done their research. They looked at the amount of gaming content at Worldcons, examined the burgeoning field of interactive works, and made some significant arguments in favour of the suggested award.

But none of their work addresses the fact that gaming has never been a primary focus of Worldcon. Alexandre’s number-crunching even showed that the amount of gaming-related programming has never exceeded nine per cent of the convention — and is usually much smaller. We would suggest that the majority of Hugo voters are unlikely to have played a wide-enough and diverse-enough range of games and interactive experiences to make adequate nominations in a category dedicated to gaming. 

It’s already difficult enough for Hugo voters to get through a voting package with six works on the shortlist in 15 categories. Games and Interactive Works individually take up to 150 hours to play through - with a short time between the announcement of the shortlist and the voting deadline, it would be difficult to play through, and be able to adequately assess, even one such game.

Independent game Return of the Obra
Dinn deserves recognition, but are
the Hugos the right place for games?
(Image via obradinn.com)

Science fiction is well-represented in games and interactive experiences — and while there are many awards in gaming, some excellent examples of science fiction get overlooked by the existing gaming awards. We do not believe, however, that such recognition should come from the Hugo Awards.

In their thorough and well-researched 100-page document arguing for the creation of a Hugo Award for Gaming, Alexandre correctly points out the vibrancy of science fiction within the modern independent game industry. However, given the tendency of the Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) category to recognize only those works with the highest budgets, we are unconvinced by Alexandre’s suggestion that independent games would win out over high-profile works with big advertising budgets. If Hugo voters shortlisted a blockbuster like Avengers: Endgame ahead of an independent film like Prospect, why should we believe they would select an independent game like Return of the Obra Dinn ahead of of a blockbuster like God Of War?

We must also ask what this Hugo Award would add to the overall cultural conversation about games and gaming. Again, Alexandre has done the legwork to look at other gaming-related awards: this is a field in which there are numerous high-profile awards that already recognize achievement in the field. From the perspective of those outside of the Worldcon bubble, a Hugo for Best Game or Interactive might appear to be a third-rate and irrelevant award: a Golden Satellite, rather than an Oscar.

The coveted Golden
Satellite award.
(image via
 pressacademy.com)

There are already an excessive number of categories at the Hugo Awards that receive little attention from those being honoured. Last year, only one of the shortlisted Graphic Story authors was in attendance and only one shortlisted Dramatic Presentation (short or long form) was represented by a director. The movie industry doesn’t seem to care about the Hugo Award — we are dubious that the gaming industry would either. 

The push to add a new category to the Hugo Awards in order to recognize games and gaming is one that we fundamentally respect. Proponents of the move are clearly working towards reasonable aims, and are providing some sound arguments in favour of their proposal. The proposal has been tabled for further study and will be discussed further at next year's WSFS business meeting. 

Fundamentally though, we do not believe that the addition of this category would produce the hoped for results, nor would it add to the legitimacy of the overall Hugo Awards process — instead it’s more likely that the Hugos would suffer the same ridicule as Paul Tassi.