‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Was So Good the Hugo Awards Made Best Game a Permanent Award
It’s been out for a year, and Baldur’s Gate 3 just can’t stop winning awards, taking home a 2024 Hugo Award for its writing.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is an amazing game. Like Skyrim, it’s probably going to be game of the year for at least three years running. Not literally, but it’s the game you keep coming back to and keep finding new things about, so even though it’s been out for a year now, it still feels like it’s newly come out in many ways.
One of those ways is that it keeps winning awards. This year, it took home a prestigious literary award, a Hugo Award, for Best Game or Interactive Work.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Wins Hugo Award
If you’re not familiar with the Hugo Awards, they are basically the Oscars but for sci-fi and fantasy books. Only back in 2021, as a one-off affair to celebrate the impact of video games during the lockdown era of the pandemic, did they add a special video game category. It went to Hades, and with good reason.
But that was a one-time deal. No one won a video game Hugo in 2022 or 2023, which was a bummer. But in 2023, at Worldcon, they did vote to make Best Game or Interactive Work a permanent category, starting in 2024 onward.
Why is that worth noting?
Reader, Baldur’s Gate 3 came out August 3, 2023. Worldcon convened October 18-22nd 2023. This meant that the Worldcon organizers had to interrupt their playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 in order to host the convention, which was mired in controversy owing to censorship. But the fact remains.
Before Baldur’s Gate 3 came out, video games were a one-off thing. After Baldur’s Gate 3 came out? Video games are basically books, as far as literary prizes are concerned. That’s how good it is. Also, the acceptance speech that Larian CEO Swen Vincke gave outlines the difficulties in game writing.
“The Hugo nominees and awards have determined my reading list since forever, so it’s a huge honor to be standing here.
Videogame writing is often underestimated. It is very very very hard work. For Baldur’s Gate 3 we had to create over 174 hours of cinematics just to be able to respect the choices of the players and to make sure that each and every single one of them would have an emotional story that was reflecting their choices and their agency. It takes a very long time, it takes a very large team […] It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of talent. So I’m very happy for all of them and for all of the team back home that we can get this, and very grateful to the fandom.”
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All that to say it’s probably time to start another playthrough.
