The Hugo Awards announced the first winner of its newly created Best Video Game award, and it’s Hades, the roguelite action RPG from developer Supergiant Games. Though the Hugo Awards is a literary awards show dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, this year it branched out into the world of video games and gave Hades another chance to make history.
Supergiant creative director Greg Kasavin reacted to his studio’s game winning a Hugo Award in a tweet, expressing regret that he couldn’t be there to accept on behalf of the team, but shared his gratitude at video games finally having a space at the storied awards show and thanking it for his studio’s work in particular.
Wish I could have attended the #HugoAwards in person. I wasn’t able to make an acceptance speech there on behalf of the team though did have a few words here. I’m grateful that the awards are recognizing work in this category, much less the work we did! pic.twitter.com/S9bfSp1i8H
— Greg Kasavin (@kasavin) December 19, 2021
Other games nominated for the historic first prize were Final Fantasy 7 Remake, The Last of Us: Part 2, Spiritfarer, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Blaseball, all 2020 games, as the Hugo Awards looks at works from the previous year.
This year’s Hugo Awards, which take place at the yearly World Science Fiction Convention, represent a further branching out for the venerable awards association, which has added categories like Best Fanzine, though it’s taking heat recently for being sponsored by arms manufacturer Raytheon this year.
Hades, meanwhile, has vacuumed up the awards and accolades since being released from early access this year, not to mention the fact that it’s extremely popular. And that was before it even arrived on PlayStation or Xbox platforms. It’s wild to think about how the game could have been different if Supergiant went in a different direction.
Hades is available now for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC.