Sony PlayStation fans, statistically one of the most loyal and devoted kind of brand loyalists are upset over their precious game taking home zero victories at this years Game Awards.
Despite being nominated in seven categories at The Game Awards, the game failed to secure a single award. This outcome has left Sony fans disappointed, with numerous voices asserting that Spider-Man 2 deserved more recognition and better treatment.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 copies essentially every single mechanic from its predecessor, doubled down on criticized story missions such as “stealth” sections featuring Mary Jane, who in turn had been further westernized with a more masculine appearance, the games story and premise being extremely lousy, depicting Peter Parker as a useless retard who seemingly has to be saved by Miles Morales who then becomes the new Spider-Man moving forward.
Oh yeah, and something about featuring an obscene amount of progressive side-missions, reuniting a young high school gay couple. A series of side missions involves playing as a black, deaf, mute feminist activist poet, tasked with spray-painting anti-racist BIPOC-themed graffiti throughout New York City.
Who wouldn’t want more of that experience?
The game itself offers barely anything new and original from the previous game, which itself was merely just the Marvel brand slapped on-top of games such as Prototype and Infamous.
Beyond its Game of the Year nomination, Spider-Man 2 received nods in various categories, including Best Game Direction, Best Audio Design, Best Narrative, and more. The multiple nominations raised expectations among fans, who were hopeful that the game would secure victories in at least a few of these categories.
Nevertheless, despite its lack of originality and emphasis on woke themes and values, Alan Wake 2, a game that appeared to generate little excitement upon release and seemingly disappeared in terms of actual players within a week, secured multiple victories while the even more progressive Spider-Man 2 received no awards.
Shortly after the event, discussions emerged on various social media platforms as fans debated whether Spider-Man 2 was overlooked at The Game Awards 2023.
Predictably, some fans expressed significant disappointment, while many others were put into a fit of rage questioning the ethics and authenticity of a rigged commercialized campaign that disguises itself as a game award ceremony.
Individuals such as “Sadot the Gamer”, of which has over 73,000 subscribers on YouTube has been on a merciless shilling campaign in defense of Spider-Man 2’s lack of victories at the rigged award ceremony, by highlighting the differences in gameplay between a truthful role playing game and a button mashing Prototype clone.
But of course the jokes seem to write themselves, as this “Sadot” individual quite literally has a pinned tweet on their profile that showcases some free Spider-Man “swag” that he received.
So obviously, the game made by the company that sends him free gifts should have won Game of the Year.
The title stands as one of Insomniac’s highest-rated releases, drawing millions of sales in its first week alone, but obviously as we’ve seen with Call of Duty developers throwing a bitch fit over a mundane joke, sales figures alone doesn’t make a product good.
The outcome has obviously surprised Sony fans, with many asserting that Spider-Man 2 deserved recognition in at least a few award categories, however the consensus among even Reddit affirms that Spider-Man 2 wasn’t deemed worthy of winning the majority of awards it was nominated for, including Game of the Year.
Some argued that the competition in 2023 was exceptionally fierce, making it challenging for a game like Spider-Man 2 to distinguish itself, given that majority of its problems that players complain about was its woeful narrative story with Insomniac Games allegedly playing it “too safe”.
In the end, Baldur’s Gate 3, a game featuring actual bear fucking secured the Game of the Year title, while a more unexpected success like Alan Wake 2 claimed Best Narrative. This underscored the notion that Insomniac’s work needed something beyond recycling the same mantra to stand out from the rest.
Spider-Man 2 might be winless at The Game Awards with a 0-7 record, but this pattern is not unfamiliar for Insomniac Games. The trend appears to continue with their recent releases, exemplified by 2021’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, which was nominated in six categories but left the event without securing any wins.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales from 2020 found itself nominated in only three categories at the Game Awards for Best Performance, Best Action/Adventure, and Player’s Voice and yet it left the event without winning in any of them.
The 2018 release of Spider-Man, widely considered a vastly superior title compared to the sequel, received nominations in 7 categories but failed to secure any wins. Interestingly, the game had even been nominated the previous year in the “most anticipated game” category, but it didn’t win then either.
The 2016 reboot of Ratchet and Clank, along with its accompanying movie tie-in, was widely criticized as lackluster and soulless. It seemed to disregard the essence of a cohesive narrative, disappointing fans of the iconic franchise. Ironically, the PS4 version boasted visually impressive graphics, but players found fault in its choppy performance as the game ran at a framerate of 30 fps, contrasting with the original PlayStation 2 version that ran at a smoother 60 fps.
Either way, the game was only nominated twice and won nothing. The same can be said about their 2014 release of Sunset Overdrive, which was also nominated twice and won nothing.
In summary, Insomniac Games has a dismal track record at The Game Awards, having amassed a total of 28 nominations without securing a single victory over the past decade.
