You would think that more than a year after going into full release, Baldur's Gate 3 would have finally stopped winning awards. And you would be wrong. On top of all the other gold Larian's epic RPG has claimed over the past 12 months, it has now added a Hugo Award, the most prestigious award in science fiction and fantasy literature, for Best Game or Interactive Work.
First presented in 1953, the Hugo Awards are voted on by the World Science Fiction Convention to recognize excellence across a range of categories, including Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, and numerous others.
A special videogame category was added in 2021 to recognize the increased impact of videogames amidst the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was a one-off: No game-related Hugo was awarded in 2022 or '23.
In 2023, however, Worldcon voted to make the Best Game or Interactive Work a permanent category for 2024—wouldn't you know it, just in time for the Baldur's Gate 3 behemoth to smash through the walls like the Kool-Aid Man and run off with it. BG3 beat out Alan Wake 2 (yet again), Chants of Senaar, Dredge, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for the big prize.
"The Hugo nominees and awards have determined my reading list since forever, so it's a huge honor to be standing here," Larian boss Swen Vincke said during his acceptance speech (via Polygon).
"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."
The words « hugo nominated » determined my reading list since I was a kid. Very grateful for this one. Thank you worldcon and all of the fandom - it was great meeting you all!!! https://t.co/HHhzo37YHPAugust 12, 2024
Vincke isn't kidding when he says Larian wanted to ensure Baldur's Gate 3 was as reactive as possible to player choices: The studio recently revealed that the game's rarest ending has only been unlocked by 34 players—and remember, this is a game that's sold well over 10 million copies. (For a little added context, 1.9 million Baldur's Gate 3 players were turned into a cheese wheel. Which is fine, really: No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.)
I wouldn't dare make any predictions at this point, but I feel like Baldur's Gate 3 has to stop winning awards soon, right? Surely we're reaching the point where somebody, somewhere is going to say, look, we have to start giving trophies to other people. Maybe not, but I don't think Vincke would mind: He said in July that the number of awards Baldur's Gate 3 has won has actually become a bit of a headache, to the point that the studio started sending "rotating teams" to ceremonies to avoid disrupting ongoing development.
One thing the studio did not consider, despite that (admittedly enviable) headache, was ditching any of the events: "Because they're important," Vincke said, "and we really appreciate it."
