The Insomnia Game of the Year Awards (1962-2024)
Last updated: October 22, 2023
2024 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S KINGSLAYER
Runner-ups: Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 & Squadron 42
Please note that the 2024 titles are merely currently under consideration and by no means constitute the final choices. Check the detailed updates in the forum thread [ > ] in the coming weeks and months to follow the evolving evaluation process throughout the year.
2023 - MENYR
Runner-ups: Beneos's Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd & Baldur's Gate III
2022 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S ULTIMATE EDITION
Runner-ups: Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game & Blade Runner: The Immortal Game
2021 - TALESPIRE
Runner-ups: Starbase & Kaettekita Makaimura2020 - ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S BATTLEGROUNDS
Runner-ups: Cyberpunk 2077 & The Last of Us Part II2019 - DISCO ELYSIUM
Runner-ups: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice & Outer Wilds2018 - ATLAS
Runner-ups: Kingdom Come: Deliverance & Marvel's Spider-Man2017 - LIFE IS FEUDAL: MMO
Runner-ups: Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 & Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands2016 - UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF'S END
Runner-ups: Tiger Knight: Empire War & Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun2015 - DYING LIGHT
Runner-ups: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege & The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt2014 - PLANETARY ANNIHILATION
Runner-ups: Divinity: Original Sin & Wolfenstein: The New Order2013 - RUST
Runner-ups: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance & The Wonderful 1012012 - FACTORIO
Runner-ups: Spec Ops: The Line & Dragon's Dogma2011 - HARD CORPS: UPRISING
Runner-ups: Deus Ex: Human Revolution & Batman: Arkham City2010 - VANQUISH
Runner-ups: Red Seeds Profile & Lost Planet 22009 - DEMON'S SOULS
Runner-ups: Bayonetta & Batman: Arkham Asylum2008 - FAR CRY 2
Runner-ups: Sins of a Solar Empire & Mount & Blade2007 - SUPREME COMMANDER
Runner-ups: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl & Operation Darkness2006 - GEARS OF WAR
Runner-ups: Dead Rising & God Hand2005 - WANDA TO KYOZOU
Runner-ups: Biohazard 4 & Killer 72004 - FAR CRY
Runner-ups: Fantasy Grounds & Ninja Gaiden2003 - PLANETSIDE
Runner-ups: EVE Online & Ketsui ~Kizuna Jigokutachi~2002 - GUNVALKYRIE
Runner-ups: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem & Tekki2001 - GRAND THEFT AUTO III
Runner-ups: Max Payne & Halo: Combat Evolved2000 - DEUS EX
Runner-ups: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn & Jet Set Radio1999 - SHENMUE ISSHOU: YOKOSUKA
Runner-ups: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Planescape: Torment1998 - METAL GEAR SOLID
Runner-ups: Baldur's Gate & Rittai Ninja Katsugeki Tenchu1997 - AGE OF EMPIRES
Runner-ups: Fallout & Total Annihilation1996 - BIO HAZARD
Runner-ups: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu & Command & Conquer: Red Alert1995 - PHANTASMAGORIA
Runner-ups: Heroes of Might and Magic & Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness1994 - MASTER OF MAGIC
Runner-ups: UFO: Enemy Unknown & Jagged Alliance1993 - SAMURAI SPIRITS
Runner-ups: Merchant Prince & NBA Jam1992 - DUNE II: THE BUILDING OF A DYNASTY
Runner-ups: Dune & Super Mario Kart1991 - SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION
Runner-ups: Street Fighter II: The World Warrior & Sonic the Hedgehog1990 - WING COMMANDER
Runner-ups: Super Mario World & The Secret of Monkey Island1989 - THE SUPER SHINOBI
Runner-ups: Herzog Zwei & SimCity1988 - POOL OF RADIANCE
Runner-ups: Daimakaimura & Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny1987 - SID MEIER'S PIRATES!
Runner-ups: Double Dragon & R-Type1986 - DEFENDER OF THE CROWN
Runner-ups: Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun & OutRun1985 - SUPER MARIO BROTHERS
Runner-ups: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar & Green Beret1984 - KING'S QUEST
Runner-ups: The Lords of Midnight & The Ancient Art of War1983 - NOBUNAGA NO YABOU
Runner-ups: M.U.L.E. & Ultima III: Exodus1982 - PITFALL!
Runner-ups: Dungeons of Daggorath & Zaxxon1981 - WIZARDRY: PROVING GROUNDS OF THE MAD OVERLORD
Runner-ups: Utopia & Eastern Front (1941)1980 - MYSTERY HOUSE
Runner-ups: Rogue & The Prisoner1979 - TEMPLE OF APSHAI
Runner-ups: Akalabeth: World of Doom & Flight Simulator1978 - SPACE INVADERS
1977 - ZORK
1976 - ADVENTURE
1975 - MORIA
1974 - DND
1973 - MAZE WAR
1972 - STAR TREK
1971 - CIVILIZATION
1970 - COMPUTER SPACE
1969 - SPACE TRAVEL
1968 - HAMURABI
1967 - BASKETBL
1966 - BINGO
1965 - BASBAL
1964 - N/A
1963 - N/A
1962 - SPACEWAR!
Introduction to the Insomnia 1962-2024 Game of the Year Awards
Most men represent pieces and fragments of man: one has to add them up for a complete man to appear. Whole ages, whole peoples are in this sense somewhat fragmentary; it is perhaps part of the economy of human evolution that man should evolve piece by piece. But that should not make one forget for a moment that the real issue is the production of the synthetic man; that lower men, the tremendous majority, are merely preludes and rehearsals out of whose medley the whole man appears here and there, the milestone man who indicates how far humanity has advanced so far.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
It was time Insomnia got into the list-making racket. After all, it was inevitable. Everyone else does such a bad job of it, that the artform has been screaming for years for someone to come in and correct this. Things weren't always so bad, by the way. Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame, to mention the greatest example, was my favorite such list when I was growing up, and it still holds up admirably today (as it should, given that it was made by yesteryear's hardcore gamers as opposed to today's greedy casuals). But all of that belongs to the distant past now. To understand the kind of competition I am facing today, consider that the last PC Gamer top 100 list I bothered to look at had Papers, Please higher than Planescape: Torment. In other words, there is no competition. No one else makes these kinds of lists anymore, they only make parodies of them.
One thing I need to make clear before we proceed with the main event is that this list is, and will always remain, a work in progress, quite simply because I have not played all the games ever made, and I never will. This means that, unlike everyone else's choices, mine are all provisional, and will remain so until I am dead, at which point people will have to "fork" my list, in the language of computer programmers, and fight over who is my worthiest successor, and hence whose list is the worthiest. Until then, there is not the slightest chance that any other similar list will outreach this, or even come anywhere near its unprecedented breadth and scope, and its immeasurable value. It would in fact not be too much of an overstatement to say that, for all intents and purposes, there are no other such lists besides mine.
Another thing to note is that there is a bias on this list towards new experiences (new and at the same time better, not "new" as in "gimmicky", which is the way scammer developers employ the term. So yes, a walking-forward simulator might indeed be a "new" experience in a way, but it is a retarded one, so there's no question of it being on the same level, never mind better, than existing ones). So Age of Empires II, to give an example, may indeed be a better game than the original, but it's not going to knock Shenmue, Alpha Centauri or Torment off the list for that year, considering I had already played the original by the time the sequel came out, and given a choice between playing the sequel (which is merely a slightly improved version of the original, like most good sequels) or any of the three groundbreaking aforementioned games, I would choose the latter any day over the former, which is the principle on which this list is being made. Naturally, there are exceptions to this rule, when a sequel does indeed offer a tremendously improved experience, as in e.g. the case of Far Cry and Far Cry 2, but these are extremely rare cases and so extremely outstanding. If you see original games AND their sequels on the list it is a sure sign we are talking about a truly outstanding series.
Also, please understand this is NOT a best-games-ever list. MGS2 for example is better than many top entries, but it came out the same year with GTA3, Max Payne and Halo, all of which are superior to it, so it's tough out of luck and failed to make the cut. It's a brutal fight up in here, and history takes no prisoners. Some years are simply better than others (because years are no more equal in this respect, or in any other, than anything else in existence), so 2001 is the best single year gaming has had so far, while for say 2011 I racked my brain for hours to come up with decent runner-ups (though the GOTY was never under any doubt). So the best-games-of-all-time top 100 list is a very different beast, and that is also coming (as is the landmark games list, which is yet another thing: precisely what the Videogame Art essays are all about). This will be a much harder list to make, which is why I left it for later, because for every spot on it you are considering every game ever released. By year it's simple, in comparison, since you only have to consider each year's games (simple for me, that is, for everyone else it is impossible because y'all lack the expertise, the depth, the breadth, the aesthetic sense and critical judgment required. So dudes who only play a few genres—like basically all of you—are utterly incapable of devising a list that isn't instantly laughable: fragments of men can only make fragments of a list—you need a complete man for a complete one).
The final question to answer in this brief introduction is why this list is even useful at all, since it's neither about the landmark games (Videogame Art) nor about the best games ever (Top 100 list). It's a good question, and I have to say the main answer I have to offer you will seem petty, at first glance. The main reason I am making this list is to trash everyone else's. It is to show how vast the chasm is between me and everyone else. To ridicule the idea that the garbage-tier "indie" crapfests like the Flowers and the Witnesses, or the bloated, ugly snorefests like the BioShocks and the Skyrims, or the stupid meme games likes the Dooms and Tetrises and StarCrafts, or loljrpgs like the Faggot Fantasies and melody-less blip-blop OST "best music ever!" Chrono Triggers, or lolnintendo mediocrities like the Links to the Pasts, Super Mario 64s and GoldenEyes apotheosized by people who have never owned a system without the Nintendo logo on it that dominate everyone else's lists are LAUGHABLY INADEQUATE TO COME ANYWHERE NEAR A BEST GAME OF THE MONTH LIST, NEVER MIND GAME OF THE YEAR, NEVER MIND BEST GAMES EVER LOL SO FUCK YOU RETARDED FAGS AND ASPIES AND INDUSTRY SHILLS WHO SPEND YOUR WRETCHED LITTLE LIVES TRYING TO BURY THE ULTIMATE ARTFORM UNDER A MOUNTAIN OF YOUR RETARDED LIES AND BULLSHIT AND BRAIN VOMIT, THAT'S WHY I MADE THIS LIST; get it? Beyond that, it's good as a critical exercise, helping to expand our knowledge of each year's major releases, all the way back to the beginning, and hence our grasp of the history of the artform, which is itself an important aspect of developing good taste and critical acumen, as I have demonstrated countless times in my essays, and will go on to demonstrate countless more times, I am sure. And hey, we are all nerds here, and nerds love making lists, so it's a no-brainer. It's yet one more means of showing to the world who I am and what I believe in, it will attract tremendous attention to the site and to all the inimitable work being done here over the years, so all things told it is an extremely useful project that I vow to pursue until the end of my days.
The list will be bumped on the frontpage at least once a year, to add the new year's slot if nothing else, but smaller updates will be made continually, with date stamps at the top so you know when it has been last updated, and all updates documented in the forum thread [ > ] in detail, along with detailed justifications for the changes, so keep an eye on that if you wish to follow the progress of the list as I build it up and modify and refine it over the coming months and years. Like I said, I haven't played everything, but I do have a very detailed list of significant and interesting-looking games that I have not played, which I will again be sharing with you in the forum thread, and you are welcome to add to it by suggesting titles I ought to try, or even outright replacements of existing choices. (If your remarks are brief, post them in the list's thread, if they are extensive post them in the games' respective threads—or start new ones, for games that have no thread yet—and, finally, if you feel like reviewing your suggested titles at length, post the reviews in the Submissions forum, as usual. You are also welcome to link and quote other people's reviews that support your case in each game's respective thread.) And it should go without saying that the choices for the running year are made from titles released up to the date of the last update and are being continually re-evaluated as more titles are released throughout the year.
Notes on the Insomnia 1962-2024 Game of the Year Awards
•The notes will be updated too, so scroll all the way down every time you check back on the list's progress.
•Interesting to observe, chronologically, how genres are born, evolve, dominate and die. The list helps us do that as we observe 2D giving way to 3D, linear to open-world, offline to online, and so on. Obviously none of this is observable in journalists' random, arbitrary lists because the criterion those are made with is not quality but the attempt to please as many and as large demographics of readers as possible, and that's why you see this repulsive hotchpotch nature of their lists where it seems like a schizophrenic made them, praising in the same breath "mane streem" games and the "indie" titles that claim to have been made as a reaction to them.
•Size of dev teams and budgets escalate as we go up the list proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the best games are made with the most money and biggest teams on the most powerful hardware and whoever doesn't think so is a smelly retarded granola-eating compost-making lazy bum communist hippie (see On Why Bigger Has Always Been Better, And Why It Always Will Be).
•Also, the list ridicules the pseudo-intellectual propaganda that there's no more good games coming out, whereas a single great game released this year is better and more fun than every single game released in the '60s, '70 and '80s put together, it's just that pseuds are too busy refreshing forums and posting their brain vomit to find and play good games (and to play them PROPERLY in the rare instances when they do somehow manage to play a decent game for a change).
•1994 was the year of the PC strategy/tactics game. Astonishing games that have hardly been improved upon since then.
•Where's the "indie" love? All over the list, since every last game was made by an independent game developer, as per Jim Jarmusch's definition quoted in my Myth of Independence essay. If, on the other hand, by "indie" you mean my definition, then of course scammer games by students preying on the public's lack of knowledge of the artform and bad taste have no place on the list. Show me a game of theirs that's worth even 3/5, and we'll talk about the subject again (I and my crew of top critics have been searching for such a game for nearly a decade, and still nothing; see Introducing the "Indie" Scene).
•The Chris Taylor story: from being kicked out by AoE team, to making his triumphant comeback with Total Annihilation, to his RTS design philosophy utterly dominating in 2014 with Planetary Annihilation, which is the spiritual successor and ultimate culmination to all of his ideals. See "indie" bums? That's what happens when you devote your whole life to a single genre instead of jumping around a dozen of them like ADHD retards "innovating" all over the place: excellence happens. But of course for such a level or perseverance and commitment one needs a comparable level of love, and love is the precise opposite reason to why "indie" bums got into game dev in the first place (except if we are talking love of money and fame, that is).
•2D brawlers get close, but never quite manage to snag a top spot.
•3D fighters, at least as traditionally defined, are nowhere on the list. Wonder why? Read my Power Stone essay and all will become clear.
•Only one designer managed to get his name three times on the list (or to get his name on it at all). The one and only, Him.
•Everything Troika made is either on the list, or in consideration for it. Smilebit and Platinum are close to this too (Oh Scalebound where art thou!), but then again they made a lot more games.
•2001 was the most grounbreaking year in the history of the artform: a real videogame odyssey. No other year comes close to that top 3. Top games from other years would have struggled to get even the 4th spot if they'd released in 2001 and been against such competition. I believe this is due to a combination of 3D techniques starting to realize some of their potential while the principles of hardcore design philosophies from the arcade culture of the early eras were still alive in developers' minds, and popular (see Arcade Culture). It was a tremendous year and I lived through it and played everything, and you will hear all about it in great detail in due course.
•No id or Valve and barely any Blizzard. Sorry, they make mediocre to above-average games at best despite the hype.
•No rhythm and no sports games after a certain point: Sorry, these are games for people who don't like games.
•Two Biohazard games on the list, and I would have added Veronica too if the 2000 spots were not locked down by three even better masterpieces already.
•1985 is when things start heating up in terms of aesthetics, and by 1986 the race is in full force, and hasn't let up since, not even for a second (it was the point at which all serious companies definitively moved beyond programmer graphics and started hiring real artists). I know you morons will have trouble grasping why, but for me the paramount importance of aesthetics in an artform is a no-brainer. And of course the concept graphics is included in the concept aesthetics. Great aesthetics with bad graphics is a concept only a retard could devise.
•No Devil May Cry on the list is a crime, but unavoidable seeing the onslaught of masterpieces in 2001. Same with Onimusha, pretty much.
•Computer games completely dominate console and arcades until 1989, the launch of the Mega Drive, because the computer is the only system that can fulfill the stringent input-output device requirements of the strategy, adventure and CRPG genres that, at that time, were the most immersive genres available. And even after '89, the console and arcade influences are short-lived, until the 32-bit console era, in which consoles leave arcades in the dust due to 3D graphics and optical drives, and finally a few years later GTA3 arrives in which action games reach their full potential and leave turn-based PC games and short attention span arcade games completely in the dust (but you still need a PC for the best version of the console-inspired games). We are still in that era, and will remain there until the End of Hardware, which is coming sooner than you think (I'll have an essay about it in Videogame Culture: Volume II).
•Pretty much none of the Japanese games are at the genre-creating level of creativity that the best White designers operate on. The Japanese have never been innovators, but they are the best damn students and copiers and refiners around, and this hasn't changed since the beginning of the artform (the very latest example being the GTA Zelda, which is basically a GTA ripoff for kids—and a great ripoff, at that, which is why there's no reason for us to use such nasty words like ripoff, and which I am only using here to drive home the fact that innovation, by and large, happens in White countries and refinement in Japan). The problem is that in order to refine something, you must have first played it, and the Japanese aren't interested in playing the most complex White games, ergo why they never refined CRPGs, 4Xes, RTSes, etc. etc.
•It's fascinating to me that, as I scroll up and down the list, memories bubble up into my consciousness from both my general life and my gaming life from every year almost all the way back to the beginning. Because I was born in '78, a few months before Space Invaders' release, pretty much right at the beginning of the artform. Moreover, releases were so few back then, and hardware upgrades so rare, that games took half a decade or more to fall out of fashion and become outdated. So you could be playing Space Invaders well into the '80s and still feel like it was cutting-edge technology and game design. That's how I got to experience all those games years later, but still pretty much the same way that older people, who were adults in the '70s, experienced them at the time of their release. And when I play now an old game that I skipped back then, all I have to do is flick a switch in my brain and I am back in the '80s, perfectly capable of appreciating and evaluating it according to the standards of the time, neither trashing it because it's not 4K, nor cutting it more slack than it deserves because it "has pixels" and, as we all know, all pixels are adorable and beautiful and equal. What other critic do you know who can say the same? I don't read professional reviewers anymore, but the last time I checked they all sounded as if they had begun gaming with the Xbox 360. Setting aside intelligence and aesthetic sensibility for a moment, even in terms of birthdate I was born to be the ultimate game critic.
December 7, 2021 update•A remarkable development in recent years is the complete domination of the GOTY award by RPGs and RPG-adjacent games, from 2017 onwards, if you count Life is Feudal as an RPG, which you almost should. There's more roleplaying in it than in all the CRPGs I've ever played combined, and I still remember having to bite my tongue on a number of occasions lest I provoke the wrath of a powerful neighbor and doom our entire clan. Then Atlas repeated LiF's success in 2018, and Disco Elysium in 2019 took CRPGs further than they'd been before, reportedly further than even Planescape: Torment. And then of course my Battlegrounds was launched in 2020, expanding roleplaying to an entire metaverse, and a new genre. 2020 also saw the release of Cyberpunk 2077 which finally fused CRPG and open-world, though of course no one besides me realized it because no one else can figure out the concept of genre (see How To Not Use Genres Like A Retard). Then in 2021 TaleSpire took GMRPGs to 3D, and in the process might well vacuum up the turn-based tactics and turn-based strategy genres, and if the devs listen to me and put in a Baldur's Gate-style real-time-with-pause (RTwP) system, they'll vacuum up RTTs and RTSes too. And finally for 2022/23 we have Beneos's GMRPG adaptation of the classic D&D adventure Curse of Strahd that brings videogame-level production values to the nascent GMRPG genre. What has been happening in recent years, in other words, is that technology is finally getting to a level (mostly due to software, as the hardware for it has existed for decades) where real roleplaying is possible on computers, and as a result it is abandoning tabletops and radically transforming both that industry, and the videogame one. What a time to be alive, and what a development for me, who've loved both types of games since the '80s. So we're basically getting to the point where EVERY game in the GOTY list will be a GMRPG from now on. Don't let that surprise you though, as that's precisely what's been happening in the artform since the beginning. Good luck finding a 2D game on the list after 3D arrived, for example, and the same will obviously be true with roleplaying for the simple reason that THE ENTIRE POINT OF ART IS ROLEPLAYING. That said, some people just prefer to roleplay a two-dimensional character because they themselves are two-dimensional people, or a simplistic naive emo child who never really interacts with anyone and to whom everything comes easy with no struggle or chance of failure, because they themselves are that kind of person, and their ideal type of person. So no type of game will truly go extinct (there are even people who still play chess—one of the oldest board games ever—; they even think they're smart lol; and dogs still play fetch last I heard), unless whole demographics start going extinct, and we aren't quite there yet. Until then, you can expect Insomnia to focus mainly on the right side of the popularity vs. quality graph because those are the games I enjoy the most (see The Popularity vs. Quality Equation). For everything else you have Kotaku, or whatever other website it is you're reading (and dogs don't read anything, and since they only play fetch, they don't need to).
September 2, 2023 updates •For nearly a quarter of a century, 2001 has been the best year in videogames, with GTA3 launching the open-world genre while Max Payne, Halo, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Devil May Cry took the cinematic singleplayer campaign in various directions, all of which would be explored in detail and complexified over the next two decades until being fused—and injected with some roleplaying—in the open-world CRPG Cyberpunk 2077. But 2024 looks set to take 2001's crown as the best year in gaming, with two of its top 3 games—Kingslayer and Star Citizen Alpha 4.0—blowing open entire metaverses of imagination, while the third game, Squadron 42, looks set to be the most cinematic game ever (it looks almost more cinematic than actual cinema lol, all the while the whole thing's interactive! Heat aside, it probably also features the most ACTING talent of any artwork ever!) If you throw in Pax Dei [ > ], Dune: Awakening [ > ] and possibly also Life is Feudal II [ > ], which are quasi-metaverses in their own right, we have before us no fewer than FIVE metaverses of stunning aesthetic and mechanical depth coming out in 2024, each of which is more complex and involved than ALL of 2001's best games PUT TOGETHER. So. Please. If you want to peddle nonsense doomtalk about the future of interactive art, do it somewhere else, preferably where I won't see it. It's not my fault if people are too stupid to find the good stuff, and too low-energy to play them.
•From 2020 onwards every GOTY has been snagged by a GMRPG and/or metaverse game, and even many of the runner-up slots. Traditional invisible wall games can no longer compete with the cutting-edge that GMRPG/metaverse games represent, and it's a giant paradigm shift the likes of which has only been seen once before in videogame history... with the jump from 2D to 3D.
•Up till now, only Sid Meier had his name three times on the list. In fact he was about the only person with his actual name on the list at all. Well, with today's update I have my name three times too. Moreover, all three of my entries are GOTYs whereas only two of Meier's are, the third one is a runner-up. So. Just sayin'. I am now mathematically proven to be the greatest game designer/developer/director of all time. P.S. Chris Roberts has three games too, but two of them are runner-ups. That said, his games are, overall, clear superiors to Meier's (the later ones, at any rate, because Civ>>>Wing Commander), it's just the particularities of the GOTY format that make it seem as if Meier is superior. So if we wanted to rank the top 3 game designers/developers/directors of all time it'd have to be 1) icycalm, 2) Chris Roberts, and 3) Sid Meier. I might expand this to a top 10 at some point in the future. That should be interesting, I don't think it's even been done before (since journalists don't want to ruffle the feathers of the people who give them all their news and review code).