The Gonzo Awards 2024
The annual tribute to everything wrong and rotten in the world of esports is underway
It’s that time of the year again… January is the month everyone looks back at the preceding twelve months, takes stock of everything that happened and then concludes that they did everything amazingly. This usually manifests in saccharine, self-congratulatory social media posting listing achievements, lauding colleagues and declaring that the next twelve months will be even better based on some presumption of cosmic recompense.
Except 2024 hasn’t been like that at all and with good reason. You can broadly divide the industry into three categories now. The jaded, the ashamed and (say the line) mouthpieces for the Saudi Arabian state. The first two categories have mostly given up on saying anything at all, with the last never shutting the fuck up almost as if they were contractually mandated to never shut the fuck up. As such January hasn’t served up the same amount of Twitter and Linkedin gems that it usually would. Finally, the esports elite have accepted that their farts do indeed stink.
Perhaps it is a needless cruelty then to do the Gonzo Awards this year and yet despite the emerging shared sense of awareness, growing like a gestalt consciousness at the heart of the industry, 2024 served up too much embarrassment and failure to be ignored. We will forge our way ahead then but this year it’ll be with a sense that, at least from an industry wide perspective, I am preaching to the choir
For the newlings I started The Gonzo Awards in 2010 to counteract the forced positivity that was prevalent in the industry at the time. Back then there was a sentiment that if you said anything negative about the business then you were hurting everyone in it. As an analogy it was thought better to be silent and let the monsters do their thing rather than plainly state they existed. After all, they couldn’t eat all the villagers and if the elders weren’t among the victims, then it was all working as intended. Even something as frivolous as simply stating “this was bad” or “this person fucked up” for the eyes of a few thousand used to send people scattering.
There was a gap of a few years where I instead channelled my energy into trying to build something that not only had value but was sustainable. Sadly, the same people I was lampooning in 2010 and beyond got their hands on the controls and ensured the one viable path for community success was annihilated. Now we’re a toy for governments and rogue gambling companies, little more than a pathway to profit for a handful of the unscrupulous.
These days esports is a parody of what it was once, impossible to satirise and therefore immune to ridicule. These awards aren’t like they used to be. The war is ultimately over but that doesn’t mean you have to surrender. Hiroo Onada was both crazy and right and so it is in this spirit we dispense this years awards in the following categories:
Worst Decision of The Year
Most Pointless E-Drama of 2024
Wasted Opportunity of The Year
The Riot Games Award For Great Games Balance & Development
Worst LAN Performance of The Year
Worst Manager / Executive of The Year
Biggest Scam of The Year
The awards will run between now and the end of January. As the process is ongoing feel free to post any suggestions in the comments below and they will be taken under advisement. You can also read my summary of the esports year here.
2024: The Year Of The Sellout
Esports is an industry that collectively lacks vision. Despite its foundations being the largely innovative notion that you could smash together sports competition, entertainment and video games into one cohesive package, the overall direction the business moves in is the unsteady shuffle of the blind leading the bl…
Unfortunately the NiP vs Amkal match at Blast Fall Showdown was online. If it was on LAN both teams would win worst performance.
Irritating Fanboys of 2024: karmine corp fans