Supergiant’s Hades made history earlier this week by becoming the first video game to ever win a Hugo Award. Awarded annually, the Hugo Award is a prestigious literary award presented to the best science fiction or fantasy works for the previous year. Typically, this is reserved for works like novels or short stories, but a newly added video game category for 2021 gave Hades an opportunity for recognition.

The game was up against others in the science fiction and fantasy genre, including Spiritfarer, The Last of Us 2, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and Blaseball.

I’ll admit, the Animal Crossing nomination seems a touch out of place here, but you know what? Go for it.

The video games category that was added for the 2021 awards is, as of right now, just a “one time” thing, but it remains to be seen yet whether or not the arbiters of the award will consider keeping the category around permanently. Gaming has become an ever-popular medium for storytelling, and certainly that is definitely a form of writing that deserves literary recognition. 

The Hugo Awards have been around since 1953 and have been held annually since 1955. As such, they have evolved over the years and adding new categories to the voting roster has some precedent. Previously, they added the Best Fanzine or Best Fancast category in order to keep up with the times - maybe Video Games isn’t far behind.

What do you think about recognizing the writing and stories of games in the science fiction and fantasy genre? Share with me!