The 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Ongoing Game

While video games were once exclusively released as finished works, increasingly, games are […]

January 12, 2021, 1:00pm

While video games were once exclusively released as finished works, increasingly, games are becoming open-ended experiences, intended to keep players enjoying the world for as long as possible. In 2020, gamers had a number of great options to keep them playing, from fighting games like Mortal Kombat 11, to MOBA games like League of Legends. With so many different options falling under the umbrella of “ongoing games” this year, it was hard for the ComicBook.com staff to pick one that truly stood out from the rest of the pack. However, if there’s one that earned the spot over all the rest.

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And the winner of the 2020 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Ongoing Game is…

Fortnite!

Since Fortnite‘s release in 2017, Epic Games’ battle royale title has become nothing short of a pop culture sensation. However, it’s impossible to overstate just how much the game has improved over the last year. In 2020, players were treated to a staggering amount of new content and events, making everything that had come prior look insignificant, as a result.

Things really kicked into high gear this year with the game’s Travis Scott concert. In a year where in-person concerts were impossible to attend, Fortnite‘s Travis Scott concert drew in an astonishing 12.3 million players, setting a new record for the game. Travis Scott wasn’t the first or last musician to entertain viewers in the game, but the concert was a big deal for fans, particularly with the coronavirus keeping everyone stuck at home.

It would be impossible to talk about Fortnite this year without mentioning the game’s crossover with the Marvel Universe. While characters like Deadpool and Domino appeared in the game earlier in the year, Chapter 2 Season 4 brought in just about every major face from the Marvel Universe, in an event that tied directly into the continuity of the comics. Fortnite‘s in-game representations for the heroes and villains topped just about every other game released this year (sorry Marvel’s Avengers), and the whole thing wrapped up with a Galactus event that lived-up to the threat of the devourer of worlds. The season was so good, it even convinced Ninja to get back into the game!

It would be hard to top that kind of season, but Fortnite closed out the year on a high note with the start of Chapter 2 Season 5. This time around, the focus turned to the greatest hunters across the multiverse, giving Epic Games the perfect excuse to bring in characters like The Mandalorian‘s Din Djarin, God of War‘s Kratos, and Halo‘s Master Chief.

When Fortnite made a cameo appearance in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, many viewers scoffed at the idea of the game still existing in 2023. After the kind of year that Fortnite had in 2020, it’s now impossible to imagine a world in which the game doesn’t continue to thrive. This is just a small taste of all the content that Epic Games gave fans to keep them coming back this year, and the results were more than worth it. The developer clearly has its work cut out for it in 2021, but it will be exciting to see what comes next!

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