Elden Ring Wins The Prestigious Nebula Award For Game Writing

Elden Ring continues its award-winning streak well after its first year as it has just added the distinguished Nebula Award for best to its ever-growing list of accolades. This achievement is preceded by another huge accomplishment as Elden Ring surpassed 20 million copies earlier this year, a feat that is astronomically impressive.

The finalists for the Nebula Awards’ Best Game Writing category comprised some extremely interesting names. Elden Ring was included of course, but it competed with other great games such as the indie title Stray, Horizon Forbidden West, Pentiment, and Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, etc. It goes without saying that each of these games is phenomenal in its own right.

Elden Ring’s victory is attributed to Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin who worked tirelessly on the world and its various facets. While this is the first time Miyazaki and FromSoftware have won the Nebula Award, it needs to be mentioned that it’s the third for Martin. Aside from the victory, Martin has several nominations owing to his literary work.

The Nebula Awards are held annually in order to recognize the most outstanding works in the science fiction and fantasy genres published within the United States. The award conferences are organized and conducted by a non-profit association of professional writers within the space, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

Elden Ring saw its release in February 2022 and took the world by storm. It was met with critical and commercial success that even Hidetaka Miyazaki couldn’t make sense of. Moreover, Elden Ring was the first entry in the long line of Souls-like games developed by FromSoftware that attracted a massive surge of new players. Many believe Dark Souls 3 made FromSoftware games mainstream but Elden Ring took that and dialed it to eleven.

Beyond critics and their praise for the game, Elden Ring took the formulaic nature of open-world games and molded it to be as true to the genre’s core as possible, much like Zelda: Breath of The Wild in 2017. While the title suffered from fairly serious performance issues across the board, it provided such an experience in a genre that was stale beyond belief, that many chose to bear it and it ultimately won TGA’s Game of The Year.

Several developers expressed their resentment to Elden Ring’s success on social media citing its “poor UI/UX design” following its massive success streak. YouTuber QuantumTV made negative and questionable statements regarding the game’s future as can be seen in the video. These statements and negativity were countered by fans and other people within the gaming industry and the success stories of Elden Ring served as a rebuttal.

FromSoftware is currently working on several projects including the upcoming mecha action game, Armored Core VI, and a DLC expansion for Elden Ring titled Shadow of the Erdtree. There’s currently no information on when the expansion will come out. People are speculating that it will release after Armored Core VI due to recent reports of FromSoftware wanting to prolong the IP.

Elden Ring is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, and last-gen consoles. Read on to see why we called it the greatest Soulsborne game ever.