When you think about it, Cyberpunk 2077 was the 2020 game of the year after all

For better or worse, in the year of our lord two-thousand and twenty-three, video games are now seldom complete products. They grow, evolve, and change over time – and in many ways, challenge the traditional wisdom of giving out end-of-year awards. Is there a better example of this than Cyberpunk 2077?

Even Baldur’s Gate 3, as mind-bogglingly good as it was from the moment of release, has changed tremendously over the last couple of months – tweaking, changing, adding. It had several years of early access, too. My personal game of the year for 2023, Street Fighter 6, is released with the explicit understanding that it will grow in size – probably as much as double – over the course of its lifetime.

Cyberpunk 2077 originally released in 2020, and, well… you all know how that went. I was one of the people who was hoodwinked, to put it mildly, by CD Projekt’s approach to the review process. I played it on my high-spec PC and thought it was pretty great, with classic open world launch bugs that I figured would be ironed out over time. I ended up giving it a positive review on my other website.