The 2019 PartyChat Awards: Viral Game of the Year

December 23, 2019

I hope you all are excited for this week! And I’m not talking about all the shit you’re getting for Christmas, I’m talking about The PartyChat Awards! We’re on week 2, and today, we’re covering the most viral games of 2019.

So without any further ado, here are the nominees:

Anthem

Anthem was one of the biggest hype machines in early 2019. From the beta in January to the actual release, it was probably the most anticipated title of Q1.

I knew from the second I started the beta that the game was gonna suck, mainly because I could tell the game felt rushed. My assumption was that the game would launch with barely any content and a few weeks later, I was right.

Anthem came out and the hounds of hell were released upon the internet. Everywhere you looked you saw people talking about how fucking horrible this game was.

BioWare and EA were hoping to kick the year off great and instead showed up with egg all over their face. EA redeemed themselves a bit tho with…

Apex Legends

The launch of Apex Legends was the absolute best marketing tactic I’d ever seen.

It came without any warning. Suddenly, during half time of the Super Bowl, big-time streamers like Shroud, DrDisrespect, and Pokimane start posting about this new game. And on the following day, Respawn announced and released Apex Legends, a free to play Titanfall battle royale.

Every single person on my friend’s list was playing that game the week it released, and it flooded gaming Twitter as well.

It was the most played game the entire month of February, and it even dethroned Fortnite for a few weeks on top of streaming sites. And while it lost momentum by the end of March, it still had one of the biggest launches of all-time.

Death Stranding

I’ve already said it once, but Death Stranding is the most polarising game of all-time.

Critics were hailing it as one of the best games ever made or one of the worst of the year. When it released to the public, they continued that same fight.

You had everything; Sony fanboys vs. Xbox fanboys, Kojima fans vs the haters, conspiracy theorists vs logical individuals, etc.

That argument went from a heated battle to a full-on war when Geoff Keighly revealed the nominees for The Game Awards, with Death Stranding leading the way with 13 nominations. Everyone went fucking mad.

From the time of the nomination announcement until the actual game awards, that’s all I saw across the internet. People saying its a lock for GOTY, people saying it doesn’t deserve a single nomination, and everything in between.

Death Stranding didn’t end up taking the prestige award home, but it was the most talked-about video for two straight months.

Fortnite: Chapter 2

On October 13th, the world stood still as millions of people stared at a fucking black hole GIF.

Fortnite’s Chapter 2 announcement was one of the craziest marketing tactics I’d ever seen. Imagine any other game shutting down for 48+ hours intentionally. It’d never work.

But Fortnite isn’t just on this list for the Chapter 2 reveal, they were one of the highest trending games all year.

From the return of the Infinity Gauntlet in April, to the mech controversy, to today where there’s lightsabers and stormtroopers in the game, Fortnite has done a great job attaining and holding the attention of every gamer in the world.

Untitled Goose Game

I’m honestly shocked at how big this game got.

Not that it was undeserved; Untitled Goose Game was one of the most unique and fun gaming experiences of 2019. But what I loved even more than the game was the memes. They were everywhere.

I fucking loved it. Every morning I woke to stuff like the goose stealing the Infinity Gauntlet, or replacing Kazooie, or even the image above.

There’s nothing the goose can’t do and it was an icon of gaming in 2019.

World of Warcraft: Classic

I never played WoW, so I didn’t really understand the hype until this release.

But literally, every 20 something year old in the world jizzed their pants for WoW Classic. They love this fucking game.

I think the coolest posts I saw the week it was released were where clans who’d drifted apart over the years came back together to play this game. That was sweet. Brought a tear to my own eye.

(not, not at all)

But yea, WoW Classic dethroned Fortnite for about a full week on the streaming charts and for about three weeks it was the most discussed game on Twitter.

And this year’s winner for “Viral Game of the Year” is…

Fortnite: Chapter 2

42.8 million views. 1.4 million viewers at one time. For a black hole GIF.

That’s not the record for the highest viewers though. No, that belongs to the Fortnite World Cup, which had over 2 million viewers at one time and over 80 million views.

So yea, love it or hate it, Fortnite was the most viral game of 2019. And it wasn’t even close.

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