Coolest and Most Prolific Gamers of the Year, 2016 Edition

When people think about gamers, they don’t often think “I wonder who the gamers of the year were”, because how would one bestow such a title? What are the paradigms? How high is the bar and who is eligible. Truth is, Kotaku has some great points about some very valid contenders for gamer of the year.

Take for example, TheGalacticCactus And Psytokat, the two players who tried to meet in No Man’s Sky, first day:

On No Man’s Sky’s launch day, the heretofore little-known TheGalacticCactus reported to the subreddit that he’d found a star system discovered by another player named Pystokat. He was shocked. A sign of life of another player! They messaged each other. “We are currently 4 systems away!” he wrote. “We will meet at a space station.” And then: “Edit: My twitter is TheGalacticCact I’m shaking…” And then: “Edit: We are both in the same station but cannot see each other…” The two players livestreamed their attempt and the gaming world watched. They couldn’t meet. They were standing in the same spot of what they assumed was a shared video game world. And nothing. A day later, with legions of gamers wondering if the game had glitched or if it didn’t really support player met-ups Murray tweeted with dissatisfying vagueness: “Two players finding each other on a stream in the first day – that has blown my mind.”

Or how about Street Fighter 2 prodigy NuckleDu on Bringing Balance Back to the Force:

Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo, who was this year’s Evo champion, and one of the best Street Fighter players in the world, is 31. In an industry that seems to soak up youth and spit it out only a few years later, the fighting game community stands out for the prowess of its veteran talent. And yet somehow despite his fledgling status at the green age of 20, Du “NuckleDu” Dang became the first American to win the Capcom Cup championship—and the youngest. Street Fighter has always occupied a unique place in American pop culture, and seeing such a gutsy player grow into the game and make it his own felt like symbolic vindication of having spent all those days dueling sonic booms with strangers in arcades.

These are but a few of the great examples you can read more about here. I didn’t make the list solely because I was too busy saving orphans from burning buildings.

(Image Via Kotaku)