Astro Bot is the Barbie movie of video games
And a firm favorite for The Game Awards' top prize.
The Game Awards' 10th annual show happens next Thursday, Dec. 12, one week from today. While best known for the gazillion trailers that tend to drop during the show, The Game Awards is fast becoming the de facto Oscars for the gaming industry.
And if The Game Awards are the Oscars, then Polygon is Variety and has duly picked the platformer game Astro Bot as the firm favorite for taking “Best Picture”/Game of the Year.
There are, of course, other great games in the mix of nominees for GOTY, including Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree—a surprise addition as technically it’s DLC and an addition to the much-lauded Elden Ring, winner of The Game Awards’ top prize in 2022. Shadow of the Erdtree is an undoubted triumph. It’s a rich, dramatic, immersive, and beautiful extension of the world-building of Elden Ring on a truly epic scale and crafted by a renowned director. To drive my rather obvious movie metaphor home, Shadow of the Erdtree is Oppenheimer. And so yes, of course, Astro Bot is Barbie.
The parallels between Astro Bot and Barbie go even further than the obvious movie metaphor. Barbie is a character ostensibly created by a huge multinational corporation, Mattel. Like Barbie, Astro Bot is also a character created by a huge multinational corporation, Sony.
Astro Bot, developed by the Sony-owned studio Team Asobi, is an evolution of the free-to-play Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-loaded on the PlayStation 5 at launch in 2020. Astro’s Playroom was designed to highlight the cool features of the PS5’s DualSense controller: touchpad, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, microphone, and, of course, the speaker, out of which you’d hear the rain falling or the patter of Astro’s tiny metallic feet on sand, or the cute little chirps and beeps he makes; all far less weird and creepy than the crying baby in Death Stranding.
I played Astro’s Playroom a little when I first got my PlayStation 5. But I found the obvious design integration of elements of the PlayStation console into the game—Astro pulling wiring and cables, jumping on processors, and using the DualSense controller as a flying craft—to be a little too… well, branded content-y.
I don’t have that much historical affinity with the PlayStation brand—my first PlayStation was a PS4, and I missed out on the PS1 until very recently—and so I also didn’t pick up on many of the hidden easter eggs of old PlayStation hardware dotted around Astro’s Playroom. I assumed (wrongly) that the game existed purely to show me how cool the PlayStation was and nothing more. After all, the Astro Bot IP has historically been a series of elevated tech demos—showcases for uniquely PlayStation tech tricks—dating back to 2013’s The Playroom, used to show off the PlayStation Camera.
So when Astro Bot was released in September this year, I balked at paying $59.99 to play it. My decision was based largely upon my experience with Astro’s Playroom and the resulting reticence to pay to play yet more Sony branded content at a price that was far from cheap. I completely ignored the game until I began to read online about how damn good it was. People were buying PS5s just to play the game. The general consensus was that Astro Bot made PlayStation games joyful again. It was a big deal.
I was still pondering whether I should jump into the game when I listened to the September 13th episode of The Besties and heard Russ Frushtick make the bold declaration that Astro Bot was possibly the best platformer game ever made, arguably better than any platformer games made by Nintendo. Huge praise, indeed. And so, of course, and without any further ado, I bought the game.
To be honest, I have had little experience playing platformer video games in general. I adored and beat Super Mario Odyssey, but I quickly got tired of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury or Super Mario Bros. Wonder despite them both clearly being beautiful games. I figured that platformers just aren’t my thing.
Astro Bot is different; it is very much my thing. Despite being only a third of the way through the game—there is simply so much to explore and hidden areas to find—I already know that Astro Bot is something special. It has all of the charm of a Mario game but powered by the unbridled power of the 4K 60 fps PS5. Astro Bot doesn’t need my brain to upscale it, and yet the fluid fidelity never seems to let the remarkable cleverness of the game overpower the sheer joy of playing it. It’s not as artistic or emotional as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. But it sure is a lot of silly fun.
What I find most fascinating is that even though Astro Bot is a phenomenally good video game, it is still, to all intents and purposes, branded content made to promote Sony. And yet nobody seems to mind; gamers are not only embracing the commercial tie-in, they’re willing to pay $59.99. Me included.
Which makes Astro Bot not just a metaphorical comparison to Barbie, but a literal one. The Barbie movie grossed $1.45 billion at the worldwide box office. It was nominated for 18 Critics’ Choice Awards, eight Oscars, four Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), and nine Golden Globes—winning Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award and Best Original Song.
Barbie was a damn good movie and a mighty successful one. Yet it was also extremely effectively branded content for Mattel, whose sales increased by 9% year-on-year to $1.9bn between July (Barbie was released on July 11) and September 2023. What other branded content can you think of that helped to increase sales by 9% and generate $1.45 billion at the box office? Neither can I.
I was initially put off playing Astro Bot because of the overt PlayStation promotional tie-in. But that was narrow-minded of me; I now realize it’s a feature, not a bug. Sony is in on the gag in the same way Mattel allowed their company to become a part of the Barbie plotline (and arguably the butt of the joke). After all, it doesn’t matter if Astro Bot is built to sell PlayStations or Barbie sells lots of Barbies, as long as both the game and the movie are good. And yes, they’re undeniably really, really good.
So now all I need to bring my thesis across the finish line is for Astro Bot to lose to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree in next week’s Game Awards like Barbie lost to Oppenheimer at the 2023 Oscars. Only then will my metaphorical circle be complete.
UPDATE: December 13, 07:32 AM EST: Well, my metaphorical circle failed to complete: Astro Bot won GOTY at last night’s Game Awards. But I couldn’t be happier, the game is an absolute marvel and a deserved winner. Our huge congratulations to everyone at Team ASOBI.