Gen Wins the Best Esports Player Award at New York Game Awards 2022

This morning, the eleventh iteration of the New York Game Awards was held by the New York Videogame Critics Circle. This annual show aims to celebrate everything great that happened in the video game industry in the past year, highlighting the creators, journalists, and everyone else who made a difference in the sphere.

Psychonauts 2 and Sable dominated the usual gaming categories, but a surprise was in store for us in the esports one. While the CS:GO team NAVI deservedly won the Captain Award for Best Esports Team (they became champions in almost every notable event they entered in 2021), Japanese Tekken 7 prodigy Genki “Gen” Kumisaka was surprisingly picked over NAVI’s leader Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev for the Joltin’ Joe Award for Best Esports Player of the Year.

Both of these superstars had had an incredible 2021, but the panel’s decision can be attributed to the team-based nature of CS:GO, so Gen’s individual achievements outweighed s1mple’s team ones.

Representing Donuts USG, Gen won Evo 2021 Online - Asia East, Tekken Online Challenge 2021: Japan Online Masters, and Red Bull Kumite 2021 - Las Vegas. If 2022 brings back offline events, he will surely aim to win the Tekken World Tour and Evo 2022. This will hardly be easy though, as elite players like Knee, Arslan Ash, Chikurin, and many others are just as hungry for the offline gold as he is.