I cannot begin to wrap around my head how the absolutely awful Silent Hill: Ascension has won an Emmy.

We all know that Silent Hill: Ascension is a bad “game” right? I put game in air quotes there because it’s hard to call it one, really, when all you got to do was vote on what cutscenes played out. And yet somehow, against all odds, it has won an Emmy. Yes, the same Emmys that give out awards to actually good TV shows as opposed to whatever Ascension actually is. The award it specifically won is for “Outstanding Innovation In Emerging Media Programming” and I don’t know about you, but I don’t think either the word “outstanding” or “innovation” belongs anywhere near that mess of a Silent Hill game.

I’m not actually sure what innovation there even is in Ascension? The fact it had people collectively playing a “game” live? Twitch Plays Pokemon did that a decade ago, and it didn’t have the ability to pay for better votes that can make one outcome more likely either – just a little reminder there as to how much of a mess Ascension’s monetisation system was, not even mentioning its season pass. Somehow its Emmy win gets even more baffling though, as it turns out that it’s not the only thing to have won the award.

The Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality Marvel game What If…? – An Immersive Story also won the award, except, the thing is, it was also the only other nominated piece of media. Yes, out of the two that were nominated, both won the award, but that does seem to be based on the fact that it was a juried award, meaning there were only a select number of people that actually voted on it (likely in this case because they were both games, roughly, so needed people who actually know about the industry).

Still, Emmy or no Emmy, I wouldn’t bother with Ascension, especially considering the Silent Hill 2 remake is coming up, which our own Kelsey thought was actually surprisingly good in a recent preview.