Gimmick Awards 2025 – Best Emergent Moment Podcast

Gimmick Awards 2025 – Best Emergent Moment Podcast

From Scanline Talks by Scanline Media

February 17, 2026

About this episode

The episode discusses the nominees for the Best Emergent Moment in gaming for the Gimmick Awards 2025.

The phrasing on this category was tricky. What is an Emergent Moment? Basically, it's to distinguish from a Narrative Moment- our category tomorrow. Rather than scripted, hand-tailored moments, these are moments that occur, or occurred, naturally as a result of the way things have been set up- either in a game or in the world. The Nominees Are: Baby's First Death Trap (Android: Netrunner) Tile Hog (Aotenjo: Infinite Hands) Virtua Fighter 5 Grand Finals (Combo Breaker 2025) Your First Monorail-only Delivery (Death Stranding 2: On the Beach) Sit Back and Let the Points Roll In (Demonic Mahjong) Reading a book (The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa) Perfecting a Wave (The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy) "I Don't Play This Game." (Combo Breaker 2025) Switch Games Feeling Playable Again (Switch 2) Ten Heads In A Row (Unfair Flips) Picross Fever (Picross) Accidentally Eracing Yourself (Shadow of Memories) Infinite Chaos Control (Shadow the Hedgehog) Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2024 is Lay back by Kazuki Kaneko, and our art is a commission from GOMA on Bluesky. That's last year's art, we'll have new art for this year soon, so please look forward to that!

Topics covered

  • emergent moments
  • gaming awards
  • video game experiences
  • narrative vs emergent
  • game design

Keywords

  • emergent moments
  • gaming awards
  • video games
  • narrative moments
  • game experiences

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Scanline Media, GOMA

Books & works: Baby's First Death Trap, Tile Hog, Your First Monorail-only Delivery, Demonic Mahjong, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, I Don't Play This Game., Switch Games Feeling Playable Again, Ten Heads In A Row, Picross Fever

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