r/TheGameAwards

Well were already halfway through the year so i feel like i have some good ideas for a few GOTY contender this year.

Some i definitely think are up would be RE Requiem, 007 first light, Saros, Crimson Desert

(Sidenote ive only played RE Requiem and Crimson Desert really like both didnt play the other 2 but heard lots of great things and think they will end up with the nom.)

and even though theyre not out yet GTA 6, Duskbloods and Zelda OOT Remake will almost definitely be great GOTY material at least i really really hope so.

Who are some titles you think will end up there?

Those orchestras are 4 years apart, and 2022 was 4 years ago. If that trend holds up, we might get perfection.

Im seeing everyone and their mother claiming a gta sweep is innevitable but its highly unlikely to be nominated or win for anything other than players voice

We know the show is being held on the 10th of december so the nominees cant be held off just for gta in a way that matters

Couple this with the rumors that rockstar isnt going to give reviewers early copies of gta and you have a recipie for a game that wont get nominated unless the game awards wants to delay the entire show for one game

TLDR: The Game Awards has a overabundance of categories that praise games for being like movies, and not enough categories that are focused on specific qualities of videogames as an art form. This puts an over-emphasis on discussion and praise of specific types of games and sidelines contemporary titles that don't imitate movies or have conventional narratives.

So, for the last few Game Awards, I picked up on a trend: it seemed to me that every year, the game that got the most nominations was always a **story-rich, cutscene-heavy, and/or dialogue-heavy game.** Basically, games that borrow heavily from another medium: movies.

Let's just run through each year and look at the trends:

*2025: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has 13 nominations and 9 wins, including GOTY*

*2024: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has 7 nominations, tied with Astro Bot. FF7R ultimately has 1 win behind Astro Bot's 4.*

*2023: Baldur's Gate 3 bas 9 nominations and 6 wins, including GOTY.*

*2022: God of War Ragnarok has 11 nominations and 6 wins, loses GOTY to Elden Ring.*

*2021: Deathloop has 9 nominations. It Takes Two ties for most wins with Forza Horizon 5.*

*2020: The Last of Us Part II has 11 nominations and 7 wins, including GOTY.*

*2019: Death Stranding has 10 nominations, Disco Elysium has the most wins with 4, including GOTY.*

*2018: God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 have 8 nominations each, RDR2 has the most wins with 4, including GOTY.*

*2017: Horizon Zero Dawn ties for most nominations (6) with BotW, Mario Odyssey, and Destiny 2. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice ties for most wins (3) with Cuphead and BotW.*

*2016: Uncharted 4 has 8 nominations.*

*2015: The Witcher 3 has 6 nominations and 3 wins, including GOTY.*

*2014: The first year of the Game Awards and the only major exception to the rule, as several games tied for most nominations with 3, and no one game won more than 2. Dragon Age: Inquisition is among those that win 2, including GOTY.*

So again, it's cinematic, or as I like to call them, "movie-like" games that tend to get the most nominations and wins. There are exceptions here and there: Deathloop is definitely a very videogamey videogame (while still being story heavy), and Elden Ring and Astro-Bot winning GOTY over their competition with more nominations is certainly notable. But the trend is there.

**BUT OP, those are all good games that deserve the awards they got. What's the issue?**

The issue is not that any of these games are necessarily undeserving of awards. It's that the categories THEMSELVES favor *qualities you can assign to movies* over *qualities you can only assign to video games.*

Let me show you what I mean by looking closer at 2025. Clair Obscur was nominated for 13 awards. Of those 13, eight of them have obvious parallels with awards given out at the Oscar's. Three acting nominations, one for sound design, one for music, one for visuals, one for the narrative, and one for direction. In Oscar terms, that's Best Actor/Actress, Best Sound, Best Original Score, your choice of Best Visual Effects or Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. Their five other nominations each broadly praise game quality within a subset of games without calling out any specific trait: GOTY, Best Indie and Debut Indie, Best RPG, and Player Voice.

Does it not strike anyone else as odd that in the run of the most nominated and awarded game in TGA history, their isn't even a mention of GAMEPLAY? And yes, you can make the argument that any GOTY win *should* have good gameplay... but it doesn't *have to*, and that is weird.

I think the overall reason for the awards being like this is clear; they based the format of show off of the Oscar's and other big name award shows. Ones that celebrate non-games. And it was a decent starting point, but after more than 10 years, shouldn't we be in a place where there are more awards to praise specific GAME aspects than genre-awards?

Like, let's put it out there: there is no award for best gameplay, best level design, best world (open or otherwise), best enemy AI, best boss fight, best controls or hardware implementation, best optimization, best feedback loop or in-game system, smoothest difficulty curve, innovation in genre, most immersive, innovation in player freedom, best puzzle...

It just goes on and on. There are innate qualities and enough common aspects to games that you could populate the awards with almost all categories unique to videogames, but they just *aren't there.*

This creates narratives within the Awards themselves and the gaming community that these story heavy, movie-like games are the most important games, and by extension, the ones with the most value. As the Game Awards grow in popularity, this is going to be detrimental to gaming discourse as a whole. I'll put it to you - Baldur's Gate 3 deserved to win Best Narrative, for sure. But I kind of don't care about the narrative. I care that you can put 100 barrels on top of each other and cast feather fall to skip whole scripted levels, and the game doesn't break. I care that they made a turn based combat system that let's you incorporate adventure game style verb and noun based commands. Where are the awards for that? I want to talk about THAT.

Meanwhile, games that don't fit the movie-like genre get left out of the discussion despite being brilliant in their own right. Blue Prince was nominated for a mere two awards, despite being one of the most innovative games of the year with a wholly unique procedurally generated puzzle system. 2024s Balatro was hailed as the best designed game since TETRIS, and it walked away with a mere five nominations and three wins. One just for it being playable on phones. Doom (2016) won Best Action game, but where is the win for creating glory kills, and with it Best Innovation in Gameplay Loops? Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor created the Nemesis System, one of the coolest emergent narrative and gameplay systems ever, but it's sole win was Action/Adventure.

Would Tetris, what is often cited as the best designed game of all time, if it released today, even swing a nomination?

Other major gaming award shows also feature more diverse and game-centric categories. The BAFTA game awards feature Best Game Design. DICE has awards for character animation in gameplay and technical achievements. The Golden Joystick Awards has categories for remasters and DLC. But frankly, none of that is enough, and as the industry leader for Game Awards shows, it's TGAs' responsibility to issue more awards for qualities **SPECIFIC TO VIDEOGAMES.**

Thank you for your time if you read all of this.

2014: Shovel Knight
15: Undertale
16: Stardew Valley
17: Hollow Knight
18: Into the Breach
19: Disco Elysium
20: None really come to mind, but if I had to pick one… Nioh 2
21: Returnal
22: Tunic
23: Hi-Fi Rush
24: Animal Well
25: Split Fiction

if gta 6 is not nominated then which game do you want to win GOTY?

Fore me I choose RE requiem

When I first started off in watching the Game Awards, which was 2015 (I rooted for the Witcher 3 to win GOTY), we didn’t really have an Orchestra. I noticed that in 2017, the Orchestra came up and started performing ever since.

How do you all feel about the Game Awards Orchestra, performing every year for GOTY? Do you consider it a good addition?

Game of the Year: GTA 6
Best game direction: GTA 6
Best art direction: Saros
Best narrative: GTA 6
Best score/music: GTA 6
Best audio design: GTA 6
Best performance: Manni Perez
Best action/adventure: GTA 6
Best action: Gears of War E-Day
Best multiplayer: The Duskbloods
Best indie: Mina the Hollower