What makes a game Game of the Year? What does Game of the Year really mean anyways? Every form of entertainment has a prolific and prestigious award show. Movies, TV, Music, Books, Comics, and of course, Games. Although most of those awards and shows are easy to define. For games, it’s a bit more. There are several video game awards, both all over the world, but focusing on America and trying to find one that represents both consumers and the industry at large can be a toss-up. Through organization and notoriety however The Game Awards, live this December 8th, has become the one fans flock to for a chance to see if their favorite game gets the proper recognition it deserves.
What are The Game Awards
While starting in 2014, The Game Awards do have a very trustworthy legacy as the predecessor of the fan-favorite Spike Video Game Awards. The 10-year-old award show was canceled after some TV dealings but many who worked on it birthed The Game Awards to continue the legacy. For nearly 20 years video game journalist and G4 icon Geoff Keighley has produced and hosted a Game Awards show.
This is the stamp of authenticity you can think of if you ever wonder how much real legitimacy The Game Awards has. This year there is a jury panel of over 100 journalists and industry experts in the field of video games. So even if you don’t believe in award shows, this one comes pretty close to accuracy for selecting winners. Or does it?
What Does It Take to be Game of The Year?
The Game Developers Choice Awards, D.I.C.E Awards, and BAFTA Games Awards are some of the most respected game awards any video game or developer would love to win. There are also plenty of categories to analyze to understand why some games may be nominated and win over others. However for this in-depth look, we really are only focusing o The Game Awards and Game of The Year, easily the most popular and recognizable award and category there is possible in all of games.
Again we can just say “awards are subjective and arbitrary” and move on, but the fun for articles like this is about figuring out how, why even, some games make it and others don’t. The list of nominees this year is actually pretty solid. In fact, looking back at every year of The Game Awards so far and one could argue there’s never been a dude or undeserving game in the bunch. But have there ever been missing worthy games or high-profile snubs? Surely.
Did you know Spiderman: Miles Morales wasn’t nominated for Game of the Year despite having similar and sometimes even better review scores than Insomniac’s Spider-Man. That game was a nominee and front-runner to win GOTY at the 2018 Game Awards. Yet its equal, and a somewhat even better sequel, got almost zero nominations in other categories either. In 2019, Disco Elysium won every category it was nominated in, 4 wins, but no Game of the Year nomination.
Snubbs like these can still be quite common in any field of entertainment when dealing with awards. Is there in science or methodology to it? Can we predict or understand exactly why some games are not nominated but others are? Let’s look at this year’s nominations.
What Genre Categories Mean
To cover a lot of ground in a short amount, there are 13 categories for games of different genres or formats. From VR and Family games to Action, Indie, Fighting, and so on. Yet, the Game of the Year category has 4 games that are also in the Action/Adventure Category and 2 from the RPG nominations. So what does that make all the other games then? The lack of an even amount of distribution between categories for the GOTY spot is probably the most repeated offense of the nominations every year to be sure.
Then there’s the Indie Game problem. The story of Hades feels like the most obvious one to look at. A game that defied the odds so much and was so talked about and beloved by the entire industry that it’s only 2 wins out of 9 nominations at the Game Awards feels like some of those nominations felt more like forced to acknowledge but not completely accept that a beloved and carefully developed Indie game could thrive in this sort of environment.
Game of the Year Nominations 2022
Prime candidates
The front runners seem like no-brainers. God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring seemed to be shoo-in nominations as soon as their releases were announced. It seems like all year even before both games were out, it was Ragnarok vs Elden Ring for GOTY. At least they seemed to back it up: high game sales and nearly universally perfect scores of 9 and 10 out of 10. Though really these are very completely different games at their core, even if the combat gameplay can possibly seem similar.
Possible Upsets
What’s next, Horizon Forbidden West has to be a top contender too. Despite coming out around the same time as Elden Ring, it still racked up similar review praise and while it didn’t sell like crazy, how much do sales need to factor in? Perhaps more than you’d think or want to believe when it comes to “gameplay integrity”. If that is something you want to argue for.
Coming in possibly as the dark horse of the group a bit ironically is the orange cat game, Stray. Stray is for all purposes, an indie game. Indie games get a strange rep in today’s gaming landscape. With the help of Steam, they are now more popular and acceptable than ever but are still arguably looked down on quite a lot by those who would likely buy games like Ragnarok, Forbbiden West, or Elden Ring. Stray is Steams highest selling game of the year according to some reports. It also has very impressive review scores and was just about the only game anyone played or talked about in late July.
The Outliers
Then you have, in one person’s humble opinion, what feel like seat fillers. Games that by all accounts are good and probably the best in their genre to a degree but… did they really achieve the same level of notoriety and praise as the other games they are sharing the table with? Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Plague Tale Requiem were very anticipated sequels but didn’t seem to garner much attention outside of their niche fanbases.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3, not to sound dismissive, is just the most you can get out of your JRPG fix for the year. It doesn’t seem much more beyond that. Not to knock on JRPGs at all, but if Xenoblade could make it to GOTY contender this year, why didn’t Dragonquest XI in 2017 or Octopath Traveler in 2018, and so on?
The same can be said about A Plague Tale Requiem. An all-around well-made and fun-to-play game. However aside from its unique setting and very well-put-together story, its gameplay is quite derivative and its sales and reviews are quite good but nothing to write home about like the others on this list. So what is it doing with the “best of the best”? Was 2022 just a slow year for games? Is there anything we are missing?
Possible Snubs?
The obvious 2 that come to mind, while maybe not *more* deserving than Xenoblade or Requiem but at least would make the category more intriguing, would be Sonic Frontiers and Bayonetta 3. Sonic Frontiers of course is the real wild card that many might say “ok we’re getting ahead of ourselves”. Frontiers wasn’t praised to high heaven, but it has enough positive reception with only one or two contrarians. Its total user and review scores are not much lower than Xenoblade or Requiem, but then the fanfare was much much higher.
In Defense of Sonic Frontiers
A good Sonic game is an event due to its legacy. A nearly great or fantastic Sonic game seems to deserve more acceptance. Fans are fighting tooth and nail for even a scrap of that notoriety in the Player’s Voice category of the Game Awards since it’s the only category purely based on popular vote from gamers.
Perhaps Frontiers being nominated wouldn’t be so “deserving”, but like the general existence of the Sonic Franchise itself, would feel more interesting and noteworthy of a contender.
The Bayonetta Problem
The real snub though might be Bayonetta 3. How is this game not in the running? Its scores are relatively higher than Xenoblade and Requiem. It’s actually to the level or even higher than that of Forbbiden West even. Maybe its sales aren’t doing the best, but it’s only been a month. Was it really the voice actor controversy that kept everyone steering clear from it?
While that issue is very muddy at this point and people are struggling to pick a side or not lose sight of the bigger picture, it does seem arbitrary to ignore giving at least a nomination to the hard work of the game itself. Bayonetta 3 is touted as Platinum Games *best* game and yet it only has a Best Action Game nomination. That also begs a new question: What are the other genre categories? Are they just consolation prizes?
Conclusion: How to Nominate a Game of the Year
How good a game is clearly must be the first thing people think of when deciding what is GOTY. Enjoyably must also be there, but it seems that reputation and popularity play a big factor as well. Some hue indie games almost make it to the top, like Hades, Disco Elysium, and this year Stray, but they don’t seem to be allowed to stay on the mountain for too long. Other deserving games like Spider-man Miles Morales or Bayonetta 3 might just be edged out just barely by safer, more well-rounded games that aren’t as well known, possibly just to give games like Xenoblade and Plague Tale their flowers if only for 15 minutes.
Then there’s the Player’s Voice category. Introduced in 2019, every game so far but 1 has been a game not even nominated for hardly any other categories let alone GOTY. So of course awards are just all relative and not exactly needed to take seriously. While there seem to be a lot of serious factors in deciding on GOTY, it still seems like unpredictable and somewhat erratic criteria no matter how you analyze what is nominated or why.
