Topic: The Game Awards 2025

I see that Vedinad, the creator of Megabonk, has requested that the nomination for Debut Indie game be withdrawn, on the grounds that it's not his first game.

Will Sandfall follow suit? I'm not holding my breath.

@Matt_Barber Probably not, integrity is rare these days, but that made me buy Megabonk out of sheer respect for the creator.

The Game Awards just shouldn't have put Exp 33 in that category. I would argue they shouldn't have put Exp 33 in the indies category either - a game with a 10+ million dollar budget made by people with experience and contacts within AA and AAA studios, a 30 person core team and over 400 total people involved in the production(with other studios making some of the most major parts of the game) is not a sensible definition of 'indie'. Maybe Game Awards needs an intermediate-budget category so they can let the AA games and equivalents compete with each other. Although games would then have to admit what their budget was.

I guess I'll just have to use the term "Garage Dev" from now on for my team of two when a developer that has a publisher the size of Kepler gets to call itself indie with a team of 30 and a budget of millions. Ridiculous.

Yeh there needs to be some kind of quantitative framings around what should/could technically constitute an 'indie' studio. With how fluid the current defining criteria is, Larian could well have been put in this category for BG3 (!)

I think there’s an argument for even silk song not being indie with how popular the first game was and team cherrys ties to xBox but maybe I’m just being to extreme

@FawfulsFury Team Cherry have a huge financial cushion from the success of Hollow Knight but, other than that, I think that they've stuck pretty well to their indie roots. The bulk of the work on Silksong was done by just four people - including a composer who also worked on other projects - so it's not like they've blown a huge amount on external contractors or marketing. Aspiring indie devs can, and will, learn a lot from how they operate.

Supergiant are perhaps a bit more questionable. They've grown considerably from the studio that made Bastion and Transistor and even the first Hades had a production cost that was north of $10 million, although that might just be because they pay well and don't crunch. They still seem a lot more connected to the indie ethos than Sandfall, at any rate.

The Game Awards thought Sifu was a fighting game, no one should be shocked they have a flawed concept of the endlessly contentious term "indie".

In general expecting The Game Awards to be 100% serious and legitimate is ultimately a fool's errand. My bar has been set at "consistently watchable" for them and it has passed that bar like 3 times out of 11.

I want to see all the other games that Sega is working on that they promised in their trailer last year. More Virtua Fighter would be nice too. Maybe a new console.

About a week until Player Voice opens for voting. What are people's guesses about what the options will be? It starts with 30.

@FishyS,

"About a week until Player Voice opens for voting. What are people's guesses about what the options will be?"

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 Plus. 🤣

Will never happen, but a man can dream.

I'm pretty sure that Genshin Impact will be among the contenders, because it always is.

@FishyS im just hoping hundred line gets some kinda mention. doubt itll get far but in the initial group would be nice

@FishyS My guess for the 30 Players' Voice nominees are:

• MK World
• DK Bananza
• Silksong
• Hades 2
• Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2
• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
• Ghost of Yotei
• Split Fiction
• Silent Hill f
• Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
• MGS Delta
• Battlefield 6
• Arc Raiders
• Shinobi Art of Vengeance
• Indiana Jones
• DOOM The Dark Ages
• Outer Worlds 2
• MH Wilds
• Pirate Yakuza
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• AC Shadows
• FFXIV
• No Man's Sky
• Helldivers 2
• Marvel Rivals
• Fortnite
• Genshin Impact
• Zenless Zone Zero
• Palworld

With the final 5 turning out to be:

• Expedition 33
• Marvel Rivals
• Genshin Impact
• Battlefield 6 or Arc Raiders
• Hades 2 or Silksong

EDIT: Adjusted my predictions to add in Arc Raiders.

Looking at the nominees this year, I'm pretty uninterested in seeing so many categories full of the same games.
I'll just take the Not-E3 trailers and announcements in the day after this year I think.

@Grumblevolcano given they just released a new console, I would love for them to announce a new game, like they did when the Switch 1 released, they announced Bayo3 as well as a port of Bayonetta 1 and 2

Players' Voice category has gone live, nominees are:

• Arc Raiders
• Battlefield 6
• Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2
• Delta Force
• Dispatch
• DK Bananza
• DOOM The Dark Ages
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• FFXIV
• Fortnite
• Genshin Impact
• Ghost of Yotei
• Hades 2
• Helldivers 2
• Silksong
• Indiana Jones
• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
• MK World
• Marvel Rivals
• Megabonk
• Ninja Gaiden 4
• No Man's Sky
• Peak
• REPO
• Silent Hill f
• Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
• Split Fiction
• Warframe
• Wuthering Waves

https://thegameawards.com/brackets/players-voice

My round 1 votes are:

• Expedition 33 (haven't played but want to)
• Bananza (own; really good)
• Final fantasy 14 (enjoyed years ago)
• Genshin Impact (enjoyed years ago)
• Hades II (on my wishlist)
• Silksong (on my wishlist)
• Mario Kart World (on my wishlist)
• Ninja Gaiden 4 (haven't played but looks neat)
• No Man's Sky (own; kinda fun)
• Sonic Racing (the demo was kinda fun)

@Grumblevolcano Not bad, you guessed more than 20 of them

I voted for:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Dispatch
Donkey Kong Bananza
Final Fantasy XIV
Ghost of Yōtei
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Mario Kart World
Silent Hill f
Sonic Racing: Crossworlds
Split Fiction

Players' Voice Round 2 is live with the 10 nominees being:

• Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2
• Dispatch
• DK Bananza
• Genshin Impact
• Ghost of Yotei
• Hades 2
• Silksong
• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
• Wuthering Waves