Topic: The Game Awards 2025

@Matt_Barber Maybe they need to rethink the debut indie category if only 2 of the 5 nominees are actual debut indies...

@FishyS Yeah, the definitions that they're currently using are clearly far too broad.

The best explanation I've heard is that a lot of people thought that Dispatch deserved to be nominated for something but just wasn't a good fit for any of the other categories. However, it's a new studio and they don't have a big-name publisher, so into Debut Indie it went.

I mean the problem I have is that the Game Awards have fairly boring tastes in games and enough of the people involved with it don't actually play enough games.

This was abundantly clear in 2018 where conveniently the three biggest acclaimed AAA games (Spiderman, Red Dead 2, God of War: Ragnarok) were among the best at every single thing possible. Most annoying to me in hindsight was best soundtrack which did not have Xenoblade 2 despite being eligible. By comparison, I think the category issues are minor or at least way more understandable.

Though to be fair, it is less embarrassing to not play every 15+ hour game than when Oscar voters won't watch the 2 hour movies to vote for.

@kkslider5552000 Considering the jurors are all over the world and some of them are from magazines or sites which barely cover games or only review certain types of games, it makes sense that the games which get nominated are the ones the jurors have actually heard of or potentially even had someone write a review on.

Nintendo Life isn't in the list of jurors this year so that is one less juror vote from a venue which has actually played the Nintendo games as opposed to just heard of the top couple.

@FishyS I think it would be incredibly bad if it came out that a notable amount of people there didn't know that Xenoblade Chornicles 2 existed, a fairly acclaimed first party Nintendo game that was a sequel to one of the best rated RPGs of the past 15 years.

@kkslider5552000 Sure, but... random person at PCGamer or NPR news or Esquire magazine? Even if they were on the gaming beat, knowing Xenoblade 2 had good music is a bit in the weeds.

I think it's important to remember that game awards shows are popularity contests by design. Popularity in an award show doesn't have to correlate to anything like quality or what people actually like.

Most people that actually played the games never even vote in them. I sure don't. Waste of time. The only one I vote in is Steam's because there you can't vote for a game unless you've played it for more than two hours and still own it. It doesn't fully remedy the problems with popularity contests, but it's a heck of a lot better than what the TGA's and practically every other award show does.

It's a paid for industry circle jerk event, mostly. Omnitron is bang on.

Nah, I'm genuinely glad that TGA exist - and honestly look forward to watching them every year!

I don't take them too seriously, and think that the show is just a chaotic fun time - chaotically held together (barely..!) by Geoff.

Usually some good trailers/announcements, and its always interesting to see who wins. I wouldn't even say that nominees/winners were too contentious, and would probably agree with majority of outcomes.

I can see how the show would irk people that take gaming very seriously, but otherwise its a fun time I think

For the "Player's Voice" category I agree. Those are Twitter campaign results and if you scientifically polled actual gamers then the results would be wildly different.

But the rest of the categories on the night (at least making up 90% of each of those) are mostly votes of video game journalists. People that do a 9 to 5 every day playing and writing about video games. And then go home and unwind by...playing more video games. They're professional video game nerd super-users.

I find the opinions of those people useful, interesting, and the whole night overall fun.

@MontyCircus I disagree, because most journalists are even more likely to have biases because their job depends on it. Not being invited to industry events, not getting review copies, not getting enough clicks; these among many other drive bad behaviour and a conflict of interest. Someone whose job depends on not stepping out of line is going to be even more flawed as a judge of what’s good or not.

I think the TGA’s are entertaining as a show, I just don’t care whatsoever about who wins what category. It’s industry circle jerking at its worst.

@OmnitronVariant

So let's say IGN (or whomever) assigns Johnny B. to review a game. He doesn't like it. Gives it a 6/10. Submits it to his editor.

Then his editor says: "No, no Johnny. This is a Playstation exclusive game. We cannot give them that low a rating or it will hurt our relationship with Sony! You've got to re-write your review!"

Do you really think this happens?

I do not. Or the Internet would be chock full of "Here is what it was like in my time reviewing games for IGN/etc." articles.

@MontyCircus No. Johnny B self-censors if the game is from a publisher that he knows will cause issues for IGN if he's too harsh on it. And sometimes Johnny B isn't aware, in which case you bet the editor will pull the brakes. If you don't think this happens, I have a bridge to sell you.

Final 5 has been revealed for Players' Voice:

• Expedition 33
• Dispatch
• Silksong
• Genshin Impact
• Wuthering Waves

Yeah, it's a pretty safe bet that Clair Obscur is going to sweep the board.

Dispatch is definitely the game of the moment though, so recency bias might yet carry it over the line in this category at least.

Rip Bananza.

Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves were in the final 5 last hear also. Genshin has been for several years in a row.

I'll vote Silksong because I think it's boring when the same game wins both player's voice and GotY. Player's Voice should ideally be an opportunity for games which have not gotten enough love in the official categories to raise their heads.

As long as anything other than Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves wins Player's voice, I'll be happy. It would be cool if Dispatch won. Haven't played it myself, but it looks pretty cool.

I will say, it still bugs me 2 years later that because they were way too quick to try it get award winners off stage one year that people were like "HOW DARE THE GAME AWARDS NOT TREAT THE AWARD WINNERS SERIOUSLY?" I'm sorry are you new? Most of the awards are given away in 10 seconds with no award winners on screen, its kinda too late to care about that.

Like why is the line "most of the award winners at an award show are never shown for awards given away in 20X less time than the next Fortnite commercial will get" acceptable when that is obviously embarrassing compared to literally any premiere award show for any other medium but "the dozen award winners who got any time at all not enough time" is too far?

@kkslider5552000 I think it was mostly about the way Eiji Aonuma was treated with the acceptance speech for Tears of the Kingdom. He took to the stage with a translator, so was obviously going to need a bit longer than most, but still got told unceremoniously to wrap it up after thirty seconds.

You can accept that the honoring the creators of the games really isn't that big a priority and still think that that sort of behaviour is beyond the pale.

@Matt_Barber I mean yeah, I guess, but for the most part I just don't think it even stands out that much. I only kinda noticed when I watched that year's show, because its not some big betrayal of what the show has been.

Honestly, I don't know why a writer would only have chosen to be mad at the Game Awards in 2023. If they actually care about this, the show's been like this since year 2, this is just something that was fairly predictable.