EVERY year, The Game Awards hosts a live show to announce upcoming games and to unveil the game people have voted as “game of the year.” The event has around 30 awards, and at the end, they reveal the game of the year. Since its launch in 2014, The Game Awards has become an event gamers look forward to every year, hoping their favorite game wins the kudos it deserves.
This year, GOTY nominees include Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Donkey Kong Bananza. A jury composed of influencers and media outlets worldwide selects the nominees. The winners of each category were chosen through both jury votes and public votes, with a 90%:10% ratio, respectively.
The Game Awards had an over 3-hour runtime this year, and with it came a plethora of game announcements. The new games did not appeal to me at all. Trailer after trailer, they all looked and felt the same as each other and games released in the past. Few tried something new, many followed the same style and game design. There were a few attention-grabbing announcements, though, like Larian Studio’s “Divinity” and Remedy Entertainment’s “Control: Resonant.”
The awards also fell relatively short this year. One game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was a frequent winner. The game won awards like best RPG, best narrative, best direction, best music, best art, best indie game, and more. The team behind it, Sandfall Interactive, was honored to receive so many awards, and the fans of the game were even more pleased, but fans of some of the other nominees disagreed.
Clair Obscur didn’t win every award, however. No Man’s Sky won the best ongoing development award. While it wasn’t released this year, the game had several free updates and has been consistently improving since it came out. Other winners were GTA6 for most anticipated, Hollow Knight: Silksong for best action, Mario Kart World for best sports, and Battlefield 6 for best audio design. All of the game announcements and categorical awards led up to the thing everyone was there for: the game of the year. The 2025 Game of the Year is unsurprisingly Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
The game awards this year were a mixed bag of good and bad. People online are upset over the lack of interesting game announcements and the record-setting number of awards Clair Obscur won. It has been a hot topic of discussion, with fans of the game defending why it deserved every award, and fans of other games arguing why it didn’t deserve any.
Personally, I was disappointed that Death Stranding 2 didn’t get a single award. Overall, the awards show this year set a lame precedent for future shows, and the audience can only hope that the 2026 show won’t follow suit.
