Looking across the nominations for this year’s The Game Awards, I don’t see too many shocks. Some surprises, most notably Shadow of the Erdtree actually making the cut for GOTY,, but nothing egregious. That’s a good thing for the health of the show. It’s also a sign of the fairly unimportant year 2024 has been for video games.
Whenever you say a year hasn’t been great for games, people rush to comment with individual games that have been good. Yes, I liked Astro Bot too. I’m very happy Balatro is up for GOTY. I wish Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and 1000xResist were there too. I get it. Some good games have indeed been released this year. But all things considered, 2024 does not have the bench to go the distance.
2024 Has Been Weaker Than 2023, And 2025 Will Be Better
We might consider 2023 a bit of a freak year, caused by the bottleneck of console launches and a pandemic that led to a double stuffed cookie of a release calendar. But if we go back to the last pre-pandemic year, 2020, then we again see that 2024 doesn’t quite have the same star power.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, Half-Life: Alyx, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order all missed out on a GOTY nom in 2020, because the competition (The Last of Us Part 2, Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Doom Eternal, Ghost of Tsushima) was too tough. 2024 can’t compete.
It looks to be a similar story in 2025, as the industry weans off its live-service obsession and some big hitters return. The nominees for Most Anticipated paint this picture: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Ghost of Yotei, Grand Theft Auto 6, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and Monster Hunter Wilds. And they still leave out Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Fable, Civ 7, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Doom: The Dark Ages, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, and anything the Switch 2 will give us.
Of course, there are some caveats there. These games may not all launch in 2025 (Hades 2 was nominated last year and is still in early access), and they may not all be that good. Only one eventual GOTY nominee was up for the joke of an ‘award’ last year – Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which won. Star Wars Outlaws, a fellow nominee, was a major disappointment, while GOTY front-runner Astro Bot hadn’t even been announced. 2025 is shaping up to be very interesting.
The Game Awards Is Getting Interesting
However, The Game Awards 2025 is not. If GTA 6 does indeed launch and is of a similar level to other GTA games, it will win most categories. Maybe it will deserve them – that’s not really my issue. Baldur’s Gate 3 was my GOTY and I felt it deserved most, if not all, of the plaudits TGA gave it. It still made the run-up to (and actual ceremony) quite boring.
It seems like I’m trashing 2024, but being an average year is no shameful thing. They can’t all be great or else ‘great’ loses all meaning. And what it means is this is one of the most exciting years for The Game Awards ever. While I have concerns over how Keighley and the show deal with the rising discontent, this is the most interesting version of the show yet. I love award shows, and The Game Awards has finally joined the party.
Most people don’t actually like The Game Awards. They like when games they like win, but when they don’t the show is bad and corporate and meaningless. And you know what? They’re right! Award shows ultimately matter very little, but I love them anyway. I love the race of it all, predicting the winner, banking on an underdog, seeing a spread of accolades. I love it with the Oscars, the Grammys. God help me, I even follow the SAG Awards. And The Game Awards has lacked this feeling in the past.
Every Race Is Too Close To Calls
We’re already seeing evidence of this. Best Performance has only one nominee in GOTY as the jury casts a wider lens over 2024. With no true standout on the level of Baldur’s Gate 3, everybody has a shot. Games For Impact has had a change in fortune too, feeling more legitimate with a stronger crop of games also nominated elsewhere rather than being shut out by titans.
There are still some changes I would personally make to each category, of course. That’s one of the core elements of following award shows. I look forward to doing it again when I Saw The TV Glow and The Substance are snubbed by the Oscars. I’d have Infinite Wealth in GOTY, I’d have 1000xResist… well, anywhere, but particularly Narrative, Direction, and Indie. I’d find a place for Thank Goodness You’re Here.
But despite that, this is the most I’ve been looking forward to The Game Awards in years. I don’t have a lot of horses in many races, but it’s the thrill of the chase that matters. It’s not about whether ‘my’ game wins or loses. It’s that I have no idea which game is taking any of the awards home. That’s rare for The Game Awards, and it’s special. It could only happen in a down year like 2024.
