While reading through the BAFTA nominees earlier today ahead of my interview with Tara Saunders (Chair of the BAFTA Games Committee) and Jane Millichip (CEO of BAFTA) hours before the public reveal, I was struck by a couple of thoughts. The first, most obviously, was the domination of Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga. With 11 nominations total, three more than Astro Bot and the equally surprising Still Wakes The Deep in second place with eight, it seemed like an odd reflection of 2024 – few would have Hellblade 2 as their game of the year. And yet, it seemed like a perfect reflection of the BAFTAs.
One of the more surprising ceremonies in gaming’s award season, the BAFTAs tend to have a broader range of more interesting nominees – the introduction of chapter voting (where only those with explicit experience in specialist categories vote for some awards), plus an emphasis on curation and taste-making rather than following the crowd, tends to throw up more interesting nominees. This, I’m told, is by design.
“I think it’s a showcase that our awards are peer voted, they’re not voted by the general public,” Saunders tells me. “They’re voted by the strength of the games industry, and that’s global membership as well. When you get peers voting on quality, on what they see as excellence, you’ll get some things that maybe have bypassed the public radar, but are just really great entertainment experiences from a games perspective.”
It reflects the ‘category first’ thinking of BAFTA voters, where games that achieve technical heights and are perhaps even more divisive, like Hellblade 2, get recognition that typically goes to the biggest sellers in many other gaming ceremonies. This, too, is an important part of what makes the BAFTAs unique – and why it can offer such a spectrum of nominees.
“The bewildering array of genres, the bewildering array of the size of studios, the breadth of genre types, whether it’s multiplayer, comedy, [even] a solo developed game like Balatro,” Millichip says. “It’s quite gobsmacking frankly, just how much breadth there is and I think it reflects the community brilliantly. It feels really wide open. To see big Japanese and Chinese games up against really tiny, bespoke British games in Best Game [is exciting]. We were saying earlier that, I can’t think of many art forms where you’d see that kind of breadth in the top category. We’ve just come out of the film awards, and I can’t imagine seeing those kinds of lists that really represent the whole ecosystem of the sector, and that’s really refreshing to see.”
The other thing I noticed with the nominees was the heavy presence of Thank Goodness You’re Here, with seven nominations including Best Game and Best British Game. The comedy slapfest was one of my favourites of last year, but its specifically British (and even more specifically, Yorkshire) references meant it perhaps didn’t have global appeal. That’s why I was so glad to see the BAFTAs recognise it, and while Saunders and Millichip can’t play favourites, they agree it represents something specific to the BAFTAs themselves that such small, personal, specific games that resonate get a chance to shine.
“A job we have to do at BAFTA is to bring some of those games that might be overlooked in the consumer sphere to consumer attention,” Millichip says. “The fact that the actual industry practitioners are playing, Thank Goodness You’re Here, and Balatro like it’s going out of business, enables us to bring those games to a wider public.”
“I think the industry obviously cares about what gets celebrated, but the BAFTA rewards are exceptionally robust,” Saunders adds. “We encourage people not to vote for things if they haven’t played it. That’s a message that goes out each year. We encourage people to vote in their expertise. Having experts in the field of design and technical achievement to actually put the long list together, their votes counting towards those long lists have made a huge impact. And I think we’ll see more of that moving forward. It’s something that’s done really well in the film awards as well, and games is bringing some of that knowledge of that rich history.”
You can check out the full list of BAFTA nominees here, with the winners at the BAFTA ceremony on April 8.
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