Image by Ben Anshin

The Game Awards, an annual award ceremony celebrating exceptional work within the games industry, has become a main staple for both developers and gamers alike. Every year, viewership only grows, and so do public votes, with the 2024 awards seeing over 112 million votes.

The awards break down into 29 categories, most of them highlighting the best-produced work of a given field – whether that’s a multiplayer title, an adapted television show, or even the audio design in a game. Since its inception, The Game Awards has also celebrated figures within the industry, commending content creators, esports icons, and individual performances in games.

Among these categories is the coveted “Game of the Year” title. It’s the ultimate reward for developers, highlighting their game as the best work of that year. In 2024, the honour went to surprise hit platformer Astro Bot – a charming celebration of all things PlayStation.

The Astro Bot series started off as a VR-exclusive game for the PS4 named Astro Bot Rescue Mission, and since then has seen two more titles, including the aforementioned winner. The series really picked up traction with the release of “Astro’s Playroom”, which served as a demo that launched free with PS5, designed to show off the console’s capabilities and the unique adaptability of the Dualsense controller. 

This year, the awards for every category are looking more contentious than ever, none more so than for Game of the Year, where the favourites to win are the indies.

Between titles like Expedition 33, the breakout JRPG heartwrencher set in an apocalyptic France and Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry’s Magnum Opus, we’re looking at possibly the closest pick since the inception of the awards.

In all of this uncertainty, one thing is clear – it’s never been a better time to be a gamer. There’s so much passion and fire being breathed into this industry, both by fans and developers, that games are only continuing to get better; it feels like this year we’ve had a contender for Game of the Year every few months, and most of them are entirely independent studios born from nothing but love for the craft.

I often think of Josef Fares, the director of 2021’s Game of the Year, It Takes Two. During the 2017 Game Awards, Fares took the stage to announce his title, A Way Out, but in a moment of passion, suddenly and with great clarity, exclaimed, “Fuck the Oscars!” 

He went on to explain that the rant was truly about the lack of respect games received as a medium, and that his callout was more a way of saying, “We don’t need to be the Oscars of gaming, because we are great on our own.” As the days pass, that sentiment is proving to be increasingly true.

The nominees have now been announced, and are predicted to exceed last year’s number of votes (112 million). Voting is accessible to the public, and will also be voted upon by a jury of media outlets and professionals.