It is December which means we are close to “Oscars of Video Games” or in other words, The Game Awards. The nominees were just announced and let’s just say, there weren’t many surprises. So, let’s talk a bit about them and speculate on who has a good chance of winning.
At the start of 2025, everybody was looking forward to GTA VI, if it had been released this year there would be no need for this article. But as the delay of the game confirmed (and to no one’s surprise, we just heard the news about a second Rockstar-style delay), this year’s best video game race is wide open.
2025 was an interesting year for video games. A lot of new games came out of nowhere to grasp the attention of the community. A good chunk of these titles were indies. I know this trend has been growing in the video game industry in the past decade, but this year was remarkable. With the release of the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Silksong, Blue Prince, and Hades II, smaller studios showed they are going toe to toe with ‘triple A’s.
If I had to pick a winner for both Game of the Year and Best Direction, it would without doubt Clair Obscur: Expedition 33; a game from a small studio in France founded by ex-Ubisoft veterans. To be honest, I went into the game without any expectations, but I instantly fell in love. Gameplay, art style, story, and music. Everything in this game felt fresh. In a world of sequels and remakes, it is really interesting to see an original game that does a lot of things right. The game is not perfect; it has some balancing issues and other small stuff, but just seeing some developers doing something against the tide is really cool. Therefore, I think CO:E33 has a very good chance of winning in at least one of the two main categories. Which for an indie game would be a huge success. But there are at least two more games that I think would also be worthy of being considered in winning Game of the Year; Hades II and Silksong. But enough of indies, let’s see what AAA games have a chance this year.
Source: Hades II Official Press Kit
The Game Awards are not the Game Awards without two things; Nintendo and Hideo Kojima! Both of these two had a very good year. Nintendo with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2 and two excellent titles, Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bonanza. Both of these games are fantastic, and as we could easily predict, Donkey Kong Bonanza was nominated. But I don’t think it has the innovations needed for a game of the year award.
On their part, Kojima Productions released Death Stranding 2; the sequel to one of the most polarizing games of the past five years. But I don’t think Kojima has achieved enough in this game to be the winner. But again, I am not a good person to judge because I really couldn’t understand the appeal of the first one. Although I am not alone in thinking this way as some websites and journalists agree. For example, Gamespot in their review of Death Stranding 2 stated “Death Stranding 2 is less precise and clear about what it wants to say” and Edge magazine in their review of the game which was published in their issue 413th, wrote: “This is a grand, unwieldy behemoth of a sequel, buckling under the weight of its features and bombast. In lacking a sense of direction, though, it sometimes delivers in unexpected ways.”
Another game that suffers from not-done-too-much-to-be-considered is Ghost of Yotei. Yes, it is a beautiful game, but I feel like it was created mostly because of the success of the Ghost of Tsushima, and it is basically the same. Also, I am going to pass on Doom: The Dark Ages, at least in the game of the year category. It may have some chance in other categories, but the game is not even near to having the impact of its predecessor, which was Doom: Eternal.
The only traditional triple–A video game that I think has a good chance of winning is Kingdom Comes: Deliverance II. The game was released at the start of the year, and it is a very strong contender.
Before I sign off, I want to also take a look at the indie category which this year is not entirely distinguishable from Game of the Year. It seems like each year the number of indie games that can also compete in Game of the Year category increases. Besides Clair Obscur, only this year did we have Silksong, Hades II, and Blue Prince, which in my opinion all of them have a good chance of being nominated in the main category. As a person who strongly believes indie gams are the main creative source for the industry and loves to see them thrive, I love to see this development. But it may be unfair to some smaller indie games, because I think there are lots of good and even great ones that risk being overshadowed by these exceptional ones.
For example, if Clair Obscur wins Game of the Year, shouldn’t it automatically win the Indie Game of the Year as well? Or, shouldn’t it even get nominated in the Game of the Year category, mean that it should win the indie game category? I can think of two possible solutions to this problem, neither of them perfect, but may be slightly more fair! The first one is to set a rule that if an indie game is nominated in Game of the Year category, it will be excluded from the indie game section; the second would be to remove the indie game category completely and nominate 10 or even 15 games in the main category. I know these are not good solutions, and I am open to hearing more suggestions!
However we want to look at it, two things are obvious. Whether we like it or not, The Game Awards are becoming really important for the video game industry; and thanks to strong indie games, this year we are in for a hell of a ride!
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He grew up with platformer and point and click adventure games and still thinks these two genres are the best! Beside games, loves football (and insists IT SHOULDN’T BE CALLED SOCCER) and is an avid Arsenal fan! Games, Music, Movies and in general Pop Culture are the things that he lives for! And thinks writing in third person is a bit weird!
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