The Game Awards, 2025

T he Game Awards 2025 has concluded, and with it, some thoughts always linger in my head. Production was fine this year, but the pacing of the awards, and the ratio of award time to trailer time was once again, leaned way too much towards trailer time then awards. Also, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 won everything, even categories it shouldn't have been nominated for in the first place. Overall, although I think a good chunk of the awards went to deserving recipients, this year has got to be the weakest year this awards ceremony has had. Let's take a deeper look.

Game of the Year, Expedition 33. Won 9 out of 11 Categories it was nominated for.

    First, lets talk about that aforementioned "ratio" of trailers to awards. Just like last year, some awards were briefly mentioned in a "pre-show" where the category had a brief introduction, the winner was read, and then it moved on. While I do think categories like "best esports player" and "Best esports game" can be rolled together into a back-to-back section, it would be nicer to have these fleshed out, especially a category like "Best Fighting Game". Next, after the show is started, even more categories are given this brief award segment. Why are categories like "Best Art Direction", "Best Sports Game" and "Best RPG" not given some love!? Even if its just a nice intro like the rest, and not even a speech at the beginning or end, giving some love to these categories, the games that make up the awards ceremony, would be a much better experience, even if  I miss out on a trailer or two. And, as hyped as I am for HighGuard, it should NOT have been the last trailer, especially when we had that sick ass Divinity trailer.

    Next, lets go over the awards, one by one cause I'm annoyed. First, the Esports sections: Best Player, Best Team, Best Esports Game. Best Esports player nominees are: Brawk is the Initiator/Killjoy player for NRG, who won Valorant Masters this year. He's a phenomenal player, but most of his achievements came at the end of the year, with the miraculous run at Masters. Next is Zyw0o, star AWPer for Team Vitality, and in my opinion, the next reincarnation of Simple. I'm not very informed on his achievements this year however, since I wasn't following the CSGO pro scene closely. but Vitality have gone on a tear this year, so he's been playing fantastic. Next is one of my FAVORITE rivalries in all of esports, Kakeru and MenaRD. These two star Street Fighter players have DOMINATED SF6 this year, and MenaRD in particular looks UNSTOPPABLE. My vote for this category went to MenaRD, as a fighting game player I am quite intimate with seeing his success this year, and felt it was better, and more dominant than the winner of this category, Chovy. Chovy is the star mid-laner for Gen G, who dominated League's pro circuit this entire year, falling at the end with a 3rd at worlds. losing to KT. A deserved win in the category for him, but I wouldn't have been shocked if it went to Zyw0o or MenaRD instead. I've just typed way to much for this one category, but it helps us understand the next two, Best Team and Best Esports game. Best team was a competition between GenG, Vitality, Liquid, NRG, and Falcons. Liquid and Falcons are nominated for their performance in Mobile Legends and Dota 2 respectively. Vitality won this, probably because unlike Gen G's dominance, which was mainly in their own region and failed to get the final, most important trophy, Vitality has just been winning it all pretty much, especially in such an amazing year from CS esports, despite Valve's best attempt to blast the playerbase's heads off with a shotgun. Please fix the anti-cheat Valve. Unfortunately for me, who voted for LoL in this next category, CS2 won the Best Esports Game, and its understandable why. Despite an amazing year from LoL and Val, CS2 had an INSANE turnout on their events and pro circuit, and the production around the circuits were incredible as well.

   Vitality after their win at IEM Katowice

     Next category is Content Creator of the year. Caedrel, Kai Cenat, MoistCritikal, Sakura Miko and TheBurntPeanut were all nominated, even if the BurntPeanut is a repulsive human being  who disrespects the very people and art he as a vtuber is built off of. Oh and he says slurs. Cool. Anyways, MoistCr1tikal won the Content Creator award, and it's very deserved.

    Next, for one of the most contentious awards, we have the Players Voice category, which is a fully FAN VOTED award. The topic this year is once again, gacha games being allowed, as popular gacha game Wuthering Waves won this year's Player Voice, beating Expedition 33, Silksong, and my personal favorite this year, Dispatch. Now, I haven't played WuWa since its launch, which was rocky to say the best, but I have heard it is tremendously better than it used to be, and I thought it was better than Genshin even at launch, so its still a fine game that won. It would've been much more disappointing for it to go to Genshin. However the topic about this award is normally, after nomination, the games will give some premium currency to the players as a "thank you", and because of this, players will vote for their favorite gacha game more, because they want the rewards. However, I think this is just the product of both Multiplayer games and Single-player games being nominated for the same category, as nothing is stopping other multiplayer games, like Marvel Rivals or Overwatch, from giving their players skins or premium currency for nominations or wins, but there's not much a single player game can do do offer the same level of rewards. An optimal solution would be two player voice's categories, but with how much TGA seems to hate awards, I don't believe that is going to happen.

Player's Voice winner, Wuthering Waves. Maybe I'll give it another playthrough, and a thorough review.

    Next, we have Most Anticipated game, Best Adaptation, and Best Strategy/Sim. As cool as Witcher 4 and 007 look, its motherfucking GTA 6. No game in the history of video games have come CLOSE to how anticipated GTA 6 is. Best adaptation is the next category, and really, the only contenders for the award were the Minecraft movie, the horrible DMC adaptation, and TLOU2. As much as I enjoyed the Minecraft Movie, critically, its an awful movie. As I've said a ton, its slop from a bucket, but that slop tastes really good. TLOU2 understandably won that category, but I hope the Mario Galaxy movie is critcally better, as I'm really looking forward to Rosalina posting after the win next year. Best Sim was between The Alters, FFTactics Remake, Jurassic World Evolution, Civ 7, Tempest Rising, and Two Point Museum. FFTactics won the category, a very good remake of an old Classic, but The Alters and TPM were also pretty good this year, and would've also been an understandable win.

    There are always 3 categories each year I never really know the games off, and each time I wish I played them. Innovation in Accessibility, Games For Impact and Best VR/AR. Games for Impact went to South of Midnight, an action adventure game set in the American Deep South, and as someone from the Deep South, I'll have to give this game a try. The only other game I knew is Wanderstop, a cute game with music by C418. Yeah, the minecraft guy. Innovation in Accessibility went to the new Doom game. And Best VR/AR went to The Midnight Walk. Congratulations to the winners, and I hope the communities around these games are happy.

       Wanderstop, tea-making simulator? by Annapura Interactive

    It has been 3 days since I last wrote in here, and I've realised, maybe covering every category is fruitless, but I'm going to do it anyways. This year has been pretty decent for casual racing games, and its quite the welcome surprise. Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing Crossworlds and the new Kirby Air Riders game are all fantastic. and completely outshone the rest of the sports category this year. Though notable mention does have to go to my vote, Rematch, since I believe its insanely fun and such a nice concept, but unfortunately its too small in a multiplayer space. I thoroughly believe if it had a massive marketing campaign, we could've seen it winning, but the winner of the category is Mario Kart World. No complaints here, I've been feasting off of MKWorld content since its release, and the rest of the category, while fantastic, hasn't really captured me in like MKWorld has.

    Speaking of another Nintendo win, best family game, a category often won by Nintendo, went to Donkey Kong Bonanza, to nobody's surprise. An absolutely fantastic Nintendo game, and definitely a game in the topic of "best of this year", Bonanza is absolutely amazing, like the 2 Lego games and  Split Fiction, while great, are nowhere near the quality of Bonanza.

    Last of the smaller awards that I don't have the most comment on is best Mobile game. As always, the contenders were three underperforming games that didn't manage to find a foothold, a bad port of Wuthering Waves, and the greatest gacha game to be released since Granblue Fantasy. I may be biased. In all seriousness however, I don't get how some of these games get nominated, since we have seen some pretty decent mobile games get released this year, and some fantastic ports of pc games to mobile as well, but we nominate Persona Fantom X and the fucking Destiny game? Maybe I'm hating too much, but surely this category can have more research and love put into it, there's probably some hidden mobile gems out there being released every year.

Mobile Game of the Year, Uma Musume Pretty Derby. Released to fan acclaim and developed a strong western fanbase almost immediately..

    Now, onto the contentious categories. These massive categories often have many great games released in the year to compete for their titles, and this year, they were beaten by French people almost fully across the board. These categories always have some internet dialogue before and after, so lets start with an interesting one. Best Multiplayer Game. This year we've seen some fantastic multiplayer games come out, the rise of "friendslop", and some fantastic Co-Op  games come out as well. This year's nominees were Arc Raiders, and extraction shooter by The Final's creators Embark Studios; Battlefield 6, a series finding itself coming back into shape after the horrific BF2042; Peak, a 4 player "friendslop" game that really solidified the co-op genre as a successful model, even with the success of previous "friendslop" games like Lethal Company, developed and produced by Landfall Games and Aggro Crab Studios; Elden Ring: Nightreign, a fantastic open-world co-op "rougelike?" with all the Dark Souls and Elden Ring bosses you hate; and Split Fiction, a charming sci-fi/fantasy co-op game by Game Awards winning studio Take Two Interactive. All of these games are fantastic, but  the buzz was about Shroud and his endorsement of Arc Raiders. Now, I've played The Finals, the studios first game, and I know Embark can make a fantastic game, but a critical downside of their games is the use of Generative AI in their voices. I was willing to let it slide in the first game, as they were a new studio, and they fully paid the VA's a contract that the VA's had to willingly sign, granting the use of their voices to train the gen AI in their games. But now they're a bigger studio, so forgive me for not letting it slide again. Though I don't doubt Embark's ability to put a ton of love into the gameplay and design, they're use of AI is a critical fault of the game, and so my vote went to PEAK. However, the award went to Arc Raiders, which was a little bit surprising, seeing how successful Battlefield 6 was. However, the use of AI is a contentious subject, and one I will leave for a larger article, as I think the AA and AAA gaming spheres are abusing something that is drastically lowering the quality of games we are receiving, but I digress.

    

    An even more contentious award probably has to go to the two "indie" awards. Clair Obscur E33 took both awards, "Best Independent Game" and "Best Debut Indie Game". Expedition 33 is NOT an indie game. Its best described as a AA game, where it doesn't have the $100M games like Red Dead or Black Ops is being funded with, but it still has large sources of EXTERNAL funding. Although games like Hollow Knight Silksong have more "available" money, as Hollow Knight made $95M in profit, those sources of funding, publishing and marketing are all internal works that Team Cherry has done and acquired themselves. If Team Cherry needed another million to make their game, they would've had to get it by asking their community, or maybe putting their game on sale, meanwhile E33 just needs to ask Kepler Interactive, who isn't the biggest publisher, if they can have more, especially considering Kepler is funded by massive AAA chinese studio NetEase. Now it's more complicated than that, and their are some weird exceptions to the external/internal rule I use for evaluating the status of an "indie" game, but overall, I just think the main problem is that the industry has lost the term AA. Now, if a game isn't a AAA funded macroproject, its considered "indie", and if it is published and developed by a AAA developer, but looks indie, its "indie" (I'm talking about you, Dave the Diver). Anyways, I think best Indie should've gone to Silksong, and best Debut Indie should've gone to Blue Prince. If you haven't played Blue Prince, go do so. It's fantastic.