Rollout for 2025’s The Game Awards has began at last, and it’s sure to be a contentious one. After much speculation, the nominations for each of 2025’s Game of the Year categories are finally here, bringing with them some huge wins, some disappointing absences, and the setting up of what will be an Expedition 33 massacre, scoring a nomination in what feels like every category — shocker.
Biggest winners
As anticipated in my Game Awards predictive article, 2025 is looking to be a strong awards season for the independent hit-makers and small teams with an unbridled drive in their craft. The likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Hades 2 are dominating nearly every category, all putting their AAA contemporaries on the backfoot.
Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur in particular is taking home 12 nominations, breaking new ground as the most nominated title in the award show’s history. Just like the industry-shaping Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2023, the events of this year’s ceremony are looking to affirm the power of the AA RPG in the modern era, and take home many a trophy while doing it. The voice cast is even earning three separate nominations. Deserved.
The AAA big-hitters of the gaming world aren’t being entirely snubbed either. While not earning a GOTY nomination, the celebrated Ghost of Yōtei is charging into battle with seven nominations. Death Stranding 2 earned the same number: an expected feat given the jury’s (and particularly Geoff Keighley’s) infatuation with the man behind it, Hideo Kojima, inevitably making his umpteenth on-stage appearance this year, too.
The tidal wave of sequels landing in these nomination positions is immediately noticeable, from Silksong to Kingdom Come Deliverance II. but to see an army of established IP bested (at least so far) by Expedition 33, a studio debut and new story, is sure to permeate some hope and creativity through gaming’s chief studios and names.
What got snubbed
Many titles, while still performing well, missed out on the spotlight seen by their predecessors, whether that be the aforementioned Ghost of Yōtei, absent from the GOTY nominations seen by Ghost of Tsushima, or Split Fiction: a certainly celebrated title, though not going on to win Game of the Year like its genre-defining counterpart It Takes Two.
Furthermore, buzzer beater games like Dispatch or ARC Raiders didn’t quite reach the pinnacle of categories either, though both received their flowers elsewhere. Dispatch found a home in Best Debut Indie Game, sadly likely to be brutalised by the likes of Expedition 33‘s seismic impact on the scene. Perhaps Dispatch will find a home in the Players’ Voice category, 100% decided by the community and still yet to have finalised nominations.
Blue Prince was often discussed to be in the running for a Game of the Year point by fans and speculators online, though this indie puzzler only found a home in two categories, sandwiched amongst monstrous competition.
Still, everything nominated wasn’t truly snubbed, and they’re all still getting their name in the ring to be celebrated and debated in a longstanding bout. While it feels like all of the year’s culturally significant outputs found a home, there’ll inevitably be some small favourites, soon to be inevitable cult classics, that missed a spot. Citizen Sleeper 2, for instance, was cast a rough die in its 31st January launch, sure to be buried under big names by the time awards season reared its head.
What needs changing
This nomination line-up signals a few issues with The Game Awards’ structure, from repetitive categories to those with simply too few options. For instance, Best Ongoing Game and Best Community Support have 80% similarity in their selections, so maybe it’s high time we merge these nigh-synonymous units together to save us all some time.
Also, some areas are a little too niche to really be notable. Scarcely any (and that’s putting it kindly) of the Best Adaptation scorers are particularly loved by gaming fans, with many of these televised or theatrical outputs angering fans of the source material. This was a great cateogry last year, and Fallout versus Arcane was an entertaining, chatter-sparking skirmish, but this time around it’s an area bound to fall on deaf ears.
It’s years like these that make us wish Game of the Year, among other categories, could have more spaces; while the Oscars nominate ten for their coveted Best Picture, the gaming world sees only six. This is a sure-fire way of disappointing fans in such a momentous year like 2025, where seemingly every game release was one of the genre or medium’s all-time best.
Final thoughts
It’s an exciting way to end the year: a gladitorial combat bound to change tides, crown new kings and make the AAA developers quake. The gaming industry (and specifically its independent creators) has outdone itself maybe too much this year; each one of these nominated titles in any category could have taken home the most prestigious category in previous years, but here we see an all-out war between the greats. Get out there and place your votes and make sure to prepare for a late night on December 11th, as us Mancunians are forced to watch the ceremony in the very early hours of the morning.
