Every year is the same. It is September, October, and then “Time to Reflect”. We are close to the end of another great year of gaming. This period of reflection begins with “The Game Awards”. To be a good award event, the nominations should be reprehensibly incomplete. There has to be room for people to criticise the event. The Game Awards were considerate enough to not let a few games be credited in certain categories, so now people are happily angry about it.
The Game Awards covers 30 different categories. This covers the breadth of it—significant AAA games, platform exclusives, and popular indies. It even has brackets for content creators and esports games. Awards are a great place to filter out exactly the kind of games that you want to play. Fortunately, I have you covered since most of the nominations were reviewed this year on this column! This year, the favourite seems to be Deathloop, with it being nominated across categories.
The most prestigious category is the “Game of the Year”. Of the six nominees, Ratchet and Clank and Metroid Dread are console exclusives. Resident Evil Village, It Takes Two, Psychonauts 2, and Deathloop are the remaining in this list. I am personally rooting for Loop Hero, and Life is Strange to bag awards in their respective categories (both great games for beginners!). I was only disappointed at Cyberpunk 2077’s muted appearance in the nominations; sad that a game that is so visually brilliant faced such a discordant reaction. But there is hope for it in the coming years. The Awards have categories for ongoing games and community support as well; it’s not just for games released in a specific year.
The winner announcements are made live on the sixth of December. The winners are picked based on our votes! Be sure to vote for your favourite games (or vote for the game that looks the nicest). Personally, I would love to see FIFA voted out of the sports category. I’m also hoping that next year introduces a “Toxicity Award” to account for the maximum number of offended gamers in any online game. If the “Most Anticipated Games” are any indication of next year’s nominees, then we’re going to have a tough time with the votes at the same time, 2022. Till then, game on!
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)