This year, Polygon launched GOTY Watch, led by our senior editor Oli Welsh. The section – separate from our own Game of the Year picks, which will be available soon – is a home for analysis of upcoming Game of the Year competitions and awards ceremonies, including the most notable, the annual Game Awards in December. Modeled after the Oscars and the Emmys, the Game Awards are an increasingly formal event with ever-increasing implications (and potential revenue returns) for the winners and advertising participants. And just as the race to the Oscars and Emmys has become a point of fascination for readers, it was only natural that a similar beat would develop around the various gaming awards. Over the past few months, we’ve seen readers happily participate in the GOTY Watch analysis, sharing their own theories in the comments and on social media in response to ours.
Earlier this month, Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach’s newsletter Dead Game published a interview with Oli Welsh on GOTY Watch that gives readers an even better insight into his process of thinking about ‘awards season’, the contenders and the meta surrounding The Game Awards in particular. Oli explains the patterns he has observed about which types of games tend to win Game of the Year, which he compiled after years of analyzing winners.
“I would say it should have strong narrative elements, so ideally it should move a decent amount of story forward,” Oli told Dead Game. “Performance should be a big part of that. So you want it to be fully voiced, maybe even motion capture performance, high production values… like AAA story-driven action adventures or RPGs.
“I’ve analyzed the nominees between the genre categories and Game of the Year, and you almost always have an overlap of four of the six nominees for Game of the Year in the action-adventure category. The overlap with RPG is smaller, but they are more likely to win if they are nominated.”
That data analysis fueled our regularly updated predictions for the 2024 Game Awards winners, but none of us know for sure which will win, and that’s all part of the fun.
As Oli put it to Dead Game: “I would say it’s all part of elevating the medium, and part of elevating the medium is saying, ‘This is bullshit, I just want to talk about it.’ Arco‘, and part of elevating the medium is saying, ‘Why, I don’t know, why is Dragon Age You’re much more likely to be nominated for a Game of the Year award then Arco?’ Which systems support that?’ We can make that clear to people and maybe it will change thinking.”
Read the full interview and more commentary from Gach on the TGAs at Dead Game.