The Game Awards nominations are actually good

Not long after the Game Awards nominations were announced on Monday, we at Polygon noticed something interesting happening in our web traffic. Readers clicked from our nominations story to reviews of some of the games that were recognized – and they did so in surprisingly large numbers. Our review of the indie card game Balatrowhich was nominated for Game of the Year, was read by more people on Monday than in the entire first week of publication in February. Reviews from other GOTY nominees Metaphor: ReFantazio And Astrobot and indie contender Neva all also saw significant bumps in readership. It seemed like people were more curious than usual about this year’s nominees and wanted to know more.

This is the bonus of a year with a somewhat sparse release schedule and no consensus narrative on Game of the Year candidates. If you followed the awards ceremony closely, there were few surprises in the Game Awards voting jury’s choices. But if you hadn’t – or if you hadn’t been following video games in general as closely this year – the list of nominations included a lot of unknown names and a pile of great games to discover.

This was the most important conclusion from Monday’s nomination list. TGA’s voting jury is large and internationally diverse, and in the past collective taste has often settled in a fairly conservative place. But the industry’s lean year has led the jury to a slate of nominees that is varied, high-quality and culturally rich.

Look at the six nominees for Game of the Year. There is only one sequel to a major franchise (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth). There’s a candy-colored platformer for the ages (Astrobot). There’s an original role-playing epic from a studio operating deep in its niche (Metaphor: ReFantazio). An abstract indie card game has been created by a solo developer (Balatro). There’s the very first game from China to get a GOTY nomination (Black Myth: Wukong). And – controversially – there is an expansion pack (Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree).

Aside from the downloadable content controversy, the prevalence of original games in the GOTY lineup is encouraging. And quality is not a problem. 2021 was the last year where the nominees felt this broad and the race this open — which was also the only year where all GOTY nominees scored 90 or lower on Metacritic. This year, all but one have scores above 90 – and whether you care about Metacritic’s method of collecting reviews or not, there’s no arguing that these are some really good games. The financial health and stability of the gaming industry are in question, but if these nominations are to be believed, its creative health is strong.

During the voting, things are a little less adventurous, but there are still signs of the voting jury’s horizons expanding. Two of my favorite games this year were Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess And Pacific drive – both very unusual, slightly awkward genre hybrids. I also never expected to be nominated at The Game Awards, but they were both recognized (for Best Sim/Strategy and Best Indie Debut respectively).

There are a few other trends worth highlighting. Perhaps most notably, 2024 is the year of role-playing games, while action adventures are on the decline. These two genre categories are historically by far the strongest in terms of GOTY nominees and winners at The Game Awards. Normally at least half of GOTY nominees share the Best Action/Adventure Game category, but this year there’s only one (Astrobotwhich is also nominated for Best Family Game). Meanwhile, three RPGs are represented. The RPG category itself is so deep that even a big player likes it Dragon Age: The Veil Guard could not score a nomination. But in Best Action/Adventure there was room for Ubisoft’s underperformance Star Wars Outlawseven with its 75 Metascore.

Despite Balatro‘s breakout nominations in Game of the Year and Game Direction, siloing indie games continues to be a problem at The Game Awards. There’s quite a bit of room for smaller games to be recognized in the two indie categories and the indie-skewing Games for Impact, but you can count indie nominations in all the other genre and craft categories on the fingers of one hand: Neva in Art Direction, No one’s heaven in the field of community support, The brave squire in family play, Frostpunk 2 And Landlords in Sim/Strategy. Fantastic, critically acclaimed games like Arco, Tactical Breach Wizards, Mouthwash, 1000x resistanceAnd Satisfactory didn’t make the cut. Considering the incredible quantity and quality of indie releases this and every year, it feels like the jury’s indie blinders are still on.

It was perhaps surprising to see that Sony Interactive Entertainment once again topped the nomination list, with 15 – the most ahead Astrobot And Hell divers 2. The company had downplayed its plans for 2024 and may not have fully realized what it had in these two games before they were released. However, Microsoft’s total for Xbox Game Studios, Activision and Blizzard isn’t far behind with twelve nominations – and this was a year without any qualifying Bethesda releases. Next year includes Microsoft’s stacked slate Fable, GrantedAnd Doom: the Dark Ageswhile Sony has Death stranding 2 And Spirit of Yotei to start. The rivalry between these two enormous studios is increasing.

Nintendo’s relatively poor performance (six nominations) was expected, given the reported delay of Switch 2 to next year. But the Japanese industry as a whole is in poor health when it comes to the voting jury, with Square Enix, Sega and Bandai Namco all boasting major nominations and leaving players like Ubisoft, EA and 2K in the dust. Are Japanese publishers adapting better to today’s challenges – where AAA development is quickly becoming unaffordable – than their Western counterparts? Creatively, at least, it seems like they could be.

As for Shadow of the Erdtree‘s nomination: This seems to have blindsided the audience, leading to many angry reactions. An eleventh-hour clarification about eligibility for The Game Awards didn’t seem to help. There are valid debates to be had about the creative value of expansions versus original games or iterative sequels. Valid questions can also be asked about the extent to which The Game Awards outsources these kinds of difficult demarcations to a large, diverse jury that probably doesn’t all see them the same way.

But at least The Game Awards have been consistent in their message to both judges and audiences that “creative and technical excellence” is what matters most, regardless of the packaging it comes in. This attitude suits a medium as versatile and constantly developing as video. games. It also allows a pixelated card game created by one person to take its place on the hall of fame alongside mega-budget blockbusters, reaching a crowd of curious new players in the process. Perhaps a little confusion and controversy is a price worth paying.