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News Game Awards 2022 announced for December 8th (UPDATE: nominees announced, see threadmarks)

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I’m a little surprise they don’t expand the acting categories.

Seems to 99% favor those actors that also Mo-cap those performances. Or super big budget titles or titles that grew in explosive popularity.

For a show trying to talk about bringing more recognition. They really don’t seem to care a lot of the time.
 
Ain't got time for TGA anymore. It feels like a parallel universe, it's ridiculous how they think of themselves as the biggest gaming celebration while bluntly ignoring a huge part of the community and basically the market leaders for the most part.
 
I think having characters be motion captured are a very big part of who is nominated but the writing/translations/localizations of some certain games that don't have mocap aren't doing the actors and performances any favors, either.
 
Josh5890 said:
The TGA's were online only that year because of COVID. I don't remember people laughing at it.
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Clearly I'm getting senile, because you're absolutely right, of course it was online in 2020.

With any luck I'm just confusing it with some prominent websites reaction to the livestream instead of my brain just completely inventing things.
 
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PlayStation succeeding at having exclusive games that get into the GotY conversation. Not sure how I feel about the nominees. Elden Ring sounds right, but I haven’t played basically any of the others. It feels like a conversation I shouldn’t even take part in now.

Edit: Splatoon 3 is my my GotY and nothing comes close. Big Run incoming folks
 
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A Few comments

  • Stray, didnt see that one coming..
  • XC3 nominated in the 3 categories that it should be nomimated is great
  • 4/5 RPG's from Nintendo, stellar mark for their RPG strategy.
  • I guess a game can only be in one genre category, but some stuff just feels placed in the wrong category to let other games in/win:
    • Triangle Strategy is more of a Strategy game than an RPG
    • Elden Ring is more an action game than an RPG
    • I feel both should have been nominated in the other category instead
  • OST/Score category, I feel they just default in the blockbuster games because why not. Do they have good OSTs? Yeah sure, but it's very conveniant adding them to a category like this. Super happy to see Hellsinger featured, but games like Kirby, Sparks of Hope, Neon White for instance could have easily been nominated to.
  • Where's the Puzzle category?! They definitely should have a puzzle category.
  • I feel both Kirby and Sparks of Hope were a bit overlooked. But it is what it is. They were always going to be nomated for the family category lol.
  • Overall, I think nominations were quite good - some categories feels like fillers when some are actually missing.

I kind of wish Geoff would fully focus on the TGAs, because in comparison to SGF efforts I think this show has actual potential to be something good.
 
Here's my current GOTY award winners. *pending Pokemon and any surprises

Best Voice Actor: Mio from Xenoblade 3

Best Soundtrack/music: Xenoblade 3

Best indie: Infernax

Best Action game: Bayonetta 3

Best RPG: Xenoblade 3

Best family game: Kirby and the Forgotten Lands.

GOTY: Xenoblade 3

Most anticipated game: The Legend of Zelda: TotK

Edit forgot Infernax released this year and replaced TMNT with it and I forgot most anticipated game.
 
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Thoughts and prayers to the Triangle Strategy fans for having endured a year of mockery over that title, only to watch their GOTY get torpedoed in the Best RPG category.
 
I think Xenoblade 3 has a better shot at Best RPG than people are thinking. I get it, Elden Ring is also nominated and could very well win. But I feel like they'll want to give Xenoblade 3 something and obviously it won't be Game of the Year so Best RPG is the consolation prize. Kind of like how Metroid Dread didn't win Game of the Year but got Best Action/Adventure.
 
edamame said:
I think Xenoblade 3 has a better shot at Best RPG than people are thinking. I get it, Elden Ring is also nominated and could very well win. But I feel like they'll want to give Xenoblade 3 something and obviously it won't be Game of the Year so Best RPG is the consolation prize. Kind of like how Metroid Dread didn't win Game of the Year but got Best Action/Adventure.
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If they're trying to "spread out awards" it makes sense for giving it best OST, goty to GoW, and RPG to elden ring.
 
IMO, from most to least likely to be won by Xenoblade 3: Soundtrack, RPG, GOTY.

Especially if Xenoblade 3 is indeed Mitsuda's last big videogame production
 
Zeal543 said:
If they're trying to "spread out awards" it makes sense for giving it best OST, goty to GoW, and RPG to elden ring.
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GoW will almost certainly win best Action/Adventure, so I don’t really see the correlation between Best RPG and GOTY for Elden Ring.

Whatever wins GOTY is gonna win its genre category by default.
 
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Leo said:
Ain't got time for TGA anymore. It feels like a parallel universe, it's ridiculous how they think of themselves as the biggest gaming celebration while bluntly ignoring a huge part of the community and basically the market leaders for the most part.
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Who are they ignoring at this point? I mean many of the major publishers are partners of the TGA. It isn‘t up to the Award Show to pick the nominees. The only thing you could do is to change up the panel of the outlets, though who should they include? Streamers, other influencers or even the Publishers themselves? Don‘t think that would give us higher quality nominees.

Personally I think how they are doing this award show is ok if you want to include as many games and opinions around the (western) world as possible while having most of the industry on board. I don‘t see how you could do this different without losing your relevancy as "the main gaming award".
 
I am really happy Xenoblade 3 is getting some mentions after being mostly ignored at TGA. This is a W on the scale of Three Houses winning the Player's Choice Award

Still probably not gonna watch it live after last year though, that was a snorefest
 
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Really happy to see Xenoblade Chronicles 3 being nominated for GOTY!! Hope it wins either best RPG or best soundtrack, it deserves an award.
Surprised Bayonetta 3 wasn't nominated for GOTY. Hope it wins best action game.
 
A very random thing but when you login with Google on the TGA website they redirect it to something like the-game-awards-2019 dot firebaseapp dot com 🤔

"*.firebaseapp.com" are free domains you get from Google after setting up a Firebase project, and it seems per the "2019" on the name it wasn't supposed to be permanent I guess 😅 they could have setup their custom domain there but people just see that page for a few seconds so I guess they didn't bother 🤔
 
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Immortality for Best Direction is a really interesting option. Because 'Direction' really fits well there as it's like 95% movie direction in this case, but I can also see it being a valid choice given how good that direction is? Hmm.
 
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edamame said:
I think Xenoblade 3 has a better shot at Best RPG than people are thinking. I get it, Elden Ring is also nominated and could very well win. But I feel like they'll want to give Xenoblade 3 something and obviously it won't be Game of the Year so Best RPG is the consolation prize. Kind of like how Metroid Dread didn't win Game of the Year but got Best Action/Adventure.
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I'm guessing they will give RPG to Xenoblade, GOTY to the game of the elders and Ragnarok will take the other categories it was nominated for.

It's the only somewhat diplomatic outcome.
 
The nominees are dumb. For example, in the esports categories, the winning LoL team this year is not in the nomination lol.
 
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I'll be curious if Xenoblade could take the fan voice award. If all the fanbase united to give the votes, could it dethrone Elden Ring and GoWR.
 
….
Get Elden bo-RING off the damn list
Several other games were robbed but whatever
 
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Can't say I care about TGA or its nominations. It's all a show of big games along with maybe a few talked-about indies. While Elden Ring is probably my favorite game I've played this year, I know there are some indie titles I've played that could make me think about more about GotY if they were present. As it stands, eh. I guess I'm lucky this year had Elden Ring at least, I've actually loved that game. Most TGAs just make me choose a game from their GotY nominations that was the least boring while ignoring some gems.
 
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I really don't care about the game awards when the year of gaming is slow pacing.
Sure, I play a lot of new games in 2022, however, I don't believe 2022 was a good year of gaming, I really don't.
These game awards nominations work like a recap for me, thus making me sad, because I play most of them at least for couple hours, still nothing excited or memorable echo. what a slow year.
The 2022 two goats are definitely Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarök, with expectation in checked and play through them, still get mix feelings.
In my humble opinion, Elden Ring is a good game, but not as good as Bloodborne, Dark Souls or Sekiro. Those games make memory, but I've already forgotten about Elden Ring. Yes, that's how I judge a game briefly, depending on how memorable the game is. And I would like to share one simple example of the reason causing the situation. Before release in the trailer, I saw a ghost-like enemy hopping on a horse, I think the design is so sick! Can't wait to fight them and learn about their story. Turns out, nothing special about them, you can run past them in the lake area.
On the other hand, God of War Ragnarök, I finished this game yesterday, feeling unsatisfied. Don't get me wrong, it definitely a good game, but I still can't say love it with all my heart. I choose give me a story difficulty according to my God of War 2018 launch experience, yet the combat still feels off, especially in the latter part. Exploration is all right I guess, but it’s sad to say it don’t like replay ability comes from limit your ability at the first place. all in all, good games but not the game that perfect or persuade me to accept its design/structure fully.
I don’t know if it’s me or 2022 just not as good as I expected.
 
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The TGA categories are the perfect example of the focus of the industry right now: You have categories for best actor/actress performance, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music...and I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that there's no award at all that focus on that little aspect all games feature which is gameplay. There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...You could come up with a hundred different awards that focus on the game-y part of games, but these awards, like a lot of the industry and critics, seem to be ashamed to call themselves videogames and instead try to hide this shameful core component that is gameplay behind all the other arts-y components of the game.

As a side-note, this is also how you can have situations where a voice actress who contributed to less than 0.01% of the game feels entitled to more retribution and recognition than all the people who did 99.99% of the work...and many people support her.
 
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correojon said:
The TGA categories are the perfect example of the focus of the industry right now: You have categories for best actor/actress performance, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music...and I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that there's no award at all that focus on that little aspect all games feature which is gameplay. There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...You could come up with a hundred different awards that focus on the game-y part of games, but these awards, like a lot of the industry and critics, seem to be ashamed to call themselves videogames and instead try to hide this shameful core component that is gameplay behind all the artsy components of the game.

As a side-note, this is also how you can have situations where a voice actress who contributed to less than 0.01% of the game feeling entitled for more retribution and recognition than all the people who did 99.99% of the work...and many people support her.
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Do you honestly think most review outlets are equipped to evaluate these categories? I agree with you but I think this would only work if the judges panel were fellow developers.
 
correojon said:
The TGA categories are the perfect example of the focus of the industry right now: You have categories for best actor/actress performance, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music...and I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that there's no award at all that focus on that little aspect all games feature which is gameplay. There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...You could come up with a hundred different awards that focus on the game-y part of games, but these awards, like a lot of the industry and critics, seem to be ashamed to call themselves videogames and instead try to hide this shameful core component that is gameplay behind all the artsy components of the game.

As a side-note, this is also how you can have situations where a voice actress who contributed to less than 0.01% of the game feeling entitled for more retribution and recognition than all the people who did 99.99% of the work...and many people support her.
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I think that stuff is just harder to quantify. Actors, music and things like that are easy to define. But what exactly counts as a “mechanic” or a “gameplay innovation”?
 
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doodlewhizz said:
I'm a bit confused on what's tone deaf about not thinking Stray is one of the 6 best games of the year?
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Look I didn‘t like Stray as much as seemingly many other people, but I still rather have an indie game in this category than another Triple A title. Stray definitely got the most media attention out of the featured indie games at TGA.

The list of nominees reflects really well how the media and console players see games in the industry. Personally I think that the GOTY category should include even more indies and categories like indie or mobile shouldn‘t exist, but that would not work, because people still value games differently.
 
correojon said:
The TGA categories are the perfect example of the focus of the industry right now: You have categories for best actor/actress performance, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music...and I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that there's no award at all that focus on that little aspect all games feature which is gameplay. There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...You could come up with a hundred different awards that focus on the game-y part of games, but these awards, like a lot of the industry and critics, seem to be ashamed to call themselves videogames and instead try to hide this shameful core component that is gameplay behind all the artsy components of the game.

As a side-note, this is also how you can have situations where a voice actress who contributed to less than 0.01% of the game feeling entitled for more retribution and recognition than all the people who did 99.99% of the work...and many people support her.
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I more or less agree with this (not sure about "most fun game" but I think I get where you're coming from). HOWEVER, with this, I also think that even the categories that are nominated need to be rethought. My pet peeve is best narrative.

What do we understand by a good narrative in a game? Is it just a good story? What makes a narrative work in a game might go beyond what makes it work in other media. In other words: if the story is "good" but is told through dull exposition, forced walking segments, etc then is it really the best narrative for a game? Is this all that videogames can do with the story? Tell it in a way that gets the job done?

Maybe TGA would be a good place to highlight games that excel at making the non-game aspects of the game interact with the gameplay, or with our understanding of how games should work. Games like Undertale might be a bit on the nose and meta but I think these are examples of games that expand our understanding of stories and narratives in a medium that is often happy enough to keep telling stories as we do now. Hell, even Tunic (a game that I haven't finished) is better at telling its story in a language that the player doesn't understand than many AAA games that get a nod for their stories.

So long story short The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe should win Best Narrative this year. I don't know if it's nominated (I'm betting best narrative and GOTY will be more or less the same games). I don't care that it's a sequel. It's good, and it's also more videogamey than any other videogame story nominated this year. It plays with the medium and understands how to tell a story (and how to play) in a videogame.
 
xghost777 said:
Mike Williams wrote a good public article on why the Game Awards nominees turn out the way they do.


Personally very glad Xenoblade 3 made the cut for GOTY. The series finally got the recognition it deserves with its best game yet.
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interesting read. it explains a lot but also makes the whole concept seem so childish frankly stupid, to where it becomes ridiculous when the awards are touted as some big deal by companies when they promote their games as "TGA winner" later.

in the end i know i shouldn't care but it bums me out slightly that this dumb show is touted as something important for the industry and hobby i care about.
 
I definitely feel the Geoffies should expand their horizon a bit more, both in terms of the awards they offer (more awards based on innovation and game design would be nice) and in terms of the games that get the nod (I think the only non-story driven game to win the big one was Overwatch 1), but at the end of the day, the nominations are reflective of popular games in our medium, and the kind of games that journalists and enthusiasts are interested in. All six nominees are highly acclaimed and have a lot of fans, and it's not like there's anything that we can consider a huge snub (unlike last year where Forza not getting nominated was a headscratcher).

Ultimately this is just one big marketing event, as opposed to a genuine attempt to celebrate gaming as an artform, so they're always going to plump for popular stuff over nicher games because they need fans fighting like rats in a sack over whether Elden Ring or God of War is better as it drives engagement, and subsequently eyes on the big announcements. The addition of a 'best game adaptation' category is all the evidence you need of where the show's priorities lie.
 
mazi said:
interesting read. it explains a lot but also makes the whole concept seem so childish frankly stupid, to where it becomes ridiculous when the awards are touted as some big deal by companies when they promote their games as "TGA winner" later.

in the end i know i shouldn't care but it bums me out slightly that this dumb show is touted as something important for the industry and hobby i care about.
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There’s parts of the show as is I think people are too harsh on, but it is a colossal bummer the final show is always just a big let down when it comes to the Awards themselves. I wish they would just make two separate events, an awards show and a preview show and make both the best they can be. It would not fix everything, but what we have is always so fundamentally flawed and emotionally draining (especially with its absurd run time) it’s hard to get truly excited about it even though some of the individual pieces and intentions are good.
 
correojon said:
There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...
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You put into words what my brain couldn't. Seriously, you hit the nail on the head. I would be a lot more interested in TGA if it was structured more like a GMTK Game Jam video.
 
Leo said:
Ain't got time for TGA anymore. It feels like a parallel universe, it's ridiculous how they think of themselves as the biggest gaming celebration while bluntly ignoring a huge part of the community and basically the market leaders for the most part.
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Well they are. And they are exactly what they want to be: an equivalent to the Oscars, big hollywood people celebrating themselves and sometimes aknowleging a contribution thats not from them if it gets to big to ignore.
I mean we have the equivalent category to the "best animated movie" that was usually disney/pixars stuff:
best family game, for nintendo stuff.

Award shows are not about nuance, inovation, appealing to everyone. They always are apealing to the least common denominator, and to pay for this celebration and all they need a lot of sponsoring.
Im honestly pretty shure that this mindset kinda grew out of an inferiority complex to the movie industry.

correojon said:
The TGA categories are the perfect example of the focus of the industry right now: You have categories for best actor/actress performance, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music...and I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Except that there's no award at all that focus on that little aspect all games feature which is gameplay. There should be categories for MOST FUN GAME, best implementation of mechanics, best level design, best new mechanics, best gameplay innovations, best level, best encounter, best boss...You could come up with a hundred different awards that focus on the game-y part of games, but these awards, like a lot of the industry and critics, seem to be ashamed to call themselves videogames and instead try to hide this shameful core component that is gameplay behind all the other arts-y components of the game.

As a side-note, this is also how you can have situations where a voice actress who contributed to less than 0.01% of the game feels entitled to more retribution and recognition than all the people who did 99.99% of the work...and many people support her.
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well then you are definitely into categories for people that need to have more of an understanding how games are made and what the aspects are that make them good or bad, or simply: having (aspiring) game devs as an audience. GMTK kinda has that.
The generall audience of just consumers and big industry developers (mainly sony and microsoft) are okay with the way they are showing it, because a) the studios are trying to make the games cinematic, so having comparable categories makes sense, and the mass of fans also dont really care about the finer details but want their favorite of the 5 games they played that year to win.
mazi said:
interesting read. it explains a lot but also makes the whole concept seem so childish frankly stupid, to where it becomes ridiculous when the awards are touted as some big deal by companies when they promote their games as "TGA winner" later.

in the end i know i shouldn't care but it bums me out slightly that this dumb show is touted as something important for the industry and hobby i care about.
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I mean, yeah.

Also one of the worst aspects for games compared to movies here is time of investment (the article talks about that).
a movie is 3 hours at best, take 3 into account for searching it, researchign stuff, thinking about it. So at most a movie is 6 h of investment, at least 1-1:30h. The maximum time investmentfor movie with thinking about it or writing a review is on paar with a "short game". While there are shorter experiences, the average will be way higher, and mainstream experiences are 25-40h i think.
In other words: people will only have played so many games, and when a group of 5 decides for a GotY or somethign like that, ... there is not much of a discourse about the contestants, because many will not have played the same games.

I usually only watch the first 20 minutes for the big anouncements out of the gate, and have a ticker in the background for the rest if something big gets anounced. otherwise, i find the concept of such awards generally boring, in every medium.
 
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Xenoblade 3 getting not one, but 3 nominations is a welcome surprise. While I'm not really a TGA fan or anything similar, I am happy for the recognition of the game and hopefully it wins. It will really help the game and the franchise as a whole to get more brand power it deserves.
 
lexony said:
Look I didn‘t like Stray as much as seemingly many other people, but I still rather have an indie game in this category than another Triple A title. Stray definitely got the most media attention out of the featured indie games at TGA.

The list of nominees reflects really well how the media and console players see games in the industry. Personally I think that the GOTY category should include even more indies and categories like indie or mobile shouldn‘t exist, but that would not work, because people still value games differently.
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I also want indie game representation to be higher as it reflects my interest, but I'm not super sure how this relates to what I asked the previous poster on why thinking another game should be nominated over Stray is tone deaf?
 
doodlewhizz said:
I'm a bit confused on what's tone deaf about not thinking Stray is one of the 6 best games of the year?
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I don't think anyone is arguing against people preferring another game to be nominated over Stray, but calling the entire process fraudulent because of that is pretty ridiculous. That's where the problem was.
 
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