Light flashes light up the theater as the orchestra plays dramatic music similar to a boss theme. Up on the screen is footage of a game. Suddenly, the music stops, and the theater falls silent. A man slowly walks up to the microphone and announces, “The game of the year is…”
As the end of the year is drawing closer, it’s nice to look back on the year and all the things that were done. In the past year, several stunning games and award-winning titles were released, causing much talk from influencers and social media.
The Game Awards is a prestigious annual event, hosted and streamed by Geoff Keighley at the end of every year, that aims to determine the best games in several categories, including Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, and Game of the Year, based on the quality of the game rather than its popularity.
The Game Awards gathers an international jury comprised of over a hundred outlets, with 154 different ones participating in 2025. Each person will be given the game along with time to decide their vote for each category, while the community can also vote at thegameawards.com. However, the community's vote will only count for 10% of the final decision, while the jury will have 90% of control. The main purpose of this is to stop the award from becoming a popularity contest.
For the Game of the Year Award, the nominees were Hollow Knight: Silksong, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, Hades II, Dong Kong Bananza, Death Stranding 2, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Although these are amazing games, all vying for the top spot, one game stood above the rest. Due to its combination of compelling storytelling, graphics, music, and gameplay, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 won the Game of the Year Award.
Out of thirty total categories, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 was nominated for thirteen and won nine, setting a new record in the Game Awards. Expedition 33 won Game of the Year, Best Art Direction, Best Narrative, and so much more.
However, not every game in the Game Awards got as many awards. For example, Silksong, which had the community hyped, was nominated for six awards and won only the Best Action/Adventure award. The developers for Silksong (Team Cherry) refused even to attend the Game Awards, saying in an interview, “We’re pretty busy,” and “This year, I think we're safe. I think Expedition 33 - it's exceptional and broadly palatable. Whereas we're on that knife's edge, where it appeals to some and infuriates others.” Likewise, most of the other nominees won either one award or none.
The Game Awards serve not only as a benchmark for this year and the years ahead, but also as a means of showing the pinnacle of the gaming industry to the world. They reveal how far the industry has come each year as games improve through story, art, music, and the emotion of the game. To quote Geoff Keighley, “Games have this incredible ability to hold us when we’re hurting, to lift us up when we feel small, to give us somewhere to go.”