What do you think of when you hear about award shows? The Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, or the Golden Globe? For gamers and game developers alike, there is only one that matters. The Game Awards.
The Game Awards is the premiere award show for games. It has 29 categories ranging from best art design, to innovation in accessibility, to best esports athlete, to the all important game of the year. The game of the year (GOTY) is the highest honor a game can achieve at the awards, given to the game the award show deems “delivers the absolute best experience across all creative and technical fields.” For game developers there is no higher honor than receiving the game of the year award.
Like most other awards at the show, the game of the year is decided by a mixed vote. 90% of the vote comes from the jury, a selection of over 100 journalists and news outlets like IGN, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. The other 10% of the vote comes from public voting which was open during the month leading up to the show on December 10th, 2025.
The awards are decided by a mixed vote for a variety of reasons. Some games are only available on one or two platforms. In a completely player based vote, those games would never be able to win because of their smaller reach. In addition, in a vote decided entirely by the players, games could ‘rig’ the vote by promising rewards and bonuses in-game if their game wins certain awards. Despite the challenges inherent in a 100% player chosen award, there is a Players’ Voice award determined entirely by the players, and as such generally has very different results than the rest of the awards. The vote isn’t decided entirely by the jury to build engagement with the audience.
This year 6 games were nominated to be the game of the year: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Donkey Kong Bananza, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, often shortened to Expedition 33 or even E33, has had the most successful run at the game awards of any game ever. After being nominated for 9 awards, plus one for best performance which goes to a person not to a game, Expedition 33 did not disappoint. It won, and won, and won over and over again as the night went on. Time and time again it would be on the list of nominees, and time and again it would win the award. From best music and score, to best narrative, Expedition 33 could not be stopped.
Out of the 10 awards, Expedition 33 was nominated for, it won every single one except for the players voice award. Expedition 33 won 9 awards at the show, beating out The Last of Us Part 2’s 2020 record of 6 awards at a single game awards.
Hades II
Hades II by Supergiant Games is the second installment in the Hades series. Much like its predecessor, simply called Hades, Hades II is an expertly crafted roguelike that focuses on the combinations of intricate boons offered by the Greek gods to Melinoe, the main character. As the player continues throughout the game they hone their skills and improve their abilities, with each death setting them back to the beginning with new knowledge of what is to come upon the start of their next run. Boasting an incredible score and snappy, exciting combat, Hades II was nominated for an impressive 6 awards and, unlike a few of the games on this list, it did win an award.
Hades II won the best action game award for its intuitive and invigorating combat. As it happens, it lost every single other award it was nominated for to Expedition 33. The entire game revolves around using the correct ability at the right time to defeat enemies before gaining a boon or other reward, like currency or bonus health. Despite the immense efficacy a well seasoned player can achieve by utilizing their skills with precision, the amazing amount of customization that Hades II offers allows any run to be successful through any combination of boons. A player can choose to min-max their build, aiming to be the most powerful they possibly can in order to immediately kill the final boss, or that same player could choose to be slightly less efficient in their boon choice in order to make one of their abilities incredibly strong at the expense of all else, or just to be goofy and take boons that make you explode when running into enemies. The customization in Hades II is endless.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the second game in the metroidvania series Hollow Knight. It takes place in the kingdom of Pharloom where the game follows Hornet, its protagonist, as she ascends to the peak of the kingdom to rid it of its Haunting. Silksong is the sequel to the incredible Hollow Knight, a game credited with bringing large scale metroidvanias back into popularity. Both games, developed by Team Cherry, contain a sprawling map with unique enemies, powerups, abilities, and bosses at every turn. However, Silksong is a difficult game, it is unforgiving and punishes you rather harshly for mistakes as many attacks do double damage, leading to many complaints about its difficulty.
Regardless of its unfortunate showing at the game awards, winning only one award (best action adventure game) out of the 6 it was nominated for, Silksong holds perhaps the most rare achievement of any title nominated at The Game Awards. With a record of 5.2 million wishlists on Steam, the most popular online game store and launcher, and over 7 years of development, Silksong’s release was highly anticipated. So highly anticipated in fact that when it released, the traffic to online shops was so large that Steam, the PS Store, Nintendo Eshop, Xbox Store, and Xbox Gamepass all crashed. Because Team Cherry did not allow pre-orders, there were hundreds of thousands of people all over the world all trying to purchase the game at once and the online stores all crashed. Even some sites that didn’t even sell Silksong crashed from fans scouring any site that might sell the game once the major stores went down.
Donkey Kong Bananza
Donkey Kong Bananza is the 39th game in the Donkey Kong series by Nintendo. While Donkey Kong was originally developed to fund Nintendo after the 1980 arcade game Radar Scope, a game so obscure that it even today, it does not show up within the first 5 pages of a Google search. Radar Scope was a commercial failure and nearly bankrupted Nintendo. Luckily for Nintendo, since its start in 1981, the Donkey Kong franchise has sold over 82 million copies, around 4 million of which are from Donkey Kong Bananza. The Donkey Kong franchise has earned Nintendo almost 10 billion dollars.
Since its release in mid 2025, Donkey Kong Bananza has been acclaimed for its constructible world, a feature more reminiscent of building or mining games like Minecraft rather than the platforming games that Donkey Kong is known for. The game’s focus on player creativity as well as interesting its platforming and fetch quests earned it two nominations at The Game Awards. Despite having a relatively sparse nomination list, Donkey Kong Bananza did not fall flat when it came to its awards. Donkey Kong Bananza may not have won game of the year, but it did win ‘Best Family Game,’ beating out two Lego games and its sibling Nintendo game, Mario Kart World. Even with a relatively small number of nominations, Donkey Kong Bananza still managed to win an award at the Game Awards in a year dominated by just one game.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has had a rather unfortunate game awards stint. The game was critically acclaimed upon release, receiving an 8 out of 10 from IGN. Its combat is swift and precise and feels difficult to master but rewarding if done properly. It also has a remarkably complex NPC (non player character) system, with many minute details about your character impacting how NPCs perceive and interact with you.
Unfortunately for Warhorse Studios, its developer, that acclamation did not translate to the game awards. It had a good showing when nominees were announced, being nominated for four awards across a spectrum of categories. However, on the night of the award show, its performance fell rather flat.
It won none of the awards it was nominated for. In fact it lost three of its four nominations to one game. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was nominated alongside, and beaten by, Expedition 33 for the awards of Best Narrative, Best RPG, and of course, Game Of the Year. The only category it did not lose to Expedition 33 in was the player’s voice award where E33 was nominated, but lost to Wuthering Waves, a mobile game that promised in-game rewards in the event of its victory.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach unfortunately had much the same showing at The Game Awards as Kingdom Come: Deliverance II did. It was loved by many of its players for expanding on its predecessor significantly by adding more content and removing or reworking some of the more tedious or frustrating aspects of the game.
At the Game Awards, Death Stranding 2 was nominated for a whopping 8 awards, tying Ghosts of Yōtei for the second most nominated game, after E33, at the event. Unfortunately for Death Stranding 2, come the night of the awards, none of its nominations came to fruition. Out of the 8 categories it was nominated for, Death Stranding 2 won none of them. From best audio design, to best action adventure, Death Stranding 2 fell just short of accolade every single time
Despite the unfortunate showing of some of the games nominated for Game Of The Year, every single game at the game awards, winner or not, is an amazing game all of which are worthy of praise, and accolades. Just because a specific game did not win awards at the game awards or won less than was expected does not mean that game is worse than a game that did win. The game awards is just one way of honoring and exhibiting games that have done particularly well in certain arbitrary categories.
What do you think of when you hear about award shows? The Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, or the Golden Globe? For gamers and game developers alike, there is only one that matters. The Game Awards.