The Game Awards isn’t the end-all be-all in the gaming world, but winning an award there carries a lot of weight. Just being nominated, especially for the Game of the Year award, is a major accomplishment. All year long, people speculate about which incredible games might get nominated for the award, and in 2025, there have been a nearly historic amount of legitimate contenders. It could go down as the best year in gaming. If nothing else, the Game of the Year race is going to be positively fascinating.
Game of the Year at The Game Awards Is Going to Be Unreal
There are a few locks for Game of the Year at The Game Awards. There’s just no world where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn’t a nomination. It is almost this year’s Baldur’s Gate 3, so much so that other amazing games are going to be snubbed by virtue of a generational title happening to be in the same year. It’s a lock for a nomination, and it’s all but assuredly going to win the award.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is probably a lock for a nomination, too. It has wonderful critic scores, audiences are loving it, and it was the most anticipated game of the year. The entire world was waiting patiently, and Team Cherry delivered. That will mean something and should secure a nomination. In another year, it might be the frontrunner.
That’s not all, though. Several other games are highly likely to make it. Just take a look at this year’s Metacritic scores so far:
- Hades II – 94
- Clair Obscur – 93
- Blue Prince – 92
- Split Fiction – 91
- Silksong – 91
- Donkey Kong Bananza – 91
- Death Stranding 2: On the Beach – 89
- Monster Hunter Wilds – 88
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II – 88
- Mario Kart World – 86
- Ghost of Yotei – 86
- Silent Hill f – 85
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – 85
The problem here is that there can only be six nominations, and that list is far from comprehensive. Tons of games will be snubbed from the finalists. That’s how good the year is. Maybe it doesn’t have a Red Dead Redemption 2 like 2018 did, but this is a very deep year for the gaming world.
How Will Game of the Year Shake Out?
There’s not much else coming out in 2025 that is expected to contend for major awards. There can always be surprises, but the final six nominations for Game of the Year are highly likely to all come from the list above. The problem is narrowing it down to six, which is a nearly impossible task for The Game Awards.
As mentioned, Clair Obscur and Silksong are virtual locks. It’s also incredibly likely that Donkey Kong Bananza makes it. After Astro Bot‘s win last year and with TGA’s love of Nintendo, that feels like a very safe prediction, but that takes up three slots. Hades II probably gets the fourth nomination since the highest-rated game of the year can’t really be ignored here.
So with the final two slots, what can they possibly go with? Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is extremely likely since TGA also really loves Hideo Kojima and the game was a big hit, even scoring the same as the original title, which earned a GOTY nomination in 2019 (it lost to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice). It also had the most nominations overall, so DS2 is likely to get a lot of love.
That means the final spot can go to one of the following realistic options: Ghost of Yotei, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Monster Hunter Wilds, Split Fiction, and Blue Prince. As highly rated as Blue Prince is, that one may not make the cut. Monster Hunter Wilds had some poor PC performance issues at times, which might keep it out as well.
Ultimately, since It Takes Two literally won Game of the Year in its year and Split Fiction is considered just as good if not better, that’s probably the final pick, though it’s so far from a safe choice. Ghost of Yotei, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and the rest are highly deserving, but there can only be six. This just illustrates how deep the 2025 backlog is and how many games have to be snubbed. It’s unfortunate for those games, but it’s a big win for the gaming world, especially considering how many indie games are really dominating.
Conclusion
The Game Awards are still a ways off, but gamers will be anxiously waiting to see how this all plays out. Fans of any of the above titles will be hopeful their game can score the coveted Game of the Year nod, even if it feels now like it’s Expedition 33′s award to lose. And when those games get left out, there will be a legitimate gripe, but that’s overall a really good sign for the gaming industry.
