We are living in an historic era for video games. When you ask someone what the best year for games was, they’ll often point to 2004, which gave us Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, World of Warcraft, and GTA: San Andreas, among others; or 2017, which gave us Fortnite, Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Resident Evil 7, and many more. But when we look back at 2023 years from now, it will be hard to deny that this wasn’t one of, if not the greatest years for video games ever - and it’s not even halfway over yet.
With Summer Games Fest only weeks away, I’ve been thinking a lot about this year’s Game Awards, AKA TGA, AKA the Golden Keighley’s. There’s been a lot of early Game of the Year buzz around Tears of the Kingdom, just as there was for Elden Ring last year. Despite having six nominees, last year’s GOTY award really came down to just two games - Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok. This year, the competition will be stiffer than ever before, and it might even warrant expanding the category to include more games than all previous years.
The Game Awards held its first ceremony in 2014, where Dragon Age: Inquisition beat Bayonetta 2, Dark Souls 2, Hearthstone, and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor for Game of the Year. While Dark Souls 2 fans were sorely disappointed, I don’t imagine anyone was too surprised at Dragon Age for taking home the gold. The same could be said about the following year when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt beat out Fallout 4, Super Mario Maker, Bloodborne, and Metal Gear Solid 5. Again, this one felt like a toss up between The Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid 5.
The two years that followed continued on with five nominees and just two serious contenders, but in 2018, the category was expanded to six to make room for God of War, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Celeste, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Monster Hunter: World, and Red Dead Redemption 2. God of War won over Red Dead Redemption 2, which many still consider the biggest upset in TGA history.
From 2018 to 2022, the GOTY category has maintained six nominees, but I don’t think that will be enough this year. An argument can be made that we’ve already had six strong candidates for Game of the Year in the first five months of 2023 alone. Tears of the Kingdom is the obvious frontrunner, but we also have to consider Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, Jedi: Survivor, Hi-Fi Rush, and based on popularity, Hogwarts Legacy. There’s six already, and in the next couple of weeks we’ll also have to add Diablo 4 and Street Fighter 6 to that list.
Those eight probably won’t even be close to the only GOTY-worthy games we get this year. Looking ahead we still have Final Fantasy 16, Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Alan Wake 2, Armored Core 6, and Hollow Knight: Silksong - and that’s a fairly conservative list of contenders. I’m also hopeful that Sea of Stars, Homeworld 3, Mortal Kombat 1, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Immortals of Aveum, Remnant 2, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, and Silent Hill: Ascension will be GOTY-quality and get the attention they deserve. Narrowing down this category to just six seems almost impossible.
Then there’s all the unknowns. What is Nintendo going to launch in the second half of this year? What big reveals during Summer Game Fest will come out before December? It isn’t common for a big exciting game to get announced and released the same year, but look at 2021’s Guardians of the Galaxy, or Hi-Fi Rush for that matter. It does happen.
So what’s an appropriate number for this year’s GOTY category? You can’t include 20 games without diluting the vote and taking some of the prestige away, but I don’t think you can keep it to six either. The Best Picture category at the Oscars traditionally included only five nominees until 2009 when it was increased to a maximum of ten. Could we have ten nominees at The Game Awards this year? Would that even be enough? Even if the category only increased from six to seven nominees, it would be a recognition of what a monumental year it's been for new releases. If I was Mr. Keighley I’d try to make a case for 15, and it might still be difficult for the jury to narrow it down.