A few years ago I wrote a post about on the Best Sim/Strategy category of the Game Awards, where it was clear that little diligence had been put into the nomination process. A few years have passed and little has changed with a remaster of the original 1997 PlayStation title Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles taking out that category at the 2025 Awards; the very day I began writing this post.
In reality, nobody really cares about the categories outside of overall ‘Game of the Year’ and many winners continue to be announced in the pre-show with very little fanfare. This year it was the French “JRPG” Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that was the big winner; receiving the award in almost every category the game was nominated.
This included the two categories for Independent or “Indie” games which is questionable give the developers had a reasonably big publisher and a number of the developers formerly worked for Ubisoft. These two categories probably need to be more clearly defined as a smaller publisher than say Electronic Arts, Ubisoft or Activision — is still a publisher. In any case, I haven’t actually played this game so I can’t speak to its quality but it had a lot of buzz leading up to the show and the result is not a surprise.
UPDATE: (13/12/25) I’m far from the only one that was suspicious. This great article at Fandom Pulse is well worth your time.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was hilariously snubbed in every category though being nominated for three. As expected, the significant compromises they made to their original vision didn’t win them any “official” praise.
What was also noticed is that Sony Interactive Entertainment received nineteen nominations across the categories with Kepler Interactive (the publisher of Clair Obscur), receiving fourteen. There is a big drop between these two alone but it drops further and Nintendo received only four though it had a big year for new (and well-received) releases and did win in two of the categories it was nominated in.
This year was the twelfth Game Awards and so there are now twelve games of the year since 2014. I thought it would be worth going over these and offering some analysis. Though not for the winners for the last few years, hindsight has been quite instructive.
Here is the list of the twelve winners for Game of the Year up until 2025:
2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition
2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2016: Overwatch
2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2018: God of War
2019: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2020: The Last of Us Part II
2021: It Takes Two
2022: Elden Ring
2023: Baldur’s Gate 3
2024: Astro Bot
2025: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
In the twelve years since the awards began, three PlayStation exclusives (at least they were at the time), have won the award and eleven of the winners were available on PlayStation platforms. A Nintendo exclusive has won once with 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A game published by Xbox Game Studios has never won. FromSoftware has won twice. Eight of the categories were available on both Xbox and PC at the time with Baldur’s Gate 3 being released for the former on the day of the ceremony. Japanese developed games have won three times and the rest of the winners were Western (as in the United States or a European nation).
Depending on how you place the games in genres, between four and seven RPGs have won and five Action/Adventure games. With the continuing trend of blurring genres, most games now include some sort of progression system so placing games firmly in Action/Adventure/RPG categories gets a little complicated. For example, I consider The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to be much more an Action/Adventure game than a genuine role-playing game but it is generally considered one so I won’t dispute that. The only anomalies out of the twelve are the co-operative adventure It Takes Two, the competitive multiplayer Overwatch and the action platformer Astro Bot.
From all the above (and the nominations this year), there is a clear bias towards the PlayStation platform and Western developed games released on that platform. Last year’s winner Astro Bot also supports this as there have been plenty of great 3D platformers from Nintendo and a few others over the past twelve years that have been overlooked.
I have only played two of the twelve winners to completion: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In connection with other titles, I have played the previous Dragon Age games, The Last of Us and Dark Souls. I believe I have a pretty good idea of whether I would enjoy the others but not having actually played them — take the following opinions with that in mind.
Especially with hindsight but really also at the time, Dragon Age: Inquisition winning the inaugural award is laughable and all the more so with the disastrous sequel released last year. I only enjoyed the original Dragon Age: Origins and the series never improved afterwards. Inquisition was mostly just better than Dragon Age II which is not much of an achievement.
Although it has lowered in my esteem in the decade since it’s release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains a popular game and was one of the most significant and popular releases of 2015.
From my understanding, the original Overwatch can’t actually be played anymore as Blizzard “overwrote” it with the poorly received sequel. To say it hasn’t stood the test of time would then be an understatement. I’m sure it was fun at the time but other games in the genre have had a lot more staying power.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains a beloved title and received a a major update with the Switch 2. Nothing further need be said here.
I’ve not played God of War but it looks like a very typical story-driven Action/Adventure title with action sequences broken up by walking, talking and trips through narrow passages to disguise background loading. Still, this seems to be the kind of game most people who have PlayStations for titles other than yearly Call of Duty and EA sports titles want to play. However good it may be, the fact that it won over Red Dead Redemption 2 is really hard to believe.
Sekiro is one of the strangest wins as it is probably the least loved of the “Soulsborne” titles. I have to wonder whether it was truly Death Stranding that was supposed to win in 2019; at least right up until people played it. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was also nominated but overlooked in 2025.
The Last of Us Part II is not a game I will ever play. I thought the original was good but vastly overrated and that was when it released on PlayStation 3 and not the re-releases and remakes that have followed. By plenty of accounts I’ve seen, it is a miserable experience. The exceedingly silly ‘Games for Impact’ category would have been a much better fit for a title like this.
It Takes Two is one that I would like to play some time but also another I don’t see having a significant legacy. This was directed by Josef Fares who had a famously foul-mouthed rant at the Game Awards in 2017. I’ve only played his Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons game which I thought was alright.
Elden Ring I have no issues with. By most accounts, it is a great game and though not my thing, I don’t doubt its quality.
I am sure I would like the game part of Baldur’s Gate 3 and so I would definitely play it if I could get a version without the pornographic elements. I expect that without the latter though that it would never have even been nominated.
Astro Bot is probably the one game I would actually want to play but not enough to buy a PlayStation 5. It is proof that the console has at least one exclusive worth playing. Maybe I’ll have a look if/when it is ported to PC.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also looks like a decent game but I am doubtful it is the best release this year and suspect it has had a lot of push behind the scenes.
UPDATE: (20/1/26) Having played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all the way through, I think it deserved the GOTY nod though it isn’t mine. It also definitely is not an “Indie” title and I still don’t understand how it got away with being nominated in the two related categories. I have made two changes to the list below including putting back Astro Bot in 2024.
Some years ago I attempted a heuristic for judging a game that included time as a significant factor. The short of it is that if a game doesn’t remain fondly remembered than it probably isn’t all that special. This is very similar to the way books and films that really are good, remain well-thought of decades or centuries into the future. I think the same is true for video games and most of the games above will be largely forgotten in popular consciousness over time. Some such as Overwatch already have and can’t even be played anymore.
I will finish here by offering what I think is a better list for the years 2014-2025 and one that will go beyond the story-driven Action/Adventure/RPG titles that the awards tend to favour. These are not necessarily what I would personally choose for that year but games that I think has held up better than the one chosen for each given year. Where I agree, I have retained the same title.
2014: Mario Kart 8
2015: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2016: XCOM 2
2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2018: Red Dead Redemption 2
2019: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
2020: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
2021: Psychonauts 2
2022: Elden Ring
2023: Baldur’s Gate 3
2024: Astro Bot
2025: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I think the above list better reflects games that have had a lasting legacy and also includes a wider variety of genres and publishers. Nintendo has won four times here which will show my bias but then every game of theirs represents a different genre. I don’t expect anybody to agree with this but I think it better represents games of enduring quality across multiple genres.