Game Awards Nominations: How Game of the Year Is Picked

Some time in the next few days, a list of five or six games will appear under the words Game of the Year, and your feeds will fill with arguments about snubs. The Game Awards nominations look like a verdict from on high. They are really the output of a voting system with very specific rules, and those rules decide which games make the cut long before anyone walks on stage.

That matters if you use the list to pick what to play over the holidays, or if you plan to cast a fan vote. A game can be loved by millions and still miss the shortlist because of how ballots are counted. A game released on the wrong day can miss it entirely.

This guide breaks down how the jury works, how much your vote is really worth, which dates shut games out, and how to read the nominee list as a buying guide instead of a scoreboard.

How Game Awards Nominations Are Actually Chosen

According to the official Game Awards FAQ, most categories are judged by an international jury of over 100 global media and influencer outlets. Each outlet counts as one voter. Its ballot is meant to represent the collective view of its editorial team, not one critic's taste.

The ballot itself is simple. Every outlet lists its top five choices in each category, in no particular order, and keeps the ballot confidential. The organizers then count appearances. The five games that show up on the most ballots become the nominees. If there is a tie for the last spot, the category gets six or more nominees instead of five.

A few categories run on separate juries. Esports, accessibility and best adaptation each have their own specialized panel, because a general games critic is not the right judge of a tournament player or a TV series.

Why unranked ballots favor broad appeal

An unranked top five rewards the game that appears on many lists, not the game that inspires the most passion. That one rule explains a lot of snub outrage.

Here is a simple worked example. Picture a jury of 100 outlets:

• Game A is the favorite of 40 outlets, but the other 60 leave it off entirely. It lands on 40 ballots.
• Game B is nobody's favorite, but 65 outlets rank it somewhere in their top five. It lands on 65 ballots.

Game B gets the nomination ahead of Game A, even though not a single voter thought it was the best game of the year. Divisive, niche or genre-specific games suffer most from this math. A brilliant strategy game that half the jury never played has a hard time beating a polished action game that everyone tried.

Your Fan Vote Is Worth 10%, and Here Is What That Means

Nominations come only from the jury. Fans enter at the next stage. Per the FAQ, winners are decided by a blended vote: 90% jury, 10% public. Fan voting runs on the Game Awards site and closes Wednesday, December 9 at 6 p.m. PT.

Ten percent sounds small, and it is, but it is not zero. Whether it matters depends entirely on how close the jury is.

Worked example: when fans can flip a result

Say two games lead a category. In the jury vote, Game C takes 40% and Game D takes 35%. In the fan vote, Game D is far more popular, with 50% against Game C's 20%.

• Game C: (0.9 x 40) + (0.1 x 20) = 36 + 2 = 38 points
• Game D: (0.9 x 35) + (0.1 x 50) = 31.5 + 5 = 36.5 points

Game C still wins. Fans pushed Game D up, but a 5 point jury lead held. Now shrink the jury gap to 40% against 38%. Game D scores 34.2 + 5 = 39.2 points, against Game C's 38. The fan vote flips the category.

The rule of thumb: fans can only overturn a jury lead when the fan margin is about nine times larger than the jury margin. In a runaway year, the fan vote changes nothing. In a tight race, a motivated fan base can decide it.

The award fans own outright

The exception is the Players' Voice award, which is decided by fans rather than the jury. It also has a later cutoff: games only need to ship by November 30 to qualify. Turnout is huge. Outlook Respawn reported that last year's show drew an estimated 171 million livestreams, up about 11% from 154 million the year before, and that fan voting passed 123 million votes.

The Eligibility Dates That Shut Games Out

Release timing is the quiet factor in every awards season. This year, a game must be commercially available by Friday, November 20 at 9 p.m. PT to compete in most categories. Miss that by a day and the game rolls into next year's show, where it will face twelve fresh months of competition and fading buzz.

The calendar creates an odd squeeze. The official site says nominees arrive in mid-November, which is before the cutoff passes. So a game launching in the final week of eligibility can be nominated by jurors who played it from review code, often only days or weeks before the list goes out. Big late releases get judged on a short clock.

What counts as eligible is broader than most players assume. The FAQ spells it out:

• Remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury thinks the new work deserves it.
• DLC, expansions and new seasons can be nominated as well.
• Early access games qualify if the public could buy them before the deadline.
• Games from previous years are eligible when new content or updates justify a return, which is how live service titles end up in Best Ongoing Game.

That last point means a nomination is not proof a game is new. Check the release history before you treat a nominee as this year's discovery.

What Last Year's Sweep Tells You About This Year

Last year showed how the system can concentrate wins. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took a record 13 nominations and won nine awards, including Game of the Year, Best Narrative and Best RPG, according to Hitmarker's winners report. The previous record was seven wins, set by The Last of Us Part II at the 2020 show.

A sweep like that follows from the rules above. A game that sits on most ballots across many categories collects nominations everywhere. Once it leads the jury vote by a clear margin, the 10% fan share cannot pull it back. Nine trophies were not nine separate surprises. They were one consensus counted nine times.

For you, the lesson is to look past the headline category. When one game dominates, the genre and craft categories are where the variety lives. Best Indie, Best Debut Indie, Best Audio Design and the genre awards often hold the games that the top-five ballot math squeezed out of Game of the Year.

How to Use the Nominee List Before You Spend Money

The nominee list is one of the best free buying guides of the year, if you read it with the voting rules in mind. Here is a practical way to work through it.

1. Start with the craft categories. A game nominated for narrative, direction and art across several categories is a broad consensus pick. A game with one genre nod is a specialist pick that may suit you better.
2. Check your subscriptions first. Several nominees each year end up in catalog services. Before buying, compare against our breakdown of whether Game Pass or PS Plus is still worth paying for.
3. Note what missed the cutoff. Anything released after November 20 is absent by rule, not by quality. Our list of the biggest games on the horizon covers what lands in next year's race.
4. Treat the winners as a tiebreaker, not a ranking. A 90% jury vote tells you what critics agreed on, which may not match the genre you actually enjoy.

Doing this before the show means you can line up a short list, then watch the reveals and prices without impulse buying the moment a trophy is handed out.

Frequently Asked Questions

When are The Game Awards nominations announced?

The official site says nominees arrive in mid-November. The ceremony itself is on Thursday, December 10 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with the opening act starting at 4:30 p.m. PT.

Who votes for The Game Awards?

A jury of more than 100 global media and influencer outlets votes on most categories. Specialized juries handle esports, accessibility and best adaptation. The public votes too, but only counts for 10% of the final result, except in the fan-decided Players' Voice award.

How do I vote in The Game Awards?

Fan voting opens on the official Game Awards website after nominees are announced and closes Wednesday, December 9 at 6 p.m. PT. Your vote is blended with the jury result at a 10% weight.

Can remakes win Game of the Year at The Game Awards?

Yes. The rules make remakes, remasters, expansions and DLC eligible in all categories, as long as the jury thinks the new work is worthy of a nomination.

What is the release cutoff for The Game Awards this year?

Games must be on sale by Friday, November 20 at 9 p.m. PT for most categories. The Players' Voice award allows games that ship by November 30.

The Bottom Line

The Game Awards nominations are not a ranking of the best games. They are a count of how often a game appears in more than 100 unranked top fives, with a fan vote layered on top at one tenth of the weight. That design favors broad consensus, punishes late releases and makes sweeps likely in a year with a clear favorite.

Read the list that way and it becomes far more useful. Look past Game of the Year, check the craft and genre categories, and cast your fan vote where the race looks close. That is where your 10% can actually change the outcome.