The Game Awards: 2025 and Beyond

Every December, the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles becomes the center of the gaming universe for one night. Developers in tuxedos, celebrities presenting awards, world premiere trailers dropping between acceptance speeches, and millions of viewers watching from around the world. The Game Awards has become gaming's answer to the Oscars, and this year's show just reminded everyone why that comparison keeps getting made.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a debut title from French studio Sandfall Interactive, didn't just win Game of the Year. It swept the ceremony with nine awards, shattering the previous record for most wins in a single night (TBreak, 2025). Sandfall’s work combined with Fortiche (the French animation studio responsible for works like “Arcane”) makes me very excited to see what sort of mind-blowing work is going to come out of France next.

Title art for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/expedition-33-b3240d

From Spike TV to Streaming: A Brief History

The Game Awards didn't appear out of nowhere in 2014. Game journalist Geoff Keighley spent over a decade working on the Spike Video Game Awards, a show that was equal parts celebration and spectacle, sometimes leaning too far toward the latter (Epic Games Store, 2024). When Keighley left to create The Game Awards, he brought the production polish but refined the focus: honor the craft, spotlight upcoming games, and build something that could stand alongside film and music's major award shows.

The ambition was explicit from the start. Keighley wanted The Game Awards to be as culturally significant as the Grammys or Oscars (NPR, 2022). That's a tall order for an industry that mainstream culture still doesn't fully understand, but the numbers suggest he's getting closer. The show draws millions of concurrent viewers across streaming platforms, and major game studios now time their biggest announcements around the ceremony.

What makes The Game Awards different from other gaming award shows is the balance between honoring existing work and previewing what's next. Half the audience tunes in for the awards. The other half shows up for the world premiere trailers. This creates a strange dynamic where acceptance speeches sometimes feel rushed because everyone's waiting for the next big game reveal, but it also makes the show significantly more watchable than a pure awards ceremony would be.

How Games Actually Win (It's Not Just Popular Vote)

You can vote for your favorite games at The Game Awards, but your vote only counts for 10% of the final decision. The other 90% comes from a jury of approximately 100 media outlets and gaming publications from around the world (Polygon, 2024).

This hybrid system is deliberate. Pure public voting would likely reward the biggest marketing budgets and largest fanbases, not necessarily the best games. Pure jury voting risks becoming insular and disconnected from what players actually enjoy. The 90/10 split tries to balance critical assessment with popular sentiment, though it's a compromise that doesn't fully satisfy either camp.

Games must be "available for public consumption" by November 21st to qualify for that year's awards (GameSpot, 2025). That means late-year releases sometimes dominate the conversation simply because they're fresh in voters' minds, while equally impressive games from January through March get forgotten by December.

The categories themselves are worth examining. You've got the expected ones: Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction. But you also have categories that reflect gaming's evolution: Best Community Support (rewarding ongoing game maintenance), Best Adaptation (for video game movies and shows), and various esports categories. The show recognizes that gaming isn't just about the product at launch anymore, it's about sustained engagement and cross-media presence.

The Categories That Matter (And The Ones That Get Ignored)

Game of the Year gets the headlines, but some of the other categories tell more interesting stories about what the industry values. Best Indie Game consistently highlights innovation happening outside major studios. Best Debut recognizes first-time developers making an immediate impact. These aren't just consolation prizes, they're career launchers that can transform small studios overnight.

Last year's Best Indie and Best Debut categories had a strong Saskatchewan connection. Balatro, a poker-inspired roguelike deckbuilding game created by an anonymous developer known only as LocalThunk from Regina, Saskatchewan, won three awards and later took Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards in March 2025 (Game Developer, 2025). LocalThunk developed the entire game solo while working a day job in IT, proving that you don't need a massive team or Silicon Valley address to create something that resonates globally (France24, 2024).

The technical categories (Best Audio, Best Technology) often go to games with the biggest budgets and most advanced engines, which makes sense but also reveals a bias toward AAA productions. Games with incredible art direction using simpler technology sometimes struggle to compete against photorealistic blockbusters with motion capture budgets that exceed entire indie studios' operating costs.

Best Narrative is particularly contentious because interactive storytelling works differently than linear media. A game with a mediocre plot but exceptional environmental storytelling might lose to a game with cutscene-heavy cinematics that feel more traditionally "narrative." The category is evolving, but the criteria remain fuzzy.

2025's Record-Breaking Night

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's nine-award sweep wasn't just about quantity. The game won across diverse categories: Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, Best Audio Design, Best Performance, Best RPG, Best Debut, and Players' Voice (The Guardian, 2025). That breadth suggests genuine excellence rather than one dominant strength carrying an otherwise average game.

For context, most Game of the Year winners take home three to five awards total. Winning nine means the game excelled at almost everything it attempted, and the jury (plus 10% public vote) agreed across the board. It's the kind of consensus that's rare in an industry where tastes fragment across genres, platforms, and play styles.

The sweep also highlights something interesting about debut studios. Sandfall Interactive is a first-time developer, yet they beat established franchises and veteran studios. That's not supposed to happen in an industry where experience, resources, and franchise recognition typically dominate. But gaming keeps producing these anomalies, small teams or new studios creating something that resonates more deeply than the carefully focus-tested products from major publishers.

What The Game Awards Gets Right (And Wrong)

The show's greatest strength is visibility. Winning a Game Award, particularly Game of the Year, changes a studio's trajectory overnight. Sales spike, publisher interest multiplies, and talented developers suddenly want to work for you. For indie studios, a nomination alone can mean the difference between shutting down and securing another round of funding.

The celebrity involvement works better than it should. When you get someone like Simu Liu or Pedro Pascal presenting awards, it signals that gaming has cultural cachet beyond its own ecosystem. These aren't C-list celebrities fulfilling contractual obligations, they're often genuine fans who know the games and respect the industry.

The world premiere trailers are both the show's biggest draw and its most frustrating element. Yes, seeing the first footage of a highly anticipated game is exciting. But when awards get rushed or acceptance speeches get cut short so we can watch another CGI teaser for a game that won't release for three years, the priorities feel backwards. The show is called The Game Awards, not The Game Announcements, but the balance keeps tilting toward the latter.

The length is a persistent problem. This year's show ran over three hours, and that's after cutting content. When you're trying to honor 30+ categories, include celebrity presenters, showcase 10+ world premiere trailers, feature musical performances, and keep the energy high, something has to give. Usually it's the acceptance speeches, which means the developers who actually made the games get less time to speak than the trailers for games that don't exist yet.

Why This Matters Beyond Gaming

The Game Awards' evolution mirrors gaming's broader cultural integration. Twenty years ago, video game awards were niche events covered primarily by enthusiast press. Now major news outlets report the winners, celebrities attend, and the ceremony streams globally with real-time translation.

That shift reflects gaming's economic and cultural reality. The industry generates more revenue than film and music combined. Games like Fortnite and Minecraft have become shared cultural experiences across age groups and geographies. Game developers are recognized as artists, not just programmers. The Game Awards legitimizes all of this by providing a formal recognition structure that mainstream culture understands.

For anyone working in learning and development, particularly those exploring game-based learning, The Game Awards serves as an annual snapshot of what's possible in interactive media. The games that win often showcase innovative mechanics, compelling narratives, and player engagement strategies that transfer directly to educational and training contexts. You're not just watching an awards show, you're seeing a catalog of design patterns that might solve problems you're currently facing.

The 2026 Questions

Next year's Game Awards will face familiar challenges. How do you keep the show focused on honoring existing work while everyone's clamoring for future announcements? How do you balance AAA spectacle with indie innovation? How do you make 30+ award categories feel meaningful when only five or six generate significant discussion?

The industry itself keeps evolving in ways that complicate the awards. Live service games blur the line between "new release" and "ongoing update." AI-generated content raises questions about authorship and artistic merit. Cross-platform play means traditional console war tribalism matters less, but also reduces some of the competitive energy that drove viewership.

What's clear is that The Game Awards has established itself as gaming's most visible and culturally significant ceremony. Whether it's the "best" gaming awards show is debatable, plenty of developers and players prefer GDC's peer-voted awards or BAFTA's more intimate ceremony, but it's unquestionably the biggest. And in an industry obsessed with reach, engagement, and cultural impact, biggest often matters most.

The recent ceremonies remind us that a debut studio from France can beat established franchises, an indie developer from Saskatchewan can compete with major publishers, and nine awards can go to a game that prioritizes artistic vision over market research. That's worth celebrating, even if the acceptance speeches got cut a bit short for another world premiere trailer.