This year marks the 10th anniversary of The Game Awards, and in that time Geoff Keighley’s annual event has established itself quite firmly as the leading awards ceremony for the game industry — the Oscars of gaming. It remains promotionally overstuffed to the point that it’s still arguably better known for trailers than awards, but that’s changing. And although its winners tend to be pretty conservative, they are broadly representative of the critical consensus. Its voting body is composed of a wide range of international games media, so the chances are your favorite publications’ and critics’ picks factor into The Game Awards. (Polygon’s do.)
The top prize of the night is, of course, Game of the Year — and there are clear indicators of what makes a Game of the Year at The Game Awards, based on a decade of data. On Nov. 18, The Game Awards announced the nominees for this and all the other categories, mostly confirming those indicators. Still, it’s a particularly open race in 2024, with no cut-and-dried frontrunner. Below, after crunching numbers and taking temperatures, we pick the likely Game of the Year winner and rank the rest of the six nominees in order of their likeliness to win. We’ll find out if we got it right when the winner is announced at The Game Awards on Dec. 12.
