Nominees for 2022’s The Game Awards event announced

The Game Awards premieres on 7:30 PM ET on December 8th.

Nominees Selected for Gaming’s Biggest Accolades Show

For many of us, the end of the year brings a time for recognition and reflection on our favorite games over the past year. Most media outlets and companies usually compile their own lists for winners in a variety of categories including their Game of the Year. Today, Geoff Keighley and social media accounts representing The Game Awards announced all the nominees for their award show this year, airing as both an in-person and stream event on Thursday, December 8th. While The Game Awards is not necessarily recognized as the one-and-only pinnacle awards event for games, it definitely serves as a high-production show offering awards ceremonies, world premiere trailers, and announcements for new projects.

Thirty-one categories make up this year’s award show. New to the list of categories is “Best Adaptation”, described as “recognizing outstanding creative work that faithfully and authentically adapts a video game to another entertainment medium” according to the award show’s site. Netflix holds 3 of the nominees as publishers of Arcane: League of Legends, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and The Cuphead Show!, while Uncharted and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 come in as film property nominees. Other categories include more genre-based sections such as “Best Action/Adventure” and “Best Fighting Game” as well as more individually focused categories like “Games for Impact” and “Best Performance”. Arguably the category everyone seems to look for is “Game of the Year”, whose nominees consist of A Plague Tale: Requiem, Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Stray, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Public voting for all categories is now open.

How a winner is nominated and selected is a several-step process. Over 100 media and journalism outlets with a history of game evaluation serve on a jury for title selection. Each outlet submits a ballot containing a number of nominees for each category. Once all the ballots are tallied together, whichever five titles received the most number of selections will be added to the list of eligible nominees. Then, the voting commences, with 90% of the weight coming from the jury and the general public making up the last 10%.

Geoff Keighley, CEO of The Game Awards

Criticism of the show dates back as far as its own inception. Formerly an annual prime-time entry on the cable network channel Spike TV, The Game Awards first aired independently in 2014 as Geoff Keighley’s vision for an industry award show that could hold the weight of similar art medium shows such as The Academy Awards. However, unlike these more tenured events, The Game Awards still attempts to bridge mainstream with gaming in an attempt to draw new viewers annually. This includes celebrity presenters, band performances, and more. Plus, nominee choices continue to be a hot topic of debate among critics and fans, especially those who may be outspoken critics of the impact of major gaming news media.

Whatever your opinion is, you can be sure to experience quite the flashy, celebratory event every year when you tune in. It’s an event that boasted 85 million viewers last year. Whether or not the show will suffer a dip in those numbers remains to be seen, considering that this year the show can be attended in person by the general public as well.

Voting for the show can be submitted here. If you plan on streaming the event, you can find it on any major gaming stream platform available, starting 7:30 PM ET/4:30 PM PT on December 8th. Let us know what your game of the year was in the comments below! Remember, your pick matters even if you do not think it was popular!