My Game of the Year 2023 Prediction (The Game Awards)
Contributed by DJMMT
It’s that time of year again where we let a small contingent of usually tone-deaf friends of Geoff Keighley decide which game, among several excellent options, is the best game to release this year, not counting games released in November or December, of course. But before we can discuss which game was named Game of the Year (GOTY), since the awards haven’t happened yet, we must of course first spend the better part of a month arguing amongst ourselves over which of the nominees, that we, the consumers, didn’t have any say in choosing, should win GOTY. As well as all the games that were snubbed.
2023 was actually an insane year for video games. Honestly, I don’t understand this modern hipster take that all games suck now. Whether you’re on PC, Nintendo Switch, or PlayStation 5, you ate well as a gamer in 2023. I guess XBOX players got Starfield. But the gaming overlords have already decreed that it wasn’t worthy of discussing further, so it’s not part of the list of nominees. Indie or AAA, we saw many great games released this year. Way more than just six, which is the number of nominees for this year’s The Game Awards GOTY category.
There are a total of 31 categories in this year’s awards list, and, as is tradition, I’m not going to talk about most of them. It would take way too long to go over every category. Additionally, several categories don’t really matter. Why do we waste time with categories like “Content Creator of the Year” and “Best Esports Coach”? The fact that there isn’t even a “Publisher of the Year” or “Best Studio” while we honor a bunch of hacks that already make a fortune not creating video games is appalling. But whatever. I’m here to talk about one category, and that’s Game of the Year. Though I will probably mention a few others for contextual reasons. So, let’s get started.
Your nominees, which again you had no voice in choosing, for Game of the Year 2023 are, in order of appearance on The Game Awards website (it’s alphabetical, by the way), Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4 (Remake), Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Before we get into actually choosing a winner, let’s contextualize these nominees a bit.
The first thing I noticed about this list of nominees is that none of them are new IPs. In fact, depending on how you categorize Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 4, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, one could potentially argue that all six of the nominees are direct sequels. I wouldn’t do that, but an argument can be made for it. It’s a sad day for new ideas. But it’s been like that across the entertainment spectrum for some time now. Half of these games are exclusives, which I consider pretty normal and arguably a good thing. If exclusives aren’t accomplishing anything they stop carrying any value. I’m glad to see that they didn’t sneak a small indie in there, like we’ve seen happen on occasion in past years. I consider both Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 at most AA titles, though by definition we can consider Baldur’s Gate 3 indie. I don’t, but you certainly can.
I’m very unhappy to see Resident Evil 4 in this list of nominees. A remake of a game from as recent as 2005 that has a port of the original on PS4 shouldn’t be in the list of GOTY nominees. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Ports, remakes, and remasters should not be in the running for GOTY. Really, they should make a category for those types of games. They are common enough now that it would make sense. I don’t have a problem with remakes. In certain cases, I wholeheartedly support them. Like Super Mario RPG, which will have come out by the time you read this. I’m super excited for that and already preordered it. But I don’t expect or want it to be nominated for GOTY next year. The only scenario where that would be acceptable is if the rest of the games released in 2024 were all trash. This was a great year of games. There is no reason that a remake, no matter how good it is, should be nominated. Especially when games like Starfield, Armored Core IV Fire of Rubicon, Hogawarts Legacy, Final Fantasy XVI, and Pikmin 4 were all released this year. There’s just no reason to nominate a game that already had its day in the sun years prior another shot at the title. That’s just not how it works. Or at least it shouldn’t.
I will acknowledge that we are starting to see remakes deviate more and more from their original source titles. Games like Final Fantasy VII HD Remake are so far removed from the original versions of them that it is fair to count them as completely different games. If you go to the Resident Evil 4 Remake site, it says very clearly and prominently “Resident Evil 4 (Remake) preserves the essence of the original game, while introducing modernized gameplay, a reimagined storyline, and vividly detailed graphics to make this the latest survival horror game where life and death, terror and catharsis intersect.” It is not the same game. It’s fair to acknowledge that. But that does not change the fact that the work it takes to make an entirely new game, whether it be a completely new IP or sequel, was not and is not required to produce a remake. That’s why, unless there really just aren’t good games released in a given year, I do not think it’s fair to allow remakes and remasters to be included in the nominees for GOTY. Especially in a year as hefty as 2023.
I’m also very unhappy that Alan Wake 2 was nominated, but for completely different reasons. I haven’t personally played Alan Wake 2, but the response to the game I’ve seen has been extremely divisive. While 100% of players agree that it’s a great looking game, many people (at least half of the comments I’ve seen online) were not happy with the gameplay and writing. It’s a great display of the power of Unreal Engine 5. But that doesn’t make it a great video game. If so many people weren’t happy with it for gameplay related reasons, I don’t think it should be considered for GOTY. Especially when, again, we have many other games that came out this year that a majority of players were happy with, even if they didn’t necessarily think they were GOTY material. For instance, I’ve heard pretty much only good things about Hogwarts Legacy. I got to demo it for a couple hours, and though it starts off slow, as is usually the case with open worlds, I had fun playing it. And most people I’ve seen comment on it said that it’s really fun for what it is. I’ve seen a lot of people unhappy with J.K. Rowling, which is fine. But that has nothing to do with the game. But even if you don’t want to include Hogwarts Legacy in the nominees for political reasons, we still have Final Fantasy XVI, which is objectively great. It might not be your favorite take on Final Fantasy, but if that had just been a new Square Enix action RPG, everyone would have given it high praise. Alan Wake 2 should get something like “Best Art Direction,” which it was nominated for.
Now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, let’s actually talk about these nominees and which one, in my opinion, deserves the crown. As I’ve just spent multiple paragraphs discussing, I don’t think Resident Evil 4 or Alan Wake 2 should even be in the running for GOTY. So I’m going to toss them both out immediately. Because unless The Game Awards wants another controversial year (looking at you 2016 and 2021), they’re not gonna risk it with either of the truly divisive nominees . . . maybe. Let’s also just admit that, while phenomenal and absolutely worth playing, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is not going to win. And it doesn’t deserve to when compared to at least two of the other nominees. It will win “Best Family” game, and it should.
The only other nominees in the “Best Family” category that should even have a shot are Disney Illusion Island and Pikmin 4. Disney Illusion Island is essentially a dime store version of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Pikmin 4, while also great, isn’t really a family game. It’s a family friendly game, but the gameplay isn’t really family oriented. I do hope that Pikmin 4 wins “Best Sim/Strategy” though. But I think that will go to Cities: Skylines II. Fire Emblem Engage was probably a bit too divisive to take the award, even though the dislike for the game wasn’t really grounded in any sort of valid logic. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a remaster and thus should not win, as I explained earlier. But I am very happy that it finally got released, and I hope that it goes on sale for Black Friday, because I really want to play it. Company of Heroes 3 has no chance in this category. Frankly, I’m a bit shocked that it was even nominated. But back to GOTY.
So, we are now left with Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK). Let me start by saying that it’s not going to be TOTK. Make no mistake, the game that deserves to win GOTY from this list of nominees is without a doubt TOTK. No other game was so widely praised, talked about for so long, had new content (as in social media posts from users) being created, and just generally stayed in the gaming ether, with no additional content released, this year. No other game delivered so many different types of experiences all at the same time without ever feeling convoluted or disorganized. No other game pushed its genre or hardware platform the way TOTK did. It is truly a masterpiece by every objective measure. I saw many people complain that it should have just been DLC, but that’s honestly an insane take. That game added two additional maps on top of the old one with full traversal for all three of them available with no loading screens on the Nintendo Switch. The building mechanics alone fueled an entirely new genre of content creation. They could literally have just released a simple building game with TOTK’s physics system and that would probably have been worth nominating for GOTY. TOTK deserves to win, and that’s why, even though it’s not the game I actually want to win this year, I still voted for it. It’s the objectively correct choice from this list of nominees. And yet, TOTK is absolutely not going to win. Let me explain why.
TOTK is a direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BOTW), which happens to have won GOTY in 2017. While there have been nominations on more than one occasion, there has never been an instance where two games in the same franchise have won GOTY. It does not happen. Because it’s bad for the optics. Every year, The Game Awards are riddled with accusations of favoritism, PlayStation bias, and hate for XBOX. They do not need to add Nintendo bias to the list. Which would be hilariously ironic, given that Nintendo has only won one time previously, and that was with BOTW. It’s the same reason that God of War Ragnarök never really had a chance last year. Two games in the same franchise don’t win. Especially when they’re directly linked, pun intended. So sadly, even though it absolutely deserves to win, I’m going to knock TOTK out of the running as well.
That leaves us with just two nominees: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. Both highly acclaimed. Both phenomenal in gameplay and solid in story. Both visually impressive. And most importantly, neither is an XBOX exclusive. I’m kidding. That doesn’t matter. There is an objective argument for either of these two nominees, of course when ignoring TOTK. You’ve got the obvious money maker from a respected studio and publisher with a beloved IP that did not win with the first game in the series, even though everyone agreed that the first Marvel’s Spider-Man was an absolute masterpiece. Everyone loved that game. Even the Xbots were impressed with it. Giving it to Spider-Man 2 is a safe choice that no one will argue was wrong. Not everyone will agree with it. But no one will genuinely be able to argue that it was a clearly incorrect decision.
On the other side, we have a respected developer that’s at most AA caliber, but arguably indie, with a 27-year track record and no previous nominations for GOTY. Other than their very first game, The L.E.D. Wars, which you’ve never heard of, they’ve only ever worked on one franchise before taking on Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m of course talking about Divinity. If you don’t know Divinity, it’s a highly respected CRPG series that was directly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and was basically Larian Studios’ take on the Baldur’s Gate concept. To everyone’s surprise, Baldur’s Gate 3 released with high praise from everyone. Even people who don’t like the genre, like myself, were awed by the love, quality, and fun delivered in this game. It made me want to give this genre another chance. I was especially shocked by how much I enjoyed demoing it, given how much I hated playing Divinity: Original Sin II.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the easy choice, but it is the justifiable, daring choice. That’s why I’d like to see it win. If they gave Baldur’s Gate 3 GOTY, it would be an instance of The Game Awards not picking an obvious AAA without garnering the controversy of picking a game like It Takes Two back in 2021. It’s a solid choice that everyone would respect that also makes a statement about how you don’t have to be a large publisher to win the title. Also, it gives GOTY to a turn-based game, which I would love to see happen. I think people would be surprised if Baldur’s Gate 3 wins, but I don’t think anyone would be angry about it. The choice wouldn’t be controversial or divisive. It wouldn’t make XBOX or PlayStation users angry. It’s not exclusive to any platform. It doesn’t fall into a genre that has won previously, unless you count it under the now massive umbrella term that RPG has become. It’s the safest “risky” choice they could make.
The question is who will The Game Awards choose from among these six nominees? Based on their past decisions and my understanding of their politics, which if you’ve been reading this blog for a long time you know I’ve thought about a lot, I have narrowed it down to three options: the safe choice, the controversial choice, and the politically neutral choice.
The safe choice is Spider-Man 2. It’s easy, it makes sense, and it won’t really surprise anyone. Throw in the fact that it also lets The Game Awards pretend they chose a game with a POC protagonist, and it’s an easy, low-risk decision that no one will legitimately be able to criticize. And whenever people do criticize the choice, they’ll quickly be called racist. It’s the gaming industry at its most common these days. Political grandstanding with no real risk to the bottom line. This is not choosing It Takes Two or The Last of Us Part II (2020 GOTY). This is choosing The Witcher 3: Hild Hunt (2015 GOTY) or God of War (2018 GOTY).
The controversial choice is Alan Wake 2. It was nominated, but it doesn’t deserve to win. I know I said I’d toss it out, but this is The Game Awards. They love doing the wrong thing and pissing people off. So we have to consider the possibility of something clearly wrong happening. Choosing it allows The Game Awards to act like the unwashed masses don’t understand the true value of art in video games and that it’s about more than just gameplay. They’ll say something like “the masterful use of Unreal Engine 5 to advance the medium deserves to be recognized as the future of game development” or some other posh bullshit. Everyone will get angry, but then people will look back to winners like It Takes Two and The Last of Us Part II as other examples of controversial nominations taking the title. Really, choices like this are about keeping gamers in line and giving gaming media outlets respect. It’s absolutely the wrong choice, but it has happened before.
The politically neutral choice is Baldur’s Gate 3. Again, it’s not the game that should win. That’s TOTK. But it is the game that could be chosen without getting anyone angry. And it has the added bonus of making a statement without really making a statement, as no one would find the decision particularly disagreeable. Obviously, parts of the internet would complain, but that would be over in less than a week. Baldur’s Gate 3 winning would work as well as Spider-Man 2 without feeling nearly as cliché.
Which choice among those three will The Game Awards pick though? When looking at the full list of winners, going back to when Dragon Age: Inquisition won back in 2014, you can see several patterns as well as an attempt to prevent any obvious patterns from forming. For instance, only four exclusives have actually won GOTY in the last nine years. All four of them were back-to-back wins with three of them being PlayStation exclusives. That said, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice wasn’t produced by a SONY owned studio; and it has been two years since another exclusive won. Depending on how you define God of War (2018) and BOTW (2017), up to six of the last nine winners have been RPGs. The most recent being Elden Ring, last year, which was the second win by FROM SOFTWARE. And yes, that is why Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon wasn’t nominated this year. At the same time, a turn-based game has never won GOTY. We have had a soft horror game, a puzzle platformer, an open world adventure, and multiple action games win. It’s for that reason that I don’t think they’ll pick Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The only exception would be if they wanted to make up for not picking the first one in 2018, because God of War was, well God of War.
If we accept my logic for why it won’t be Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, then that leaves Alan Wake 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 in a head-to-head for non-AAA recognition in an industry that has become flooded with sequels and remakes of established IPs that are often panned for lacking risk and heart in their productions. The irony being that these are both sequels as well. However, both have been touted as deviating from the norm, due to the love and passion put into them. So now we have to consider which game checks the most additional boxes. The “woke” boxes as they’re often referred to. I don’t really buy in for identity politics in entertainment, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t play a role. I literally just saw an article from Kotaku about how Persona is a homophobic game series. So, between Alan Wake 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, which game wins more diversity pandering points? More importantly, which game wins more of the “important” diversity pandering points? I’m not going to go into details, but the answer to that question is Baldur’s Gate 3 by a country mile. All Alan Wake 2 really has going for it in the diversity discourse is a Black, female protagonist who shares the spotlight with a white man. At that point, you might as well just pick Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, where you get both a Black protagonist and a Latino protagonist at the same time. That’s two racial minorities for the price of one! Notice that Forspoken didn’t get any nominations this year. Baldur’s Gate 3 has it all when it comes to representation. You can be whatever color and gender you want and even have sex with a bear. It wins all the diversity points while also actually being fun to play and well written.
My prediction for The Game Awards 2023 Game of the Year is Baldur’s Gate 3. Thankfully, while it’s not the game that deserves to win, as that’s TOTK, which I already explained, it is the game that I want to win. I really want to see a turn-based RPG win GOTY. And this is probably the last time in my lifetime that there’s a chance of that actually happening. It’s a good choice. It’s a choice people won’t get too angry about. It’s a choice that no one can claim comes from a place of bias or corruption in the awards and industry in general. It’s the politically neutral choice. The winner will be Baldur’s Gate 3.
