The Game Awards 2022: Who's Gonna Win Big (Maybe)?

When it comes to the Game Awards, there’s an unspoken understanding of how events will progress and how we inevitably will respond. It goes something like this: everyone get hyped up to see their favourite games get a nod (or pissed as hell because something they loved was snubbed), the speculation runs rampant as to who or what takes the prizes for any number of reasons, and then on Award Night we all get worn down by the slow pace of the show itself, the abundance of product placement and advertising, and the growing realization that a lot of awards are destined for the normiest of normie titles that best posture as outsider art. Credit where it’s due, host/showrunner Geoff Keighley and company have this down practically to a science.

But if we must engage with the Awards – and barring anything else compelling happening during this mostly frigid, empty, and miserable time of year – then we can at least have some fun attempting to pre-game the show itself. Yes, I’ve decided to partake in the tradition of trying to guess which nominees win out in specific categories, based on a mix of not-insignificant research, observed trends in games discourse and my own gut instincts. Hopefully, you find the results as fascinating as I have, even if we are all conscious of where this is going.

Best Adaptation

We’re beginning with an oddball on two fronts – it’s the newest award and it’s the one that feels most uncertain. Set to be introduced with this year’s show, Best Adaptation therefore has no existing precedent for what does or doesn’t constitute awards-worthy material. But I have my suspicions...

My Guess? Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

I think Edgerunners takes this mostly on the merits of recency bias, bolstered by some genuine positive buzz surrounding the show. There’s also the reality of it fitting neatly into a narrative emerging in games discourse wherein Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt ‘redeems’ themselves after that game’s infamously tumultuous launch. Without question there’s a whole bunch of Very Online Folks eagerly awaiting the chance to be all “See? CD Projekt can still be great, now stop shitposting about 2077.”

That said, I understand why some folks assume Arcane has a shot and it's not unthinkable that this category exists purely just to put an award in that show’s hands. If I were legitimately looking at a work to pull a major upset, though? Sonic 2 gliding in on the merits of it being marginally better than the first one and doubling down on the fan service would be my bet.

Best Role-Playing Game

The Best RPG category has a tendency to be dominated by high profile titles representing only a handful of countries (Japan, the United States, and a few European nations), with winners having an unsurprising amount of global acclaim behind them. Unusually, this year features a line-up of games that were all developed by Japanese studios, as opposed to the relatively varied mix of years past.

My Guess? Elden Ring

Fortunately for those guessing at home, this is one of a few genre categories that I can look at and feel comfortable knowing how the proverbial winds are blowing. It just so happens that Square Enix and Nintendo each have two titles in the running – the Live a Live remake and Triangle Strategy for the former, Pokemon Legends: Arceus and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 for the latter. On top of the two publishers having the potential to split votes, I suspect Elden Ring also has the benefit of its wider cultural impact backing it up.

Best Action Game

Action is pretty broad as genre descriptors go but for our purposes adequately addresses the priorities of the nominees here - all the games pivot on combat and spectacle first and foremost, with every other aspect of design being useful-but-perfunctory or an afterthought. This year’s lineup also sports quite the eclectic range of games, from Bayonetta 3’s anarchic fantasy-action excess, to the retro-revival charm of Shredder’s Revenge, through to the familiar grim hyperrealistic militarism of Modern Warfare II.

My Guess? Sifu

This category has a tendency to reward relative wildcards and more offbeat releases, even while still clearly adhering to the show’s ethos of “high profile above all”. Sifu seems a smart bet as it has, reputation wise, the best balance between being praised for executing a unique gameplay conceit well and having some degree of comforting familiarity to its basic narrative structure; put another way, it can be regarded as both bold AND safe by voters without triggering some kind of (significant) cognitive dissonance.

Backing up this theory is the observation that the rest of the category is filled with works far more complicated in their standing. Bayonetta 3 might have a shot if my secondary suspicion – that the voting jury weighs its “good but messy” critical standing as far less important than emphasizing the game’s worth in the face of a truly unfortunate controversy – proves true. Neon White is critically acclaimed by a greater margin than any of the others, but has basically no wider cultural presence (I didn’t even know it existed until I started researching the nominees). Shredder’s Revenge has the warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgic excess down pat, though I have a feeling that familiarity proves a double-edged sword (one person’s loving throwback is another person’s old-fashioned retread of questionable merit). Last, there’s Modern Warfare II, which probably sits this one out because everyone (in the voting jury, anyway) is likely all-too-aware that Activision Blizzard just can’t help itself.

Best Independent Game

I’m glad that the category exists to (hypothetically give smaller, lower-profile works a chance to shine... I just wish that, like the rest of the show, it skewed less towards the most prestigious, well-known works that can still technically be called “independent”.

My Guess? Stray

Given that the history of this category doesn’t immediately suggest a recognizable pattern to the voting bias beyond a vague sense of “maybe the one that’s getting the most attention, except when that’s not the case”, I’m going with the idea that different-but-not-too-different is the driving mentality here. 

Stray fits that to a T (because “post-apocalypse urban exploration but as a cat doing cat things” is devious that way) and has the prestige of being associated with a Real Deal Film Studio, though given its breakout success and charming presentation of dark material Cult of the Lamb could also work. What might help Stray here is that, given the likelihood of it losing out on the next category, Best Indie feels like a sufficiently respectable consolation prize if the awards committee are still aching for it to get recognition.

Best Action-Adventure

Ah, the ever confounding genre classification of Action Adventure. Describing everything from vast freeform open-worlds to more tightly structured story-driven tales, and all the innumerable points in-between, the Action-Adventure genre exists as the catch-all for when pining down a game’s place in the wider canon proves truly beyond human capability. Naturally, that means it’s also home to a decently varied (but not too varied – don’t want to scare off the normies or alienate the sponsors with OBSCURE NOMINEES!) selection of works, which this year encompasses four of six Game of the Year contenders.

My Guess? God of War: Ragnarok

Recency bias and an overwhelming presence at the Awards says Ragnarok runs off with this one (which, if true, has ramifications for Game of the Year – but I’m getting ahead of myself). Honestly, setting aside Stray (because as mentioned, Best Indie’s likely in the bag) and Tunic (very cute, just also profoundly outmatched), this feels like it could tip in a few directions. Ragnarok is looking like the front-runner, though.

Best Ongoing

Introduced in 2017, this category has the biggest vibe of “we want to retroactively reward SOMETHING for existing and we have nowhere else to put it” out of pretty much the entire show. Best Ongoing Game also, curiously, acts as a kind of place of honor for games on the tail end of an industry-wide redemption narrative; consider that the last two winners are post-update(s) No Man’s Sky and the current incarnation of Final Fantasy XIV.

My Guess? *wildly shrugs*

Just throw darts with this one. Seriously. This is a weird category and none of the games immediately scream “give us prize for unscrewing up the game”. Maybe Destiny 2? A two-year streak’s happened before with Fortnite, perhaps FFXIV manages the same feat.

Best Performance

Honoring the specific individuals responsible for the work that goes into game development, versus broadly gesturing at their efforts as a collective studio or in reference to a specific work, is unquestionably a good thing. And no reasonable person would be right to claim that the folks who get their names put in the running for Best Performance don't deserve recognition and praise for their efforts.

My Guess? Judge or Suljic, God of War: Ragnarok

In Game Awards past this has proven interesting for those also observing the Best Narrative category; historically, the game (and their representative) who takes one is likely to take the other. Again we have a stack of GOTY representation here vying for attention, so in the end it comes down to math – Ragnarok has Chris Judge and Sunny Suljic in the running, against one actor each for Horizon and Plague Tale. That having been said, a case could be made that apart from Ragnarok splitting the vote, an upset could arise from the jury going with Ashly Burch for Horizon; she’s been nominated several times before, she’s an industry favourite, and it’d be hard to argue she isn’t long overdue for a win.

Best Art Direction

Does this category refer to what the jury deems the most interesting, stylistically compelling visuals in their game of choice? Or is it about cohesiveness of vision, the notion that everything you see in a game world fits together and conveys the sense of belonging? We may never know for sure.

My Guess? Horizon Forbidden West

What I can say with some certainty is, if the jury does prove as gung-ho about Ragnarok as I suspect they’ll be, this will be one of the places where Horizon 2 gets a conciliatory nod. Scorn’s more interesting as an art piece, but the look of Horizon’s overgrowth-covered sci-fi aesthetic probably works better for the jury as visual spectacle (and, again, doing the game a solid).

Best Narrative

We could go on for days about the actual quality per number of words and overall execution of game narratives, but that would be missing the point of this category. After all, Uncharted’s confident pulp-adventure bonafides is far removed from Valiant Hearts’ heartrending war drama or Disco Elysium’s darkly amusing take on neo-noir; the only thing linking them is confidence in the material and in their approach to it.

My Guess? God of War: Ragnarok

Of course, as mentioned this category and Best Performance have historically been linked, so it would stand to reason that Ragnarok continues its winning streak here.

Best Game Direction

No one actually knows what a game director does, how to distinguish between the different kinds of directors on a project, or what part of the development process can be classified as the most important part of game direction. So we settle for “the vague sense that someone on top knew what they were doing” and call it a day.

My Guess? God of War: Ragnarok

This is also a numbers game, though more in the sense of how much a given studio or publisher is represented at the show in total. Sony’s got that honor at 20 overall nominations so we’re probably down for another Ragnarok versus Horizon match-up, and Ragnarok is looking mighty confident.

Game of the Year

The big prize. The top dog. That which is coveted among all. To be crowned Game of the Year, even in the context of this tacky advertisement board-cum-award show, is to be granted a certain prominence and prestige above all others in the field. That’s the theory, anyway.

My Guess? God of War: Ragnarok

Weirdly enough, a pattern has kind of emerged when tracking this particular category. GOTY nominees that crop up in a given genre category and Best Game Direction, and manage to win at least one of those, have strong odds of winning here. So, if you’ve been following the trend so far, it will not surprise you to learn that I think Ragnarok walks away winning big if it sweeps as much as I suspect it will.