The Game Awards 2022: how are the winners chosen?

Year after year we get the same discussions. Whether X game deserves a nomination over Y, if that one was unjustly selected to be a nominee… whatever happens, there always seems to be a conflict related to The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s celebration of video games. The veteran journalist is once again back with more announcements and surprises, but, how does the voting system that chooses the winners actually work?

The 2022 edition of the show follows the exact same procedure that’s been there in previous years, which means that the chosen winners in every category is selected through a hybrid system: on one side, hundreds of media outlets around the world act as a jury; on the other, the audience can also vote. As you can see next, values per vote can vary.

From nominees to winners

The nominees of almost every category are chosen by a jury of over 100 specialized members of the video game press, and some influencers. Every one of them votes in private and creates their own list. It’s important to note that neither Geoff Keighley nor the show’s consultants take part during this process, so the host is only finding out about the winners at the same time as everyone else.

The winners are chosen by the jury’s vote (90%) and the audience’s vote (10%). Followers have a chance to vote in the official The Game Awards website, as well as in the corresponding Discord server until Wednesday December 7 at 6PM PT.

In the Game Awards’ official FAQ, the organization justifies not giving the public’s votes a value of 100% when selecting winners. “Given that some players exclusively have a single platform, the public vote puts games developed for one platform at a disadvantage.” In the Player’s Choice category, however, the audience has complete control of the winners every year.

The Game Awards 2022 will be celebrated on December 8. Steam has announced they’ll be giving away a Steam Deck every minute.

Source | The Game Awards