The GOTY 2025 Are a Slap in the Face to the Video Game Industry

A few days ago, in a video published on the The Game Awards Youtube channel, the good Geoff Keighley announced the GOTY 2025 nominees, and, as is now tradition, the announcement kicked off a series of speculations about which video game would take home the most statuettes, but also sparked many reflections on the state of the gaming industry.

Let's start with the most obvious thing: the nominations for GOTY 2025 show how the year that is about to end has been, surprisingly, an excellent year for players, but less so for the big companies in the sector; or at least for those who want to remain deaf to what the market is saying.

The list of Game of the Year nominees is led by games that, until a few years ago, we would have called “minor”: Clair Obscure Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades 2, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, plus Death Stranding 2 and Donkey Kong Bananza, which paradoxically, are the underdogs of the list.

And no, 2025 was not at all a year without big names and games with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This year we played Monster Hunter Wilds, Ghost Of Yotei, Silent Hill F, The Alters, Doom the dark ages, The Outer Worlds 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Split Fiction, Mafia Terra Madre, Metal Gear Solid Delta, and Avowed.
Yet none of these managed to earn a spot among the 6 GOTY nominees.

In fact, if usually the list of nominees has seen the constant presence of major developers and publishers such as Sony, Capcom, Square Enix, Microsoft, Bandai, etc., this year the only big name present is Donkey Kong Bananza, which, incidentally, is a much more modest production compared to much more renowned titles like Legend Of Zelda and Super Mario.

The absence of big names was counterbalanced by the presence of 4 games that, more or less, revolve around the definition of an indie game. And as if that weren't enough, Clair Obscure Expedition 33 took home a whopping 12 nominations across various Game Awards categories, breaking the record of 11 nominations held by God Of War Ragnarok and The Last Of Us Part 2.

What has been written so far should make it clear how impactful the announcement of these nominations has been on the entire gaming industry.
In the past, the race for GOTY was a matter for the big gaming companies; which also won when they published minor games – see Sony's Astro Bot in 2024 and Electronic Arts' It Takes Two in 2021.

Another fact that helps to understand the magnitude of the situation is that 3 of the titles nominated for Game of the Year are also present in the list of contenders for the Indie Game Awards' Game of the Year title.

In short, a real comeback for smaller games, which we have already discussed here on Gamesurf and on the Just Play podcast, which confirms the enormous gap between publishers – constantly searching for live service titles and online multiplayer – and players, who instead seek creative experiences that want to say something.
And so the success of Clair Obscure and its probable win at The Game Awards are not just a deserved recognition for Sandfall Games' adventure, but also a political choice.

Because perhaps Clair Obscure is not, technically speaking, the best game among the nominees, but it is the one that best highlights the contradictions of the industry.
33 mavericks who leave Ubisoft and create the game they wanted to play.
Developers who don't care about boards of directors made up of people who have never played, about returns on investment and quarterly balance sheets, but instead give space to creativity, the desire to innovate and transform, and above all, offer an original story.
33 Davids against dozens and dozens of Goliaths.

Lessons for the Industry

The first big lesson these nominations have given the industry is that ambition and creativity always win.
While all the big companies in the sector are looking for the magic formula for their game, falling more and more often into development hell due to the many trends to follow, what really works are good ideas and beautiful stories; So much so that even a title like Ghost Of Yotei, which is acclaimed by critics, remains out of the running because it turns out to be yet another open world with many flags on the map, which, however, adds little to nothing to the sector.

The second lesson is that the comfort zone no longer works.
Over the years, big developers have drastically reduced the number of franchises to work on in order to allocate energy to “safe” franchises.
Ubisoft did it with Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, EA is practically specializing in the sports genre, Activision has now become a machine serving Call Of Duty, Microsoft has relied on Bethesda without any real results, and Sony struggles to create new big exclusives.
Players no longer want the old formulas, or rather, it's clear that they play Fifa, COD, and the new Spider Man, but they remain in love with creative experiences, extravagant ideas, something with a soul.

The third lesson is that ideas are worth more than 1000 developers who meticulously craft every single detail.
Clair Obscure was created using the basic tools offered by Unreal Engine 5, stuff that essentially anyone can start using tomorrow.
Yet, here we are talking about a masterpiece capable of overshadowing productions with much larger budgets.
While until a few months ago we feared that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for almost 70 billion dollars could harm the industry, today we see Call Of Duty faltering and games with significantly lower budgets like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 or Silksong making absurd numbers and retaining millions of players.

And So Swen's Oracle Was Right

And so this year the GOTY is not just another big production, another soulslike, another third-person action game, but something authorial. A game that tells a story but also says something about who wrote that story. A game that reworks old formulas and gives them a touch of madness; like the electric guitars of Death Stranding 2.

And so Swen Vincke's, CEO of Larian Studios, prediction is about to come true.
The GOTY of 2025 will go to those who created the game they wanted to play. To those who aimed to entertain players. To those who were not afraid of being fired if they didn't reach astronomical figures. To those who had fun creating their game. To those who were guided by ideals and not by market impositions. To those who understood that respect and transparency towards players would lead them to forgive any mistakes. To those who, simply, love video games.

Most likely my favorite game of 2025 won't win GOTY, but that's okay.
These nominations have already given me something to cheer about; and that's perfectly fine.