The Game Awards are a big deal. Over the years, they have become videogaming's Oscars and just like the Oscars they are not aimed at true audiences, but media representatives. It's nothing more than corporate gate-keeping and opinion-making. It's a media ceremony that allows gaming-media to tell the rest of the world which games they liked independent of their true quality and popularity. In other words, The Game Awards are fake and their sole purpose is to create more advertisement drive through corporate networking.
Upper Echelon Gamers had an interesting video on the matter:
1. The winners are picked by media representatives, not the audience
If you take a look at their FAQ, you can see that audience votes only account for 10% of voting process:
This means that your votes are absolutely meaningless and only serve to create more social media buzz. The winners are picked by a jury that is composed of media entities that belong to giant media conglomerates. There are 103 media publications on the voting jury, many of which belong to the same media groups such as VOX media (Polygon, Verge) or ReedPop (Eurogamers, VG247, RPS). In essence, the vast majority of the jury is not independent and their voting process is heavily dependent on advertisement deals that are created as a result of their decisions.
2. The advisory board is populated by the same people who produce the games
Game publishers have a heavy hand in the Game Awards, as such it is not a ceremony by and for the gamers, but by and for the media. EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Rockstar are all part of the advisory board, even Tencent's vice president Steven Ma. The presence of Tencent shows how strong China's influence on our hobby has become, which considering the country's human rights situation is reason for concern.
When Geoff virtue signals Activision's absence for the awards, he fails to mention that Rob Kostich, president of Activision, is part of their advisory board. The Game Awards are just a façade, it's an artificial show disguised as one giant hours long advertisement. With so much money behind, they are certainly not representative of their audiences opinions.
3. TGA heavily favors third person cinematic single player games
Since 2014, all GOTY winners, with the exception of Overwatch, are narrative driven single player games. Racing games (Forza 5), indies and multiplayers games stand no chance at winning due to how the jury and the voting process are designed. Many games win, not because they are that good, but because they are chosen as a statement by the journalists against critical voices among audiences. Some nominees wouldn't even be on the list, had audiences more than 10% of a say in the matter.
4. TGA is corporate gate-keeping
The Game Awards serve as a gate-keeping mechanism for the media. Only they get to present their opinions, only they get to make statements, only they can promote their views and drown out criticism from their audiences.
4. Conclusion
The Game Awards makes the awards secondary to creating marketing hype for upcoming games. The primary purpose is to build hype and to promote, not to recognize the best games. It's a marketing event where ads, commercials, trailers and promotions are blasted in your face. It's not a show by the people for the people and it is high time we put this crap on ignore.