Look I'm not going to look over you entire post because there's one red flag with your response to me that caught me eye. You gave me a list of GOTY examples this year that should not be counted toward Elden Ring. I looked at the first one you gave me which was:
151. Into The Aether (US)
https://www.youtube.com/@intothecast
The problem here is that In The Aether perfectly fits into the new guidelines which I listed for you. If you look into their About section for their podcast:
https://intothecast.online/
One of the members of Into The Aethar has over 1k followers, and the other member has nearly 3k. Not a ton, but certainly better than the one I posted earlier that had 52 followers. Additionally these guys were named "Esquire's Gaming Podcast of 2021". Here's their posting:
Best Gaming Podcast
Into the Aether
Into the Aether, hosted by Stephen Hilger and Brendon Bigley, is the best video game podcast of 2021. And it’s also the only video game podcast that has allowed me to come on and yell about
Wii Sports Resort. Those two facts are by no means connected! Really, though,
ITA has had a big 2021. Look no further than its Twitter page in the past few weeks, where troves of listeners have posted Spotify 2021 wrap-ups proudly revealing
Aether as their #1 podcast of the year. Stephen and Brendon, the self-described (not)
low-key game historians, spent a big chunk of the year digging through the Game Boy Advance’s library, gathering enough cartridges to fill, I imagine, a bathtub. And the result, other than an expectedly charming
mega-episode about 32-bit Nintendo history, was everyone I know buying themselves a modded Game Boy Advance (you should stop by
RetroDodo.com for throwback handheld recommendations, by the way). It’s this commitment to game preservation and the friendlier side of gaming discourse that made
ITA a main part of my 2021 listening line-up.
—D.N.
So I'm sorry to burst your bubble but these guys do meet the new critieria for being counted to the GOTY aggregate. So I'm not going to waste anymore time going through the rest of the examples you listed. You're free to go through each award one by one if you like. But the difference between this year and 2020's is that 2020's was done by a single individual with a known bias for Sony titles. This year is a collaborative effort by a bunch of ResetEra members, and we all know how committed and psychotic they can be. If an award gets listed that doesn't meet the criteria, they will filter it out.