The Game Awards have slowly become one of the “must-see” things in the gaming community. If nothing else, it’s a place where developers can make announcements, and fans can talk about who won and who lost and rage over the results. The 2022 edition of the show will arrive on December 8th, so voting for the event has begun. At this point, it’s been open for about a week. As a result, fans have full access to the categories and can vote on the games they want to win. That doesn’t always affect the verdict, though. But it doesn’t stop people from making their thoughts known.
We can prove that as The Game Awards posted on their official Twitter handle and said there have already been 35 million votes cast for the show. According to their tweet, that’s double what the show had for its first week of voting last year.
To be clear, that’s not saying 35 million gamers voted. That’s saying that 35 million votes have been counted. There are many categories in the show’s structure, so if everyone makes a vote across the board, that adds up quickly. Still, getting 35 million votes from the gaming community is impressive, and it’ll be interesting to see if it sways anything in the future.
If you’re curious about what we meant about fan voting “not swaying the verdict,” the reason we said that is simple. The structure of the show, in terms of picking the winner, is decided between a jury and a fan vote. The jury makes up 90% of the vote, while the fan vote only makes up 10%. That’s a relatively low number, but it’s the one they chose.
There are specific categories where fan votes matter 100%, but it’s in the minority.
The system is part of why The Game Awards haven’t always been taken seriously. They have done big “swerves” in the past in terms of winners, and other times they go for the “easy pick” for Game of the Year versus “thinking on their own two feet.” Geoff Keighley admitted that the jury doesn’t fully play all the games for Game of the Year due to “time constraints,” further diluting the result.
With A Plague’s Tale Requiem, Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: Forbidden West, Stray, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 up for the top award, it’ll be interesting to see what the jury and fans choose as the winner. We’ll find out on December 8th.
Source: Twitter
