Critics, journalists, and industry folk aren’t the only ones who get to vote on the best game of the year at The Game Awards. The Players’ Voice category, which seeks to recognize players’ favorite game of the year, is exclusively voted on by fans. TGA announced the 30 nominees for round one, which you can vote on until Dec. 4 at 3 p.m. EST. Each voter gets 10 votes for round one. Two more rounds follow to narrow down players’ most favorite game of the year, which will be announced at The Game Awards on Dec. 12.
While the list of nominees largely lines up with games that got noms for the jury-voted Game Awards categories, which are tabulated with 90% weight on jury votes and 10% weight on fan votes, a few titles with massive fan bases but less critical acclaim appear in round one of Players’ Voice. There’s The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which was nominated only for Best Family Game and Best Action/Adventure; Palworld, which got zero nominations; and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was nominated only for Accessibility; and Sonic X Shadow Generations, which got zero nominations, to name a few.
No Man’s Sky is another surprising nominee — the game was first released in 2016, but received two big updates this year, including the literally game-changing Omega update. Perhaps less surprisingly, only one nominee comes from an independent developer: Balatro by LocalThunk.
The Game Awards Players’ Voice nominees, in full:
- Astro Bot
- Balatro
- Black Myth: Wukong
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
- Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Fortnite
- Genshin Impact
- Helldivers 2
- League of Legends
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Metaphor: ReFantazio
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
- No Man’s Sky
- Palworld
- Persona 3 Reload
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
- Silent Hill 2
- Sonic X Shadow Generations
- Stellar Blade
- Wuthering Waves
- Valorant
- Warframe
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
- Zenless Zone Zero
The Game Awards take place on Thursday, Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m. EST.
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