The Game Awards Predictions - 2023
What a year it’s been for video game releases. It hasn’t been the best year for the video game industry on the business side. Well, actually, I guess it’s been a pretty good year for the video game business too. But it hasn’t been a great year for the people in the video game industry, with over 6,000 jobs cut and talented developers out of work. As their previous companies continue their chase for the almighty investors who need to see growth (but also not too much growth).
But anyway, back to those video game releases! The Game Awards 2023 nominees were just announced today. Last year I made a prediction list for my partner, and it went super well with an astounding 6/31 correct (~19% accuracy). I’m shooting this year for that even ~20%. I need to see my predictions getting better (but also not too much better, otherwise how will I outdo myself next year??).
This list is going in backwards order from the website, so Game of the Year is at the bottom. Sometimes after a prediction will be a little blurb if I have more to say about my prediction (or who I’d prefer to win instead). Also, my shame, out of the games nominated for Best Debut Indie Game, Best Independent Game, and Games for Impact I have only played Dredge. So I am delaying my predictions on those to hopefully experience more of them before the awards.
Best Esports Event
- 2023 League of Legends World Championship
- Blast.TV Paris Major 2023
- Evo 2023 (winner)
- The International Dota 2 Championships 2023
- Valorant Champions 2023
Best Esports Coach
- Christine “potter” Chi (winner)
- Danny “zonic” Sorensen
- Jordan “Gunba” Graham
- Remy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam
- Yoon “Homme” Sung-Young
Best Esports Team
- Evil Geniuses
- Fnatic
- Gaimin Gladiators
- JD Gaming
- Team Vitality (winner)
Best Esports Athlete
- Lee “Faker” Sang-Hyeok
- Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut (winner)
- Max “Demon1” Mazanov
- Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez
- Park “Ruler” Jae-Hyuk
- Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen
Best Esports Game
- Counter-Strike 2
- Dota 2
- League of Legends (winner)
- PUBG Mobile (preferred)
- Valorant
Content Creator of the Year
- Ironmouse
- PeopleMakeGames (winner)
- Quackity
- Spreen
- SypherPK
I predict PeopleMakeGames will win, but also I really want to impress how much I hope PeopleMakeGames will win. I’m sure the other four nominees are great entertainers in their own right. But PeopleMakeGames creates well produced, highly researched, important videos about aspects of the video game industry that just aren’t found elsewhere. I would highly recommend watching their videos about Roblox’s exploitation of children video game designers, Valve’s internal structure, and their most recent collaboration with Tamoor Hussain (GameSpot) about the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Most Anticipated Game
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Hades II (winner)
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Star Wars Outlaws
- Tekken 8
Best Adaptation
- Castlevania: Nocturne
- Gran Turismo
- The Last of Us (winner)
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie
- Twisted Metal
I could imagine a world where The Super Mario Bros. Movie wins this award because it made over $1b, so again this is another prediction and hope at the same time. The third episode of The Last of Us (HBO) is incredible and helps cement the fact that this television show stands on its own separate from the video game it’s adapting.
Best Multiplayer
- Baldur’s Gate 3 (winner)
- Diablo IV
- Party Animals
- Street Fighter 6
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Less about the winner and more just complaining about one of the nominees: I really wish Diablo IV wasn’t always online. The game suffers for it. I was having a good time one weekend playing some Diablo IV and then boom, disconnected. And I couldn’t reconnect. Turns out battle.net was being DDoSed! Very Cool! And the game would lag while I was just playing on my own. Maybe my internet isn’t the best but that shouldn’t matter when I’m playing the game on my own because there should just be a way to play the game offline. And all of this is exacerbated because I like Diablo IV. The gameplay is good, the items are pretty cool, the story is well done. But wow I hate that it’s always online.
At least I got a laugh out of it when one of the game’s directors revealed that every time you see another player the game loads their entire stash and all the items within it, which is why they couldn’t let people just have as many stash tabs as they want.
Best Sports / Racing
- EA Sports FC 24
- F1 23
- Forza Motorsport (winner)
- Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged (preferred)
- The Crew Motorfest
I haven’t played any of these games, but last year Gran Turismo 7 won so I assume this year Forza Motorsport will win. But it’d be really funny and cool if Hot Wheels won right?
Best Sim / Strategy
- Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
- Cities: Skylines II
- Company of Heroes 3
- Fire Emblem Engage (winner)
- Pikmin 4
Best Family
- Disney Illusion Island
- Party Animals
- Pikmin 4
- Sonic Superstars
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder (winner)
The Nintendo Award
Best Fighting
- God of Rock
- Mortal Kombat 1
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2
- Pocket Bravery
- Street Fighter 6 (winner)
Street Fighter 6 got me to actually learn how to play a standard 2D fighting game, and is the thing that even made me interested in Mortal Kombat 1 (which I haven’t played). I think The Game Awards should understand the signifcance of this and give the award to Street Fighter.
Best RPG
- Baldur’s Gate 3 (winner)
- Final Fantasy XVI
- Lies of P
- Sea of Stars
- Starfield
Best Action / Adventure
- Alan Wake 2
- Spider-Man 2
- Resident Evil 4
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (winner)
Best Action Game
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (preferred)
- Dead Island 2
- Ghostrunner 2
- Hi-Fi Rush (winner)
- Remnant 2
Disclaimer: I haven’t played any of these games.
But Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm action game and that’s really cool and unique among this list of nominees, so I think it’s going to win. And this is the weakest (preferred) on my list, because I just also think it’d be cool if FromSoft was recognized for something other than the Souls and Souls-adjacent games. Armored Core VI seems like a really cool revival of the mech action genre and it’d be fun to see them get their shiny ray-traced metal flowers for it.
Best VR / AR
- Gran Turismo 7 (winner)
- Horizon Call of the Mountain
- Humanity (preferred)
- Resident Evil Village VR Mode
- Synapse
I don’t really care for driving games. I tried Gran Turismo 7 VR, and it was fine. I really did seem to be sitting in a car instead of sitting on my couch. But I don’t really think it’s all that. However, a lot of other people I’ve spoken to that are thinking about getting/have a PSVR2 talk about how cool GT7 VR is, so I feel like it’s going to win.
Humanity though looks really unique among the VR games which have been nominated. VR Lemmings is so different than “it really feels like you’re driving a car” or “look one of your controllers is a gun now (again, and again, and again)”. It’d be really neat if it won.
Best Mobile Game
- Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis
- Hello Kitty Island Adventure
- Honkai: Star Rail (winner)
- Monster Hunter Now
- Terra Nil
Disclaimer I haven’t played any of these games.
I could imagine Honkai: Star Rail winning because it’s another game from miHoYo and I bet it’s really popular. Terra Nil on the other hand has an environmental message and is something I didn’t even know was on mobile. Mobile is the biggest gaming market there is and just by being nominated for this award I’m sure Terra Nil is getting some more visibility in that space. But if it won the award it could get even more, and that’d be cool!
Best Debut Indie Game (Prediction Pending)
- Cocoon
- Dredge
- Pizza Tower
- Venba
- Viewfinder
Best Independent Game (Prediction Pending)
- Cocoon
- Dave the Diver
- Dredge
- Sea of Stars
- Viewfinder
Best Community Support
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Cyberpunk 2077 (winner)
- Destiny 2
- Final Fantasy XIV
- No Man’s Sky
I don’t know if I’d say CD Projekt Red has had outstanding transparency and responsiveness, given that it’s been two years since Cyberpunk 2077 released the way it did. But they have made done some impressive patching and with the release of Phantom Liberty and the free “Cyberpunk 2.0” update it can’t be denied that the game is much better than it used to be.
Plus Bungie just laid off 100 members of their staff, including a bunch of their community support employees. While I’m glad the work those members of Bungie did has been recognized with this nomination, I don’t believe Bungie should win it after letting those that supported their community go.
Best Ongoing
- Apex Legends
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Fortnite (winner)
- Genshin Impact
Not only is Fortnite ongoing, but they just released their latest season which saw a return to the original map and 44.7 MILLION players logged on. That’s unbelievable. And for that reason it’d be unbelievable if they didn’t win this award.
And while we’re talking about Epic, it’s pretty unbelievable that they laid off about 800 people just back in September, citing in part making less money from Fortnite, while they were sitting on this season which then saw 44.7 MILLION players on it’s first day. Surely they could have survived the couple extra months on a hiring freeze or something to wait and see how this season did at least.
Games for Impact (Prediction Pending)
- A Space for the Unbound
- Chants of Sennaar
- Goodbye Volcano High
- Tchia
- Terra Nil
- Venba
Innovation in Accessibility
- Diablo IV
- Forza Motorsport
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Spider-Man 2
- Mortal Kombat 1
- Street Fighter 6 (winner)
Spider-Man 2 will probably win this award because it’s a first-party PlayStation game and PlayStation does good work with accessibility. But is the innovation this time around that they delayed a bunch of the accessibility options to after the game released? Seriously though, PlayStation studios do put a lot of effort into accessibility and they drive the industry forward all the time in that regard.
But, hear me out: Street Fighter 6. They came up with a whole new control scheme for fighting games, Modern Controls, which help way more people play that just can’t do the motion inputs required for special moves. But the biggest innovation in fighting game accessibility was definitely their inclusion of audio cues to signal distance, types of incoming attacks, whether strikes connect, etc. That’s a game changer for blind & low-vision players, and why this should win the award.
But also, last year The Last of Us Part I had some really impressive audio accessibility innovations with the inclusion of a narrative description track in cutscenes. And impressive haptic accessibility with their inclusion of a setting to have the DualSense controller mimic the speech pattern of the game’s characters. But God of War Ragnarok won anyway because that was the more popular first-party PlayStation game.
Best Performance
- Ben Starr, Final Fantasy XVI
- Cameron Monaghan, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- Idris Elba, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
- Melanie Liburd, Alan Wake 2 (winner)
- Neil Newbon, Baldur’s Gate 3
- Yuri Lowenthal, Spider-Man 2
Disclaimer I’ve only played the demo for Final Fantasy XVI, the first act-ish of Baldur’s Gate 3, and Spider-Man Remastered.
I’ve heard a lot of big talk about how great the narrative is in Alan Wake 2 so I predict the co-lead of that game is going to win it. Also hint hint about how I think Best Narrative is going to go. But to have the best narrative you have to have some pretty dang good performances.
Best Audio Design
- Alan Wake 2 (winner)
- Dead Space
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Spider-Man 2
- Resident Evil 4
Best Score and Music
- Petri Alanko, composer of Alan Wake 2
- Borislav Slavov, composer of Baldur’s Gate 3
- Masayoshi Soken, composer of Final Fantasy XVI (winner)
- Shuichi Kobori, audio direction on Hi-Fi Rush
- Nintendo Sound Team, composed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Again, I only played the demo of Final Fantasy XVI, but the music in the demo was pretty sick. I also recently learned that Masayoshi Soken was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and continued working on the music for Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion. It’s an impressive feat to go through such an emotionally and physically exhausting experience and continue working on what he loves, so I’m predicting he’ll be accepting this award.
Best Art Direction
- Alan Wake 2 (winner)
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Lies of P
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder (preferred)
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Alan Wake 2 is very beautiful, and creepy, and atmospheric. It’s pretty incredible, and I think it’s going to win this award. But Super Mario Bros. Wonder also looks pretty incredible. Somehow it looks like they took the cover of Nintendo Power #1, cleaned it up, and made it into a video game. It’s so smooth and clay-y and bright and vibrant, and it’s all so cohesive and beautiful. I love Mario Wonder and a huge part of that is the art style. It would be really cool if it won this award for all the not-realistic-looking games out there.
Best Narrative
- Alan Wake 2 (winner)
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
- Final Fantasy XVI
- Spider-Man 2
Best Game Direction
- Alan Wake 2
- Baldur’s Gate 3 (winner)
- Spider-Man 2
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a triumph in game direction. I would be astounded if it doesn’t win this award.
Game of the Year
- Alan Wake 2
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Spider-Man 2
- Resident Evil 4
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (winner)
Perhaps considering my other predictions something like Alan Wake 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3 is going to win Game of the Year, but nah it’s going to be Tears of the Kingdom.
And so there we have it! My predictions for The Game Awards 2023. I’ll be back after the awards to record how I did this year. Here’s hoping for that 7/31.
Jacob