The Game Awards 2019 nominees have been revealed, with producer Geoff Keighley revealing the games that have made the cut for the annual ceremony. Leading the pack is Death Stranding with a whopping 10 nominations across all categories, while the Game of the Year 2019 category is also populated by Control, Resident Evil 2, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Smash Bros Ultimate, and The Outer Worlds. It’s a stacked list with plenty of different names in different categories, but do YOU think these nominees are the best of the best that 2019 has had to offer?
We’ve shared our thoughts below, but as always we want to hear from you. Leave your response in the comments section — we’ll feature our favorite comment in tomorrow’s Tell GR!
Michael Leri, features editor: “The Game Award nominees were about what you’d expect. The GOTY list is solid and I can only hope Resident Evil 2 takes it since it is probably the actual best game of the year. The only real dumb parts come from how genres are sliced up. What exactly is an action-adventure and why is RE2 against Borderlands 3 there? It doesn’t quite add up. Regardless, MK11 better beat Smash Bros. for the best fighting game.”
Jason Faulkner, senior editor: “I think The Game Awards list is pretty on the money. As much as I love Death Stranding, it does seem like a bit of a conflict of interest for Geoff Keighley. I guess that sort of thing is unavoidable, though. I’m with Michael in thinking that the genre categories are a bit uneven. I’m not sure why they didn’t include a horror category since there’s more than enough games that could go there that don’t neatly fit anywhere else. More categories would also allow some excellent underrepresented games of the year to get some room to shine. The Outer Wilds, for example, was excellent, but only got nominated for Best Game Direction and Best Indie Game. This show is heavily stacked in favor of AAA productions, and it’d be great to get some categories where the playing field is more even.”
Paul Tamburro, executive editor: “The ‘Fresh Indie Developer Sponsored by Subway’ category is the most unintentionally hilarious category in any awards show ever, but aside from this I think the list of nominees is fairly decent. I would say there’s a distinct lack of independent games, with Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium surely deserving more recognition than they’ve received.”
Mack Ashworth, lead editor: “I think the nominees look pretty great, as they include the majority of my own memorable titles of the year. Categories are a little messy, with some odd choices when it comes to genres and squeezing certain games in. Ultimately, though, it’s all fine. Gonna be fun watching Death Stranding win a bunch of awards when Geoff Keighley himself is in the game. I love DS, but man that conflict of interest. The comments if it wins Game of the Year… Yeeeesh!”
Yesterday’s best Tell GR comment
Question: Will game streaming ever replace consoles?
bigtruckseriesreview: “I’ve seen this question posed every single time some company thinks they can build a portable or game-streaming service.
#1 Many locations have DATA-CAPS and game streaming would empty their data quickly – so for that alone, it won’t work.
#2 Multiplayer games are the most popular games now. Multiplayer games DO NOT WORK WELL when streamed because of latency.
#3 The Broadband infrastructure is NOWHERE GOOD ENOUGH to support game streaming, nor will it be when 5G technology advances.
#4 Gamers prefer to have their games local. Can’t modify a streamed game. Gamers don’t want remote access.
When I’m on flights to Asia, I try streaming their simple games and it’s a slow, unresponsive disaster. Playing just about anything is tedious and annoying. And that’s a local streaming service in a jumbo jet…”
