Most of the time, gaming award shows honor big AAA titles made with massive budgets, but there are occasions in which the Davids can come close or even topple the Goliaths of the industry.
Today the organizers of The Game Awards announced all the nominees for the 2022 edition of the show, and there certainly is a stand-out entry among the candidates for Game of the Year. it’s BlueTwelve Studio’s adorable cat game Stray, which is among the titles that received the most nods, with 6 nominations.
That’s just under the 7 nods each for FromSoftware’s Elden Ring and Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West, which have been created with much bigger budgets by exponentially larger teams.
It may not be as close to God of War Ragnarok’s 10 nods (albeit Santa Monica Studio’s much-anticipated game has been nominated twice for one of the categories, so you decide whether that counts for two nods or just one), but it’s certainly a great achievement for a small development team from the South of France.
The rest of the Nominees for GOTY didn’t fare as well as Stray across the board. 5 nods honored Asobo’s A Plague Take: Requiem and only 3 went to Monolith Soft’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Both of these games have also been created with much larger resources compared to BlueTwelve’s title.
Our resident Stray fangirl Rebecca Stone had this to say when asked for a comment:
“FEELS GOOD!”
Pressed to elaborate on the topic, she added.
“I’m always glad to see indie games get recognition so that more people might decide to play them. I loved that Stray dared to do something a bit different with the genre, and you can tell how much love went into the game, so I’m excited to see it nominated for so many categories.”
That being said, Ms. Stone admitted off the record that she was disappointed not to see Stray’s voice actress Lala nominated for the Best Performance award.
Does Stray have a chance to win? Last year’s edition, which saw the triumph of It Takes Two, says that it possibly does.
The rest of the recent shows were instead dominated by Triple-A games. The 2020 edition was won by The Last of Us Part II. At the 2019 edition, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was named Game of the Year. God of War was honored as Game of the Year at the 2018 edition. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild brought home the win in 2017. Overwatch won in 2016. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt won in 2015, while Dragon Age: Inquisition was judged at the top in 2014.
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