by Blake Chapman
In a livestream event on November 19, The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley announced the nominees for the sixth annual award show.
The program, which garnered over 26 million viewers in 2018, has become the highest honor a new project can be nominated for in the video game industry. Selections are first made by a voting jury of over 80 journalism outlets from 21 different countries. They are originally picked by an advisory committee consisting of both hardware manufacturers and software publishers including, Sony, Activision, Microsoft, AMD, Nintendo, and Ubisoft. After gathering a plethora of choices, the advisory committee elects the most-nominated titles for the final round.
This year was full of expected inclusions along with surprise omissions. Here are a few of the most prominent storylines.
- Death Stranding has broken the record for most nominations at nine, eclipsing God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2’s record of eight. This includes two nominations for “Best Performance” for Norman Reedus as Sam Porter Bridges and Mads Mikkelsen as Cliff.
- “Best Esports Moment” will not be returning this year, with a total of only 29 categories reaching the main stage instead of 30.
- Cloud9 was not nominated for “Best Esports Team” after winning three previous years in a row.
- No representatives from the fighting game community are up for “Esports Player of the Year”, even though there have only been three nominees from that corner over the last five years.
- Nintendo has officially taken over the “Best Family Game” category with every choice being exclusive to the Switch.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield was not nominated for any awards, and because it meet the cutoff date of November 15, 2019, it will not be eligible for the 2020 ceremony.
Source: The Game Awards Venture Beat Variety Images: Death Stranding Cloud 9 Nintendo Pokemon
