The Game Awards Nominees Raise Eyebrows, Pity At COVID-stricken Year For Video Games

The nominees for this year's Game Awards dropped this afternoon, and while this is usually a time of celebration and debate among video game fans as they discuss who should win, the general feeling this year appears to basically be: "meh."

The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on this year's game schedule, as several major titles suffered production delays. This left a rather scant selection of AAA titles when it came to the nominating of the games of the year. The 2021 nominees for Game Of The Year are Deathloop, Resident Evil: Village, Metroid Dread, Psychonauts 2, It Takes Two and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

While these are generally well-respected games, their nominations didn't seem to generate the sort of enthusiasm other GOTY nominees saw in previous years. Many voiced their disappointment that games like Returnal, Hitman 3 and Lost Judgment were not nominated.

There was also grumbling about Cyberpunk 2077 getting nominations considering its infamously terrible release state on console and the way CD Projekt Red put developers through a brutal crunch. Several commenters voiced that the game should not be rewarded at all despite its positive qualities.

Others still just had jokes about the entire concept of a "Game of the Year" in a year that FromSoftware didn't release anything — though Elden Ring looms on the horizon.

It's predictable that The Game Awards would generate some backlash over what it nominates in what category, as is the case with any awards show, but this year's show appears to have players hoping that 2022 has a better slate of games.