Are The Game Awards Still About Awards, or Have They Become a Trailer Preview Event?

Key art courtesy of The Game Awards

On December 11th, we saw the 2025 Game Awards, showcasing the best of the industry and crediting hard-working developers for their achievements. But is this what people really tuned in to see? Aside from achievements in the industry, the show also heavily emphasises its future with numerous game announcements each year that highlight upcoming titles, updates, and DLC on a massive stage. Given this, do The Game Awards still focus on the awards, or are the trailers now the main event?

First, let us look at this year's awards. It’s no secret that a certain title has gotten a lot of attention this year: Sandfall Interactive’s breathtaking Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This record-breaking title received 9 of the 29 awards, the most a single game has received in the history of the show. Needless to say, this game and its many awards generated a lot of buzz for The Game Awards as it entered talks about being Game of the Year, especially with Team Cherry, the developers of Hollow Knight: Silksong, publicly backing out of the race thanks to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 alone. It is clear that these big awards and monumental moments are still important to The Game Awards. However, does this mean that the winners of these awards are still genuine choices, or simply easy headline-grabbing picks? 

It is easy to see The Game Awards as a popularity contest instead of an actual critical analysis of the quality of all these games. The voting process consists mostly of an internal jury, with only a small amount of public voting involved. It is more controlled by the panel of journalists, reporters, and critics who can very easily be swayed based on the publications or companies they are a part of. What is worse is the fact that neither the public nor the private voters even have to play any of the games. So in the end, no matter if a game is actually more fun, the voters do not need to play it, and will be more likely to vote for the big, popular title that everyone is talking about. It is still important to note that liking a game is subjective, and that it is impossible to truly find an objective “best” game.

Now for this year’s announcements: 60 announcements were made over the night, including world premieres, DLCs, updates, new information, trailers, and ports. The Game Awards has a history of announcing large titles, updates, and even consoles in the past, such as the Xbox Series X, Mortal Kombat 11, Joker arriving in Super Smash bros Ultimate, and Bayonetta 3. These big reveals and trailers have given The Game Awards a reputation as a trailer preview event. Though some people accuse The Game Awards of slowly morphing into a long three-hour ad with a flute guy in between, it has been showing trailers and announcements since its inception, with the 2014 Game Awards notably announcing Super Mario Maker as well as showing trailers for The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne. So clearly, The Game Awards is no stranger to big announcements and trailers. However, the amount of focus on the trailers has certainly grown over the years. 

Since 2014, The Game Awards has averaged 30 trailers per show in the three-hour run time. However, in the last five years, the average has shifted to about 55 trailers, with 2025 hitting 60 within the same three hours. This suggests that The Game Awards has become a more effective vehicle for game announcements over the years. It is important to note that around the same time The Game Awards started including more trailers, E3 had begun canceling its events, eventually shutting down in 2023. It is likely that The Game Awards was forced to take E3’s space as the primary annual video game trailer preview event and thus took on this more similar role out of necessity for the industry. This shows that The Game Awards increasingly leaned into announcements and trailers as the years went on, but did they ever improve their categories? 

The Game Awards initially started with 22 categories and has since added and removed several, landing on 29 categories in 2025. This clearly shows some effort to refine the awarding system. However, many in the past have criticised The Game Awards for the many inherent flaws in that system and its refusal to fix them, with these issues largely being matched by many other award shows. This includes criticism about the rules that not all judging members have to play the nominated games, or the debate between how many awards a single game can win. The system itself has remained largely the same for the last 11 years despite pushback against it. The Game Awards has improved its ability to show trailers, but not necessarily improved the way it awards games.

The Game Awards has certainly changed a lot in its lifespan, and overall, it seems it has leaned more into reveals and trailers as it has become more central to the community and the industry. This does not mean it has abandoned its award segment; rather, in a more optimistic sense, it has become a celebration of both the past and future of gaming. Whether you only tune in to see if your favourite nominees won, or just to see what exciting adventures are to come next year, The Game Awards ultimately manages to balance both of these core aspects.

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Edited by Joanne Baranga