We break down the current contenders for GOTY 2025, including Split Fiction and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, plus upcoming challengers like Hades 2
The 11th Game Awards, scheduled for Dec. 11, are suddenly wide open. Grand Theft Auto 6, which was previously expected to dominate the Awards this year, has been delayed into 2026. That will make for a much less predictable Game of the Year competition at the leading awards ceremony for the game industry — the Oscars of gaming, as it were.
The Game Awards’ voting body is composed of a wide range of international games media (Polygon included), with a 10% contribution from fan voting. There are a number of strong indicators for what will perform well in the Game of the Year category. A high Metacritic rating (preferably over 90) is a must; role-playing games and action-adventures are strongly favored, as are games with strong narrative elements; indie and multiplayer games struggle harder for recognition than AAA single-player adventures. We used these metrics to correctly predict last year’s winner, Astro Bot. (We also got four of the six nominees right, and correctly called 14 other categories.)
Below, you’ll find our predictions for the most likely nominees, of which there are six each year, for Game of the Year 2025. Unlike the film industry, where most titles are known quantities well in advance, you never really know what kind of impact a video game will have, or how good it will be, until it’s out. With that in mind, this list only includes games that are already out. We’ll update these rankings throughout the year as new games are released. We’ll also list some likely upcoming contenders and some of the 2025 GOTY race’s dark horses, too.
Update (May 2): Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is newly installed as the GOTY favorite — and, given the GTA 6 delay, there’s even a chance that Sandfall Interactive’s debut game could go all the way. Its addition pushes Obsidian’s Avowed out of the the top 6, but that game remains a dark horse. (Speaking of which, we’ve also added a dark horses section in this update.)GOTY front-runners
Why it could win: A critically acclaimed role-playing game, strong on storytelling and performance, thematically resonant but also fun, with slick production values and shiny graphics — this is the stuff Game of the Year winners are made of. It’s an astonishing achievement from the relatively small debut team at Sandfall Interactive, which only adds to its cachet. The somewhat similar Metaphor: ReFantazio was very strong in 2024. Expedition 33 is looking hard to beat.
Weaknesses: While it’s a minor hit, enough people need to play Expedition 33 — especially among the critical community — to keep it in the conversation for more than six months. Game Pass will help, but is it really big enough to win?
Why it could win: Critical consensus is still the most reliable indicator of success at The Game Awards, and with a rating over 90 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic, Hazelight’s co-op adventure is the clear front-runner in this regard. It’s got a legacy advantage, too: Hazelight’s previous game, It Takes Two, won GOTY in 2021, and since then has amassed a massive popular following. As a story-led action-adventure, Split Fiction also belongs to a genre that the Game Awards jury has been known to favor in the past.
