Games are a big part of people’s lives—some people love games and some people hate them. For the group of people who love games it could be hard to decide which game is better than the others and which game deserves an award for it. In 2022, we had some really good games and six of them were nominated for game of the year—but only one can win.

First it’s important to understand what makes a game have a good rating and get millions of votes. 90% of votes counted for game of the year are from an official voting jury and only 10% is counted from public fan votings. There’s more than just the single category for which game is better. There are multiple categories that each game will be voted on to decide which is ranked better and the final ranking will be whichever game did better out of all the categories. The most popular and sought after categories are: Best direction, best narrative, best art direction, best audio design, best score and music, and best performance. Those six categories are the most important when it comes to voting for which game was better and which game deserves the title “Game of the Year.” Even if a game has a better rating than another game that does not mean it is a generally better game. In the 2022 Game Awards two of the highest scoring games got a 9.4/10 and a 9.6/10 and the game that was game of the year was the lower rating game but with all the categories it won due to having more variety and higher ratings in different categories.

God of War is a very popular and loved game series well before this recent game. However, this recent game title did bring in more fans and reasons to love this series. God of War Ragnarök was released on November 11, 2022. The Game Awards was on December 8, 2022, being that the play time of the full game is 53 hours most people probably didn’t even get the chance to fully play the game. Also this game is a PlayStation exclusive meaning only PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners could even play the game. This could’ve brought down the voting for other console players because they couldn’t play it and give it an honest review. This was also during the time the PlayStation 5 was hard to acquire which could’ve damaged the rating even more. This game had a community rating of 9.6/10 and a 10/10 IGN official rating and has 78 gaming awards. 

“God of War Ragnarök is an almighty achievement and creates a new high that makes many of its peers look mortal by comparison.” —Simon Cardy

The game of the year in 2022 was Elden Ring, a fantasy Action-RPG game developed by FromSoftware. It was released on February 24, 2022, almost 10 full months before the Game Awards. Seeing how it was still so loved and popular even almost a whole year of release it’s obvious how it won 331 gaming awards with a  9.4/10 community rating and a 10/10 IGN official rating. One of the reasons this game could have had an  advantage in the Game Awards was that it was released on all consoles and gaming desktops. It was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows (desktop), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S which has four more ways of playing it than the second place game God of War Ragnarök. 

“Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.” —Mitchell Saltzman

I think if God of War was released much earlier and if people were given more time to actually play the game then it probably would’ve gotten game of the year. I personally think it was an amazing game with great score and amazing graphics along with a really good story line. Elden Ring had more time to marinate with the gaming community growing love with each individual gamer every day it gets older, If God of War can’t win, this was just as good.