🍪 The 2025 Game Awards Nominations (And Who Actually Deserves to Win)
Hello there, award-season warriors.
Today the visit the industry annual chaos bomb: The Game Awards 2025 nominations are here. And with them comes a familiar cocktail of excitement, side-eyes, and questionable jury choices.
Geoff Keighley took the stage to reveal the nominees across more than twenty categories. As always, some picks make sense, others feel like PR favors, and a few are so bizarre they must have been pulled from a mystery hat backstage.
We went through the entire announcement with Kiki and Chip at our side, and now it’s time for the Game Cookies breakdown. What the industry says. What the community says. And what actually deserves to win.
Below are the categories and the Game Cookies Official Winners List.
THE NOMINATIONS AND OUR PICKS
GAME OF THE YEAR
Nominees: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Hades 2, Hollow Knight Silksong, Kingdom Come Deliverance II.
🦊 Kiki: “One of these games changed the industry. One of them changed your playlists. One of them made you Google ‘what does this ending mean’ at 3 AM. And it’s the same game.”
🍪 Chip: holds tiny trophy
Game Cookies Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
BEST GAME DIRECTION
Nominees full of sequels… except the obvious standout.
🦊 Kiki: “Innovation doesn’t come from comfort food. Expedition 33 took risks nobody else even attempted.”
🍪 Chip: scribbles “new ideas good” on a sticky note.
Game Cookies Winner: Expedition 33
BEST NARRATIVE
🦊 Kiki: “Kingdom Come 2 delivered simulation. Expedition 33 delivered emotion. One hits harder.”
- 🍪 Chip wipes a tear.
Game Cookies Winner: Expedition 33
BEST ART DIRECTION
Nominees: Expedition 33, Hades 2, Silksong, Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2.
🦊 Kiki: “The rest are sequels, so nothing in their art direction actually shifted the industry. Expedition 33 was the only one to arrive with an entirely new visual identity.”
🍪 Chip: paints air with a cookie crumb.
Game Cookies Winner: Expedition 33
BEST SCORE & MUSIC
🦊 Kiki: “When your soundtrack breaks into classical charts, the debate evaporates.”
🍪 Chip taps foot rhythmically.
Game Cookies Winner: Expedition 33
BEST PERFORMANCE
Game Cookies Winner: Ben Starr for Expedition 33
BEST ONGOING GAME
Nominees: FF14, Fortnite, Helldivers 2, Rivals, No Man’s Sky.
🦊 Kiki: “Consistency beats nostalgia.”
🍪 Chip wearing a tiny battle pass.
Game Cookies Winner: Fortnite
BEST MULTIPLAYER
🦊 Kiki: “Only one nominee was actually built for multiplayer.”
🍪 Chip with dual cookies pretending to co-op.
Game Cookies Winner: ARC Raiders
BEST MOBILE GAME
🦊 Kiki: “Wuthering Waves is basically AA on a phone.”
🍪 Chip struggling to hold a giant smartphone.
Game Cookies Winner: Wuthering Waves
BEST COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Game Cookies Winner: No Man’s Sky
BEST DEBUT INDIE
Game Cookies Winner: MegaBonk (Real indie, not PR indie.)
BEST FAMILY GAME
🦊 Kiki: “Co-op that forces communication is peak family gaming. Split Fiction nails the shared experience.”
🍪 Chip bonks the couch co-op controller.
Game Cookies Winner: Split Fiction
BEST FIGHTING GAME
We didn’t play them all this year, but the internet is loud and united.
Game Cookies Winner: Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection
BEST SPORTS / RACING
🦊 Kiki: “Why are Sonic, Mario Kart and F1 competing as if they’re the same thing? They aren’t. One is simulation, one is arcade, one is blue hedgehog chaos.”
🍪 Chip vrooms in circles.
• Our fun pick: Sonic Racing Crossworlds • Our respect pick: F1 25
BEST ADAPTATION
🦊 Kiki: “All we know is that The Last of Us should not win. The drop-off in interest was huge.”
🍪 Chip dramatically turns off a TV.
Game Cookies Winner: Devil May Cry
BEST ACTION GAME
Game Cookies Winner: Ninja Gaiden 4
BEST ACTION-ADVENTURE GAME
Community sentiment points clearly toward:
Game Cookies Winner: Split Fiction
BEST ROLE-PLAYING GAME
🦊 Kiki: “This is the only RPG here that forces you to actually role-play.”
🍪 Chip holds a broken sword and looks brave.
Game Cookies Winner: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
INNOVATION IN ACCESSIBILITY
Community consensus:
Game Cookies Winner: South of Midnight
BEST ESPORTS GAME
Game Cookies Winner: Counter-Strike 2 It’s eternal. It’s inevitable. It’s Counter-Strike.
THE BIG PICTURE
This year shows two things clearly:
- Sequels dominated the nomination charts.
- The only truly new creative voice powerful enough to break through was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Everything else feels like a conversation we’ve already had.
And maybe that’s why players gravitated so hard toward the games that embraced identity instead of trend chasing.
🦊 Kiki: “The moment the industry stops copying itself is the moment these award lists stop looking like déjà vu.”
🍪 Chip: nods aggressively.
⚙️ Stay sharp as a good voter. Keep questioning the lists. And remember: the real winners are the ones players keep talking about.
– 🦁 Leo
