Those are the more mainstream picks I decided to make as examples. Well actually there is Doom: The Dark Ages and Cronos: The New Dawn which were tons of fun as well. Pretty much anything from Uchikoshi and Kodaka (Too Kyo) is instantly GOTY for me. They're the two best game developers of the last 20 years and now since they have their own company and create games together, their brilliance has been magnified. I've been gaming since 1989 and The Hundred Line is both the longest (400 hours for me to complete) and best game I've ever played. It puts both Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 to shame and I'm shocked it's not more well known then those titles given it's legendary creators. Then again, most of the people on this site and The Game Awards are about as normie as you can get, lol.

Yui_Suzumiya,

"More mainstream picks"? For what it's worth:

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy has a metacritic score of 85 from 25 reviewers.

No Sleep for Kaname Date has a metacritic score of 78 from 24 reviewers.

Shuten Order has a metacritic score of 69 from 20 reviewers.

So these seem like decent games.

As a point of reference...

Death Stranding 2 - 89, 147 critics
Clair Obscur - 92, 84 critics
DK Banana - 91, 143 critics
Hades II - 93, 58 critics
Hollow Knight: Silksong - 90, 44 critics
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II - 88, 75 critics

Hollow Knight Silksong has the least reviews of the nominees and it's still nearly double the reviewers for The Hundred Line.

I think your perception of "more mainstream" is interesting, but you acknowledge being surprised that they're not better known.

So again, it doesn't sound like a snub. It sounds like people just haven't played them (that, or enough users did but they disagree).

I mean you're into JRPG's so I'm surprised you don't know these titles. One of the creators of The Hundred Line had previously made the Danganronpa series and Master Detective Archives: Rain Code and the other creator was responsible for the Zero Escape series and AI: The Somnium Files series. Very well known and beloved franchises. In fact, No Sleep for Kaname Date is the third game in the AI: The Somnium Files series and it just came out in the Summer. In fact, there's an article about The Hundred Line that was just posted on this site a couple days ago.

Those aren’t players, those are Metacritic users. You don’t even need to own the game to give it a score on Metacritic, so it's a completely useless metric to use as an argument. It becomes even more meaningless when you consider that the TGA is not a popular vote award, it's a critics’ award. So if you want to use an aggregated score as an argument for anything, it should be the aggregated critics’ score.

In that case, Blue Prince is literally the second-highest-rated game of the year (ignoring the Zelda re-releases), with a 92. It has the same score as the current favorite to win, Clair Obscur.

Now, talking about actual users: sorry, but DS2 is there just because of Kojima. It’s a decent game, but it’s not GOTY material, and if literally any other developer had made it, I seriously doubt it would have even received the 89 it ended up getting from critics.

Then let's use the PS store where you need to own the game to play it. Blue Prince rates 8.3/10, DS2 rates 9.6/10. Seems fairly accurate to what I said.

And again, it doesn't matter. It's not a popularity vote, it's not the Golden Joystick Awards, it's the TGA. A critic-based award. The nominees are picked by critics, and the vast majority of the voting weight comes from critics. So if you want to talk aggregated scores, then talk critic aggregated scores.

Also, come on, PSN reviews? Really? Where literally only fanboys would even bother to write something? The same fanboys who would say anything even remotely related to Sony is perfect? Come on.

I mean, you can, I'm also pretty sure that there is some bias towards Nintendo as well. But DK at least is on the top 3 best critically reviewed games of the year. And this is a critic award at the end of the day.

"Funnily enough, no Xbox games were nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards"

At least Xbox has been consistent in that department.

No VR games, DS, 3DS, or Vita titles have ever won GOTY, so maybe they’re just overlooked?
The truth is, some of the media nominated to be jurors lack a real background or exposure to games beyond what’s mega popular.
In Canada, most of the Canadian jurors are not directly connected to gaming—CBC is a government TV channel, Le Devoir is a French political newspaper, and Mobile Syrup covers general tech products. They’re unlikely to research or play these games, instead nominating what’s familiar or trendy.

In Asia, do they even have much of an Xbox presence? Japanese magazines like Famitsu have never given their own top award to a non-Japanese game, so naturally, they favor platforms people own. This explains why Nintendo often has a GOTY contender and why Xbox will likely never win at this show.