How Accurate Were Our Reader’s Predictions for The Game Awards?

Since The Game Awards began back in 2014, it has become one of the main events for gamers worldwide, and with it, comes the excitement of predicting who the winners will be. Take a look at what our readers thought the results would look like in this important event.

How Accurate Were Our Reader's Predictions for The Game Awards?

Since its conception in 2014, The Game Awards have become a standard on the videogame scene, started by Geoff Keighley, who had previously worked on the Spike Video Game Awards on Spike TV. Keighley has been hosting the show since it began and has managed to keep it with a format that is ideal for streaming, as opposed to traditional broadcasting. These and other features may be what has made The Game Awards such a success. It’s even become a tradition to try and predict how the awards will be fanning out and in this vein, KeenGamer put out a small survey to gauge what our readers were thinking about the event and how the results would likely look when everything was said and done. 

The data we collected this time was through optional polls on the various articles in our site and the responses of those who were willing to participate is what we have to show for it, this includes a total of 1,687 responses through five questions.

Results of KeenGamer poll.

Results of KeenGamer poll.

These were the results on what our readers were expecting to see on The Game Awards this year. The following paragraphs will dive a little more into each of the questions and responses and how well they fared compared to the actual result.

Main Question – Which Game Should Win Game of The Year 2021?

A lot of people would say that this is the question when it comes to The Game Awards, and it makes sense that they do. It is in a way, like winning Best Picture at the Oscar’s, for example, and it may seem like the main event of the night, of course. And while we don’t like to frown on the rest of the categories, because all of them are important in their own ways, we have to admit that this was also the burning question for us, which is why we made it question number one. And, coincidentally, it is the question with the most responses out of all of them, too. So, which game were the KeenGamer readers rooting for? 

Reader's picks for GOTY

Reader’s picks for GOTY

The battle for GOTY is always a heated one, and how could it be any other way? Everyone has their personal favorite they’re rooting for, and of course we all want our pick to be the one. Maybe that would validate our taste for this or that game, or it’s just the thrill of having been right, who knows. For this year, KeenGamer readers had hoped that Resident Evil Village would take the trophy home, with at least 33% of the votes. It was not meant to be, however, and It Takes Two swoop in and stole the price from under Capcom’s feet. In our poll, It Takes Two only made it to 3rd place with 15% of the votes, just behind Metroid Dread on a strong 2nd place.

Which Game Should Win Best Action/Adventure Game?

Another of the big categories year after year, and with titles like The Last of US II, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and God of War having been the winners on the last 3 years, it’s clear that this category goes also to the big, successful titles. It is not unheard of that the GOTY winner also wins this category, in fact. With this mind, we can see what our readers were hoping for the category as well.

Reader's picks for Action/Adventure.

Reader’s picks for Action/Adventure.

Our readers played it safe and bet that the best Action/Adventure award was going to go to Resident Evil Village which they coincidentally also chose as the winner for the GOTY: They would be proven wrong on both accounts. The actual winner for best Action/Adventure was Metroid Dread, which our voters considered to be 4th most likely, with 13% of the votes under its belt.

Which Game Was Snubbed for GOTY?

It is an impossible task to get a handful of people to agree on something completely. With that in mind, it is orders of magnitude more implausible to get absolutely every gamer to be content with the contenders for the GOTY title, let alone the actual winner. What are you to do if your favorite game of the year isn’t even considered to be on the run for actual greatest of the year? Weill, we tried to provide a small escape valve for that frustration on our third questions, which gave our readers the opportunity to name some games that should have at least made it to the race.

Hopeful dreams from our readers.

Hopeful dreams from our readers.

In an interesting turn, it seems that a healthy amount of our readers really wanted to see Forza Horizon 5 nominated this year. It was, unfortunately, not meant to be. However, those voters may have found some solace on the fact that Forza Horizon 5 did win on Innovation in Accessibility, Audio Design, and, most importantly, Best Sports/Racing game. Not too shabby. Other games our readers wanted to see nominated for GOTY were Monster Hunter Rise and Returnal.

Which GOTY Contender is the Most Overrated?

Let’s face it, the gaming community can be salty. But then again, what large community isn’t a bit salty? It’s always good for flavor and keeps things interesting. You will regularly find detractors not only of who made it with the GOTY title in the end but even of who are the ones that are even nominated. I know I haven’t always been a fan of the contenders. We wanted to exploit that salty vein and we asked our readers which of the contenders was the most overrated title, and we got some interesting results. 

A rather... interesting result, who our audience considers overrated.

A rather… interesting result, who our audience considers overrated.

Paradoxically, most of the votes went to Resident Evil Village, which you may remember was also voted favorite for GOTY and Best Action/Adventure. To say this results were interesting is a bit of an understatement. Just below it, although in the same percentile, came Deathloop, followed by Metroid Dread in third place. On the other hand, the actual GOTY winner, It Takes Two came on 4th place on this question, with just 10% of the votes. We may consider the GOTY 2021 winner to not be perceived as overrated, at least.

Which Game Should Win Best RPG?

We wanted to keep the survey short and sweet, so we jumped right to another of the big contenders year after year for this question. And since “RPG” is likely one of the most recognizable acronyms in gaming (and for good reason) we inquired which of the Best RPG contenders would our readers be more happy with. This is also a category that has had several big titles under its name through the years, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake, Disco Elysium, and Monster Hunter World, so expectations are high. 

Reader's choice for best RPG.

Reader’s choice for best RPG.

Our readers were kind-hearted and voted for Cyberpunk 2077, which, let’s not forget, it’s still being talked about in terms of its disastrous release state even a year later, and it still has talks about bugs on our Cyberpunk 2077: one year later, while being called by other outlets “still a massive disappointment” and “Still a Janky Game“. And yet, our readers gave it 40% of the votes for it to win best RPG. It would also not be the case, as the actual winner for the category was Tales of Arise, which landed on 4th place in our poll, with only 15% of votes.

We’d be interested in hearing what your thoughts are, be it on our poll and/or the actual winners of The Game Awards, so if you’re so inclined, do leave us a comment!

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