No ‘GOTY Bait’ Yet: Why The Game Awards Still Favor Blockbusters — and How Indies Could Finally Benefit

The film industry runs a long, public awards season that starts at fall festivals and ends at the Oscars in March, and that system has shaped which movies get made and marketed. By contrast, video game awards are younger and structured differently, and they haven’t yet produced the same kind of industry-wide “GOTY bait” pipeline.

• • How film festivals feed the Oscars and influence film marketing.
  • Key dates and history for movie awards and for gaming awards.

• How The Game Awards operates and recent examples of sales bumps from nominations.
• Where indie games fit into current awards systems and why that matters.

Film festivals and the Oscars: a six-month cycle

Major fall festivals help launch awards-season campaigns. For example, the Venice Film Festival begins on Aug. 27 this year; a few days later is Telluride; and about a week after that comes the Toronto International Film Festival. These events, along with others like New York and London, often showcase the films that later appear in Oscar and Golden Globe conversations.

Consequently, the awards season runs for several months and culminates with the Academy Awards in March. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1929. Studios and talent frequently build publicity and release plans around festival premieres and awards timelines. Moreover, industry coverage has described awards campaigning as part of a movie’s marketing strategy; for example, some outlets note that awards-focused promotion can function as a deliberate campaign to raise visibility and prestige. In reporting on awards campaigns, some pieces have called awards-focused marketing “their entire marketing plan” and have compared campaign tactics to political-style outreach.

it’s their entire marketing plan. Also, actors and studios have executed awards campaigns in ways that some coverage has likened to running for office: if they’re running for office.

Coda, an Apple film that won Best Picture, is often cited as an example of a film that benefited from awards-focused exposure.

Gaming awards: history and who runs them

Video game award shows are much younger than the Oscars. The Golden Joystick Awards began in 1983, and most other gaming award ceremonies appeared in the late 1990s and 2000s. The Game Awards (TGA), in its current form, started in 2014.

The Game Awards is organized as a private event rather than by an industry-wide academy. Geoff Keighley is the host and producer associated with the show. In recent years, the ceremony’s broadcast has combined awards presentation with promotional showcases and announcements for upcoming games, and those premiere slots have become a prominent part of the TGA broadcast.

Do awards affect game sales? Recent examples

There are documented cases where awards and nominations affected a game’s reach. Hazelight Games has said that the Game of the Year win for It Takes Two helped boost that title’s visibility. Similarly, the indie card game Balatro experienced a sales spike after receiving several TGA nominations, according to its publisher. Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty has publicly discussed the marketing value of awards when talking about titles such as Gape Pass. These examples show awards and nominations can have measurable commercial effects for some games.

Historically, many TGA Best Game winners are also large commercial successes. Examples include The Witcher 3, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring. In the TGA’s history to date, most GOTY winners have sold in the multi-million range; one recent GOTY winner sold under 10 million copies (Astro Bot).

Indie games and awards visibility

Indie developers often have smaller marketing budgets and rely on visibility from media coverage and awards nominations. When award shows nominate or spotlight indie titles, those games can reach broader audiences. For instance, Balatro’s nomination at TGA coincided with increased sales for the title. However, award-show category placement and nomination patterns influence how much exposure smaller games receive compared with large, mainstream releases.

What the timeline and history show

In short, film awards grew over many decades into a full industry pipeline that affects production and marketing. Gaming awards are newer and, in several cases, tied to different commercial incentives. Nonetheless, there are concrete examples where nominations and wins have increased a game’s audience, especially for smaller titles.