If anything, I’d say the problem with the Game Awards is entirely in the opposite direction. The way the jury pool is handled means it is waaaaaay too much of an unfiltered popularity contest, which clearly shows in games being in wrong categories or ones that are clearly missing from them.
The jury pool is 100+ media outlets, There are very little to no restrictions on what they submit. Each media outlet has their own method for deciding internally what they propose. And the game awards simply tabulates and aggregates all the lists they get.
There are no discussions between the jurors, no justification they need to provide for their proposals, no visibility into how each voted (not that I think its necessary, and their own internal proposals probably go through a similar process for employees to choose what the outlet submits, etc.
The idea of backroom dealings or collusion doesn’t make much sense, because they would need to do it with 100+ outlets, the idea that something like that wouldn’t have spread out at some point is very unlikely. If it were a small jury pool of specific individuals, then it is something much more likely.
If the Game Awards wants to be taken seriously as an award show(which I don’t think they care about it that much so neither should we), they probably should start putting a lot more restrictions for the jurors (guarantees that they have played the games, discussions among them, maybe even limit the jury pool size, etc)
