Every Past Game Of The Year Winner At The Game Awards

A decade ago, BioWare’s open-world fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition was the first game to win Game of the Year at the inaugural Game Awards in 2014. It might have been cool in a poetic kind of way to see 2024's Dragon Age: The Veilguard win again a decade later, but alas, the universe doesn’t work like that.

In 2015, CD Projekt Red’s RPG The Witcher 3 was the big winner of the show. The game not only walked away with the top award of the night, but it was also the most nominated game at the awards, being in the running in six categories and winning three of them. And nine years later, CDPR officially unveiled The Witcher 4 at the 2024 Game Awards.

In 2016, Blizzard’s super-popular multiplayer hero shooter Overwatch made history and became the first non-RPG and the first multiplayer game to win GOTY at The Game Awards. Spoilers, but another mulitplayer-only game wouldn’t win Game of the Year again until 2021.

In 2017, another open-world, third-person RPG won the top award of the night. This time the beloved Zelda: Breath of the Wild took the top honors at The Game Awards. This was also the first and, as of 2024, the only Nintendo-published game to walk away with the GOTY trophy. It also means that a Wii U game has won Game of the Year. Weird!

In 2018, Sony’s big-budget open-world reboot of God of War won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. This will not be the last time a PlayStation-published title ends the night with the biggest award of the event. I remember some controversy over God of War beating out Red Dead Redemption II that year, but hey, both games received 8 nominations, so that’s something.

Oh look, another third-person pseudo-open-world action game wins the top prize at The Game Awards. This time it’s the Activision-published FromSoftware samurai action game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Meanwhile, Death Stranding set a record for most nominations in Game Award history, with Hideo Kojima’s walking simulator earning ten. I wonder how long that record will last...

Oh, that record didn’t last last long! In 2020, the very next year, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II received an incredible (and still unbeaten) 11 nominations and won seven of them, including Game of the Year. It was also PlayStation’s second GOTY win at the event.

For only the second time in Game Awards history, a multilplayer-only game won the top award in 2021. However, it wasn’t a big online shooter or MMO, but instead EA and Hazelight’s It Takes Two, a split-screen co-op action-puzzle game. And this year, the studio behind It Takes Two announced its next co-op game, Split Fiction, which looks great and is out in early 2025.

In 2022, FromSoftware became the first (and so far only) development studio to win Game of the Year at the Game Awards twice. This time the studio won for Elden Ring, a game which took over 2022.

The big fight in 2022 was between God of War Ragnarök and Elden Ring. And while the God of War sequel tied The Last of Us Part 2 for most nominations with 11 and picked up six wins, Elden Ring ultimately earned the GOTY honors.

Last year, Baldur’s Gate III from Larian Studios was the Elden Ring of the year, taking over my social media feeds for months and quickly becoming many people’s anticipated GOTY winner at the 2023 Game Awards.

However, 2023 was an incredible year for games and the Game of the Year noms at the Game Awards proved that, with releases such as Alan Wake 2, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Spider-Man 2 all competing in a stacked line-up. Yet Baldur’s Gate III beat them all, and won five other awards that night, too.

And that brings us to 2024. The 10th Game Awards was probably the best show Geoff Keighley has ever hosted, and the nominees for the top spot were a diverse bunch. There was Balatro, a card game made by one guy, DLC for Elden Ring, and a turn-based RPG, Metaphor Refantazio.

But the winner of the night was the delightfully fun Astro Bot, which also picked up three other awards and received seven noms. This was also the third PlayStation-published game to win GOTY at The Game Awards. Will Microsoft’s Avowed be able to win next year in 2025, giving Xbox its first GOTY win? I don’t know, but we’ll find out in December 2025.