Examining the composition of The Game Awards’ voting jury — a mix of specialist gaming outlets, mainstream press, and prominent influencers worldwide — shows continued expansion and international reach compared with the past five years. Yet paradoxically, as the jury has grown broader and more global, its selections have trended toward safer, more conventional choices.
The Game Awards publishes its full jury list annually. The roster rose from 134 member organizations in 2024 to 154 in 2025, an increase of roughly 14%. While overall international representation remained similar in balance, growth was uneven: the U.S. did not add any new members, and several East and Southeast Asian delegations held steady, whereas outlets from Latin America and — notably — Europe expanded their presence.
France saw the most pronounced rise, climbing from five jury members to nine. Brazil, Mexico, and the U.K. each increased their count by more than one member among influential nations, while Japan, China, and South Korea registered no growth. For the first time, Hungary appears on the list, as do Hong Kong and Taiwan — the latter two noticeably enlarging the Chinese-language contingent, though their cultural perspectives and tastes often differ from mainland China.
With 24 outlets, the United States remaining the single largest national bloc still accounts for only about 16% of the jury. When combined with English-language outlets from the U.K., Canada, and Australia, English-language publications form the largest grouping at roughly 30.5% — but Europe, at about 26.6%, is nearly as large and closing the gap.
There are a handful of new mainstream entrants — including publications such as Esquire, Wired, The Times (London), and the French-Canadian daily Le Devoir — but specialist gaming press continues to dominate numerically. The jury has made a modest attempt to bolster its mobile-gaming expertise with additions like Pocket Gamer and Pocket Tactics in the U.K., though that was offset by the departure of TouchArcade.
Overall, the organizers appear committed to building a more globally representative jury, and they have succeeded in scaling its diversity. However, unlike the expanding membership of film academies that has sometimes broadened tastes at awards ceremonies like the Oscars, The Game Awards’ larger jury hasn’t translated into a wider variety of honored games.
Before non-English-language outlets joined in force around 2019, awards often favored smaller, risk-taking independent titles. The Best Art Direction winners of that earlier era were exclusively indies — Ori and the Blind Forest, Inside, Cuphead, and Return of the Obra Dinn. Following the jury’s internationalization, prize recognition shifted toward larger productions such as Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring, and Alan Wake 2.
The Narrative category shows the same tendency. Prior to 2019, winners included distinctive, smaller works such as Her Story, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Disco Elysium. Since the jury became more international, storytelling prizes have often gone to larger studio titles like The Last of Us Part II, God of War Ragnarök, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
Diversity among nominees is narrowing as well. In 2025, three titles — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Ghost of Yōtei — occupy three of the five nomination slots across the major craft categories (Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, and Best Audio Design). With only two other nominees per category, that leaves scant room for other deserving games to break through.
This is not to diminish the achievements of AAA craft; large-scale productions often warrant recognition. Yet the data suggests smaller, more experimental projects are struggling to register with the enlarged, global jury, whose collective preferences are skewing toward mainstream consistency.
That outcome was almost certainly not the organizers’ aim. One reasonable remedy would be to refine the nomination procedure by incorporating more focused specialist juries — the same model The Game Awards already uses for esports and accessibility categories. Without such adjustments, the ceremony risks becoming one where a broader jury paradoxically yields less varied winners.
Source: Polygon
