The Game Awards 2019 GOTY Nominations Feature Questionable Death Stranding Nod

But...Geoff Keighley is in the game?

Geoff Keighley

Ahead of the event in December, The Game Awards 2019 has revealed the nominations across its many brand-supported categories. The biggest, Game of the Year, has some eyebrow-raising inclusions, as it always does.

Here’s the GOTY list in full.

Control
Death Stranding
The Outer Worlds
Resident Evil 2
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

There are a couple of expected shoo-ins here, Sekiro and Resident Evil 2 likely to feature heavily in many end of year lists. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gets it due after falling out of the timeline for inclusion last year. Control, even though it runs like ass on console, might be a contentious pick for some.

It’s Death Stranding getting a nod here that makes me raise the biggest of eyebrows, though, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself.

Geoff Keighley, the creator of The Game Awards and host, features in a cameo in Death Stranding and is also famously close to its director, Hideo Kojima.

While Geoff Keighley himself doesn’t vote for the nominations, it still represents a bit of an icky conflict of interest that reeks of nepotism, and the close affiliation is a little hard to shake.

This, along with the fact that they’ve started to focus less on the smaller awards to prioritise time to new trailers and adverts, makes me want to skip the show altogether, especially as we probably won’t see Josef Fares there this year.

P.s. Disco Elysium, Devil May Cry 5, RAD, Streets of Rogue, Super Mario Maker 2, Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Untitled Goose Game were robbed.

You can vote for your winner over on the official The Game Awards website. The Game Awards takes place Friday, December 13th.

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