The Real Game Awards: A Glorious Middle Finger to Gaming Media
Move over, Geoff Keighley—Gaming Awards Has a New Sheriff in Town
The inaugural event of The Real Game Awards, hosted by Stuttering Craig of the popular gaming podcast Side Scrollers, burst onto the scene with a simple, gamer-first agenda: let the players decide the winners.
No corporate fluff, no ESG buzzwords, and definitely no “high art” picks like Astro Bot.
With categories ranging from “Best MMO” to “Worst Journalist of the Year”, this event wasn’t just a fresh start for gaming awards—it was a revolution.
Let’s dig into why The Real Game Awards hit all the right notes while exposing everything wrong with its corporate-shill counterpart, The Game Awards.
Image Credit: The Real Game Awards
Gamer Power: 100% Voting Control
One of the standout features of The Real Game Awards is its 100% player-driven voting system.
This was a huge breath of fresh air compared to Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards, where gamers only get a measly 10% vote, with the rest being controlled by a panel of media and industry insiders.
Unsurprisingly, not a single category’s winner matched between the two events. The disconnect is staggering—and telling.
Gamers don’t want sanitized picks designed to appease corporate overlords or preach propaganda. They want fun games that resonate with them, and they showed it loud and clear.
Take Black Myth: Wukong, the player-voted Game of the Year at The Real Game Awards (spoiler alert), which blends jaw-dropping action with cultural richness.
Image Credit: Angry Video Game Nerd Presenting | The Real Game Awards
Meanwhile, The Game Awards all but ignored Black Myth: Wukong, favoring cookie-cutter “safe” choices instead. This wasn’t just a difference in taste—it was a referendum on who gets to define what’s worth celebrating in gaming.
The Need for a New Game Awards Show
The catalyst for The Real Game Awards?
In my humble opinion, the 2023 Game Awards and its glaring omission of Hogwarts Legacy was the final straw.
With over 15 million copies sold in its first two weeks, Hogwarts Legacy was a massive success, yet it wasn’t even nominated for Game of the Year by The Game Awards last year.
Why?
The controversy surrounding J.K. Rowling’s comments (and her just existence) caused gaming media to blacklist the title entirely while left-wing activists tried to cancel any streamer who played the game.
Instead of celebrating one of the year’s most engaging games, they sided with a false narrative that alienated and attempted to divide players.
Vara Dark Discussing the 2023 Hogwarts Legacy Game Awards Scandal
This blatant pandering destroyed the credibility of The Game Awards and highlighted the need for an alternative.
And let’s face it, Geoff Keighley trying to trademark the name “The Game Awards“ doesn’t exactly help his case.
The Real Game Awards filled that void, giving gamers the power to celebrate what truly mattered to them—not what made corporate suits happy in their safe spaces.
the REAL GAME AWARD Winners!
The following are the winners of The Real Game Awards, broken down by category with their voting percentages. Each category was 100% decided by players, a stark contrast to The Game Awards where it seemed like corporate interests clearly held the reins:
Best Story: Black Myth: Wukong (32%)
Best MMO: Final Fantasy XIV (62%)
Best Racing Game: Nightmare Kart (54%)
Best Sports Game: Rocket League (51%)
Best 3rd Person Shooter: Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 (52%)
Best FPS: Robocop: Rogue City (53%)
Best Games Company: From Software (49%)
Best Fighting Game: Dragon Ball Sparking Zero (51%)
Best Multiplayer Experience: Helldivers 2 (52%)
Image Credit: Madam Savvy; Voted Best Games Journalist | The Real Game Awards
Best RPG: Metaphor RE Fantazio (42%)
Best Action Game: Stellar Blade (34%)
Best Value: Palworld (41%)
Best Early Access Game: Palworld (70%)
Best Games Journalist: Madam Savvy (33%)
Best Nintendo IP: The Legend of Zelda (55%)
Best Microsoft IP: Doom (63%)
Best PlayStation IP: Stellar Blade (44%)
Game of the Year: Black Myth: Wukong (31%)
Image Credit: Game of the Year Nominees | The Real Game Awards
These winners reflect what gamers actually care about—fun, engagement, and value—instead of the industry’s obsession with attempting to elevate any mediocre games that send the correct corporate-approved message.
Troll Categories Or Game Awards with A Purpose?
My so-called “troll categories” weren’t just for laughs—they were a brutal reality check for an industry that’s lost its way:
- Worst Bait and Switch: Dragon Age: The Veilguard (42%)
- Biggest Industry Failure: Concord (81%)
- Best Cash Grab: The Last of Us Part II Remastered (49%)
- Husbando of the Year: Barret Wallace (FF VII Rebirth) (41%)
- Waifu of the Year: Eve (Stellar Blade) (49%)
- Best Jiggle Physics: Stellar Blade (72%)
- Worst Games Journalist of the Year: Alyssa Mercante (76%)
- Shitty Ass Game of the Year: Dustborn (38%)
Beyond the surface, these absolutely hilarious categories are more than just trolling though.
They’re an outlet for gamers to vent their frustrations and demand better from the gaming industry as a whole.
These awards celebrate what makes gaming fun and call out what doesn’t. Sure, they’re cheeky, but they’re also unapologetically gamer-focused and accurately reflective in their sales and player reception respectively.
Watch the Real Game Awards Official Live Stream
The End of Corporate Gaming Media?
If The Real Game Awards proved one thing, it’s this: gamers are done with being ignored.
Gaming media and industry elites can retreat to their echo chambers and label dissenters as “grifters” or “bigots,” but the truth is clear. Gamers are fed up with sanitized, agenda-driven content, and they’re voting with their wallets and their clicks.
This is the fresh start the industry needed.
With The Real Game Awards, we finally have a platform that prioritizes the voices of gamers over corporate interests.
It’s real, it’s funderful, and most importantly, it’s ours.
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Ba Ba Ba Based
January 25, 2025
Based.
Ayefkay
January 26, 2025
Haha thanks, really glad you liked the article! Thanks for stopping by to comment!
they can cry more
January 25, 2025
Legit the only people mad about the real game awards are access media and the sheep that follow them blindly.
Ayefkay
January 26, 2025
I mean, I feel like they (access media, left-leaning influencers, etc.) are seeing their influence wane and after so many years of bullying people and getting their way through constant victim mentalities – they’re just upset that someone else is coming to fill in the void. Every time gamers’ opinions are validated, they lose a little more power and a little more credibility, because they’re always on the other side of the fence, saying the opposite of what gamers in general are these days. Look at things like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, most of the gaming media was trying to push the narrative sooo hard that it was a great game, with high review scores and constant posts, but in the end it just made them look bad because gamers as a whole new it was a steaming pile of propaganda garbage that was being used as a means of self-validation for the devs.
Lol sorry for the little rant, but TLDR; thanks for stopping by and I agree that The Real Game Awards is definitely a net positive and hope they continue for many many years.
SmashUp
February 4, 2025
Grubb is a tool. Period.
Ayefkay
February 6, 2025
Lol mebbe…mebbe…he definitely didn’t handle the situation well. If he had any integrity, he would have at least corrected the publications imo. Even if you don’t agree with an independent journalist – you only make yourself look threatened by their presence by pulling that weak stuff.
Olivia
February 6, 2025
I thought the Real Game Awards was pretty good
Ayefkay
February 6, 2025
Hey Olivia, I definitely agree! Honestly, for the first show they’ve tried they did a great job and I hear next year is going to be in person so I’m looking forward to it.