The Game Awards 2018 Nominations: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

Spider-Man for Game of the Year? Really?

By Jack Pooley /

The Game Awards, Insomniac & Sony

The nominations for The Game Awards 2018 dropped on Tuesday evening, eliciting a wildly mixed response from fans as is always the case with entertainment awards shows.

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The show's committed brainchild Geoff Keighley is clearly trying to legitimise the ceremony as "the Oscars of gaming", and while The Game Awards are still pretty far off from earning that moniker, it is at least daring to take itself seriously and somewhat succeeding.

There are definitely issues with this year's slate of nominees, though, from the obvious pandering to overpraised AAA offerings to the usual genre biases once again showing themselves. Not to mention the nagging feeling it's still a little too steeped in branding and advertising to be a truly legit awards show.

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But the nominations also foregrounded a number of smaller indie titles and even saw a certain "ongoing" game snag a surprise nomination more than two years after its initial release.

We'll naturally all have our complaints to make once again when the awards have been dished out on December 6, but until then, here's what the jury got right and wrong...

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