2025 has been a banner year for the gaming industry, which is something The Game Awards trying to admit this December. Looking back on this year, it's actually quite shocking how many great games have been released: inventive projects that Blue Prince, The Altersand Split Fictionwhich would have been shoo-ins for a Game of the Year nomination in other years, didn't even make the list this year, showing just how packed with quality the market has been lately.
While some of these omissions may be considered off-putting by many, the actual lineup for the coveted Game of the Year award is nothing to scoff at. It includes hereditary titles such as Donkey Kong Bananaleading Nintendo's presence at the ceremony this year, but also smaller, more surprising releases such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In other words, both the long-standing AAA industry, carried by institutions like Sony and Nintendo, are strongly represented at The Game Awards 2025, but they are matched by the indie scene, which has never happened before.
The Game Awards 2025 Game of the Year Nominees
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (indie)
- Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
- Donkey Kong Banana
- Hades 2 (indie)
- Hollow Knight: Silk Song (indie)
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Why are indie games so common at the Game Awards this year?
Many of 2025's best games were independent, and that's no accident
A quick look at many online gaming communities will reveal a number of compelling arguments declaring that “AAA gaming is dead”, and while this is a bit hyperbolic, it is rooted in real, observable changes in the gaming industry. For years, AAA, blockbuster games were the only real way for the medium to express itself: game development was a much more niche and impenetrable field before the 2010s. As it would happen, the explosion of the indie scene happened around the same time that many AAA studios began alienating their audiences through methods like microtransactions, FOMO-driven live service formulas, and general trend-chasing.
As blockbuster games began to succumb to the worst forces of the free market and chase increasingly ambitious but creatively lacking releases (eg. Anthem, Fallout 76), indie games got to work developing the medium. It's not too much of a stretch to say that many of the boldest and most impactful gaming innovations of the past decade have come from the indie scene: games like Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero offered high art to consumers burned out on cheap, reproducible experiences, while such as The Binding of Isaac, Hollow Knightand Cuphead proved that games don't need to follow standard genre conventions to be successful.
This brings us to 2025, where three of the six Game of the Year nominees are either published independently or by smaller indie companies. What's more, these three games all have excellent chances to win Game of the Year – banish the notion that any of these could be performance nominations or “likeable” nominations. Clair Obscur is one of the most creative and exciting turn-based RPGs of the decade; Hollow Knight: Silk Song exceeded the often unrealistic expectations set by its much-imitated predecessor; Hades 2 did something similar, building on a foundation that had already grown to define the roguelike genre.
So, the simplest explanation for why indie games are a bit of an equal at this year's Game Awards is that they've just been so good – better than AAA games, in many cases. No longer are indie games seen as the quaint younger cousin of their AAA counterparts: they are proving to be extremely competitive, culturally influential and, crucially, profitable. Games like Clair Obscur are not modest arthouse games lauded by a few but ignored by others: they are critical and commercial successes that have reached millions. If the industry continues on this trajectory, we can probably expect future Game Awards to represent indies with similar vigour. They may even surpass the AAA world when it comes to such awards and recognition.
