Familiar faces dominate inaugural Game Awards nominees

Game industry personality Geoff Keighley took to Twitch today to run down a partial list of studios, games and game actors nominated for awards in the inaugural Game Awards, which Keighley is producing with support from major industry players like Sony, Valve, Nintendo and Microsoft. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list of award nominees is dominated by familiar faces like Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft and Nintendo. However, smaller studios like The Astronauts and indie games like Threes and Never Alone help diversify the lineup and potentially paint the Game Awards as broader in scope than the long-running Spike Video Game Awards, which Keighley hosted until this year. The full list of awards and nominees for next month's event can be found on the Game Awards website, and it includes a bunch of categories (like "Best Remaster" and "Best Family Game") which were determined with input from representatives of 28 media outlets. It also includes five "Fan's Choice" categories (including "eSports Player of the Year" and "Trending Gamer") which will presumably be put to a public vote before the event takes place in Las Vegas on December 5th. Here are some of the awards and nominees that may be most interesting to developers: Developer of the Year Blizzard Entertainment Nintendo Monolith Telltale Games Ubisoft Montreal Game of the Year Bayonetta 2 Dark Souls 2 Dragon Age Inquisition Hearthstone Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Games for Change Mountain Never Alone The Last Of Us: Left Behind This War of Mine Valiant Hearts: The Great War Best Performance Adam Harrington Melissa Hutchison Kevin Spacey Troy Baker Trey Parker Best Independent Game Monument Valley Broken Age Transistor The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Shovel Knight Best Mobile/Handheld Game Bravely Default Monument Valley Hearthstone Super Smash Bros. for 3DS Threes