BAFTA opens submissions and tweaks criteria for 2025 Games Awards

Submissions are open for the 2025 BAFTA Games Awards. Developers will have until November 7, 2024, to submit their project for consideration and pay the entry fee.

Entry is open to all developers and publishers whose games released between 25 November 2023 and 15 November 2024.

"BAFTA is calling for all developers to register games into the Awards within  30 days of a game's  release. This allows BAFTA's voting members–experts from all across the games industry–enough time to discover and play all games entered in the awards ahead of voting, levelling the playing field across a wide range of games," reads a press release.

"Any developer, publisher or studio that has released a game since 25 November 2023 is encouraged to register it into the Awards by 20 July 2024 to benefit from half-price entry fees. The discounted rate is also available to entrants registering their games within 30 days of release in future."

Developers who submit their title for consideration within 30 days of release can pay a half-price entry fee of £200 ($250). Everyone else will need to pay the standard £400 ($500) entry fee.

BAFTA is tweaking a few eligibility and voting criteria with the next edition of its annual showcase. For starters, a voting chapter made up of BAFTA members with "craft experience" in design roles will now lead the first voting round in the Game Design category. The vote was previously open to the full BAFTA Games membership.

A similar change will be made within the Technical Achievement category, which was previously voted on by the full membership but will now be limited to voting members with relevant experience in programming and technical roles.

Moving forward, all eligible submissions will be automatically considered for Best Game and British Game, which were previously opt-in categories. British Game entrants will also be required to answer a set of questions "designed to address diversity & inclusion and bullying & harassment in the UK games industry."

"This work will support the BFI Diversity Standards for Games and build on BAFTA's long-standing work to help tackle bullying and harassment across the screen industries, as part of our wider, ongoing collective cross-sector activity," added BAFTA.

The criteria for New Intellectual Property category has been amended to take into consideration the "originality and innovation" of entries. The Evolving Game category has also been tweaked and will now only permit titles "with a roadmap for substantial future update."

"Having grown BAFTA's games membership over recent years, we’re now able to introduce specialist 'chapters' of voters in two categories, Game Design and Technical Achievement," said Emma Baehr, BAFTA executive director of awards and content.

"This means that BAFTA members with specific expertise in these areas can focus their voting here, in the first voting round, which gives every game the best chance of being recognised regardless of budget. As we move towards more specialist chapters for voting in the future, I encourage anyone with at least five years' experience working in games to talk to us about joining."

Visit the BAFTA website to learn more about the entry requirements and updated criteria.