The Game Awards are a highlight of the video game calendar, with awards given out commemorating the best games released over the past year. As well as that, the awards tend to be very forward looking with new announcements of games for the upcoming year, and beyond.
These announcement not only give us a lot of great games to look forward to, but also an insight into the direction of the video games industry as a whole. To discover what else we can learn from The Game Awards, we turned to Fancensus, a company that collect and analyze data in the video game and film industries. Using data from the awards and their global coverage, they have kindly provided us with more detail of what The Game Awards tell us about current trends in the games industry.
The Announcements Themselves
The Game Awards 2023 provided us with 61 new game announcements, more than 50% more than The Game Awards 2022. Of the games announced, it is notable that Action/Adventure titles dominated the board, making 51% of the announcements. This is not dissimilar from last year when Action/Adventure made 49% of the announcements. We can also see a rise in game announcements that don’t fit into particular genres from 0% in 2022 to 14% in 2023. See the table below for the full breakdown of announcements by genre compared with 2022:
|
Genre
|
2023
|
2022
|
|
Action/Adventure
|
51%
|
49%
|
|
RPG
|
16%
|
26%
|
|
Shooter
|
8%
|
10%
|
|
Puzzle/Quiz
|
5%
|
5%
|
|
Strategy
|
3%
|
5%
|
|
Fighter
|
3%
|
5%
|
|
All Other (1 title each)
|
14%
|
The variance in the tier of games announced was also noteworthy. By tier, I’m referring to whether the games studio was a large AAA studio like Santa Monica Studios or a small indie studio like 2DBoy or anything in between. Here, the variance is more evenly distributed, giving us a good cross section of AAA, A, Mid-Tier and Indie titles. It is notable that the AAA announcements make up the smallest tier at only 18%, just behind Indie at 21%. If you look at the table below, you will see that there is a notable increase in the presence of indie studio announcements, perhaps indicate a commitment to highlight and support smaller studios.
|
Tier
|
2023
|
2022
|
|
AAA
|
18%
|
28%
|
|
A
|
31%
|
28%
|
|
Mid-Tier
|
30%
|
26%
|
|
Indie
|
21%
|
18%
|
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- Windblow looks set to be a challenging roguelite that punishes and pushes to greatness!
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- This dark and visceral action RPG looks set to thrill players looking for a challenge!
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- New title Exodus has Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect in its DNA.
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- Jurassic Park: Survival will have you fighting for your life on the iconic Isla Nebula.
Global Press Coverage
The following data comes from Fancensus‘ analysis of number of articles produced globally up to 6 hours after the start of The Game Awards’ livestream. As you can see, OD, the newly announced game from Kojima Productions was the most covered game, whilst Monster Hunter Wilds and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II were the games that had the greatest proportion of headline articles.
|
Rank |
Title |
% of Articles that are Headliners |
|
1 |
45% |
|
|
2 |
58% |
|
|
3 |
61% |
|
|
4 |
66% |
|
|
5 |
74% |
|
|
6 |
73% |
|
|
7 |
68% |
|
|
8 |
43% |
|
|
9 |
39% |
|
|
10 |
18% |
Finally, serving to confirm The Game Awards‘ status as a highlight of the gaming calendar, this ranking of Geoff Keighley events in 2023 shows The Game Awards on top, ahead of Summer Game Fest and Gamescom Opening Night Live.
Geoff Keighley 2023 Events Ranking by Press Coverage: 1st 6 hours since start of show
#1 The Game Awards
#2 Summer Game Fest
#3 Gamescom ONL
Fancensus are an authority on data gathering and analysis in the world of video games and video game media. Be sure to check them out for more insights into the industry. As a client, you can also gain access to more sophisticated and bespoke data solutions for you and your company.
