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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Technology
Vicky Jessop

2023 Bafta games awards nominations: who will win and where can you watch it?

The Bafta Games Awards 2023 are due to take place on Thursday March 30, and speculation about who is going to win is already heating up.

The awards, the nominations for which were announced on March 2, comprise 18 different categories, including Best Game, Best British Game, and Best Debut.

Though the nominations span 45 games – a new record for Bafta – some of the frontrunners include PlayStation’s God of War: Ragnarök (which boasts 15 nominations), indie favourite Stray (with nine), and Elden Ring (with eight). A Plague Tale: Requiem, Tunic, Immortality, Vampire Survivors, and Horizon: Forbidden West are also up for five nominations each.

“It’s definitely sweeping the awards season,” says Tara Saunders, Bafta’s Games Committee chairwoman and studio head at PlayStation London Studio, of God of War: Ragnarök’s success.

“But it’s well deserved in all of the categories that it’s been in. It’s got super-high quality in music, animation, and just the game as a whole.”

However, for Saunders, the list this year is notable for another reason: “Actually, it’s not just about those big games, it’s actually really shining a light on both those big but also the small, high-quality games that people may not actually know about.”

These include viral hit Trombone Champ, satanic-comedy game Cult of the Lamb, and Vampire Survivors, all of which are also up for nominations.

“There’s such a huge variety in those game plays,” Saunders, says. “Something like Trombone Champ can sit in the same award category or alongside a blockbuster, and it makes you go, ‘Oh, wow!’ But then, when you’ve kind of played that and you experience it, you can understand why it’s there.”

The competition also features the EE Game of the Year Award, where the public can vote for their favourite title from a shortlist of six that includes viral hit Marvel Snap, Horizon: Forbidden West, and Elden Ring.

Smaller games, like Vampire Survivors, compete alongside the big names (Poncle Games)

Despite these big-budget titles, this year has also seen a huge rise in the prominence of indie games, which Bafta CEO Jane Millichip says is highlighted best by the Games Beyond Entertainment category – that is, games with a social purpose.

“It is more naturally suited to those up-and-coming studios, and [there’s] a really wide range of stories and narrative form in that category this year, which is really pleasing,” explains Millichip.

“And important stories, whether it’s tackling dementia, culture, and capitalism, endangered species, often with first-person narratives, which pull the games player into a much more empathetic environment. And they’re also hugely entertaining.”

Several British studios have also been nominated for their work – exemplified best in the Best British Game category, where nominees include Citizen Sleeper, Vampire Survivors, and OlliOlli World.

“There’s a really vibrant, UK games industry,” Saunders says, “but its strength lies in being able to work across borders.

“You can have a game made by people all across the globe and are working on one team… you get much more cultural influences coming through into games, because of the flexibility that the teams have to bring in more diverse talent because they’re not locked to a location any more.

“Games are direct to consumer in a way that certainly television isn’t,” Millichip adds. “I love the fact that gamers themselves have a great deal of agency and power to drive us in the various directions that they want us to go; that’s great.”

Who will be hosting the awards?

This year around, the show’s host will be veteran gaming presenter Frankie Ward. She has previously worked on E4’s GamesMaster show, co-presents the My Life in Pixels podcast and is a gamer herself, often posting streams on Twitch.

“I can’t believe I get the honour of being part of the awards this year, and I’m currently having to practice how to be calm in conversations with the amazing people whose work I’ve been raving about for the past year,” Ward said when the announcement was made. “Video games are entertainment’s best medium for connection, and I’m so excited to celebrate the people who bring the world together with their creative and technical achievements in gaming.”

How to watch the awards

The ceremony will take place on Thursday March 30 at 6.50pm BST at the Southbank Theatre. It will be streamed exclusively on the BAFTA’s Twitch channel.

Nominations categories

ANIMATION

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE II Mark Grigsby, Bruce Ferris, Khoa Le - Infinity Ward/Activision Publishing, Inc

GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK Bruno Velazquez, Erica Pinto, Mehdi Yssef - Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST Development Team – Guerrilla/Sony Interactive Entertainment

LEGO STAR WARS: THE SKYWALKER SAGA Development Team – TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

SIFU Development Team – Sloclap/Sloclap & Kepler Interactive

STRAY Jophray Mikolajczyk, Jean-Marie Vouillon, Simon Jacquart - BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster)

BEST GAME

CULT OF THE LAMB Development Team - Massive Monster/Devolver Digital

ELDEN RING Development Team – FromSoftware/BANDAI Namco Europe

GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK Eric Williams, Chad Cox, Yumi Yang - Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment

MARVEL SNAP Development Team – Second Dinner Studios/Nuverse

STRAY Development Team - BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS Development Team – poncle/poncle

BRITISH GAME

CITIZEN SLEEPER Gareth Damian Martin, Guillaume Singelin, Amos Roddy - Jump Over the Age/Fellow Traveller

OLLIOLLI WORLD Development Team - Roll7/Private Division

ROLLERDROME Development Team - Roll7/Private Division

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III Development Team - Creative Assembly/SEGA

TWO POINT CAMPUS Development Team - Two Point Studios/SEGA

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS Development Team – poncle/poncle

DEBUT GAME

AS DUSK FALLS Caroline Marchal, Charu Desodt - INTERIOR/NIGHT/Xbox Game Studios

THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL Andrejs Kļaviņš, Ernests Kļaviņš - Color Gray Games/Playstack

STRAY Development Team - BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

TROMBONE CHAMP Development Team - Holy Wow Studios/ Holy Wow Studios

TUNIC Development Team - TUNIC Team/FINJI

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS Development Team – poncle/poncle

Kirby and the Forgotten Lands (Nintendo)

FAMILY

DISNEY DREAMLIGHT VALLEY Development Team - Gameloft/ Gameloft

KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND Development Team - HAL Laboratory/Nintendo

LEGO STAR WARS: THE SKYWALKER SAGA Development Team - TT Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

MARIO + RABBIDS SPARKS OF HOPE Development Team - Ubisoft Milan; Ubisoft Paris/Ubisoft

NINTENDO SWITCH SPORTS Development Team - Nintendo EPD/Nintendo

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER’S REVENGE Development Team - Tribute Games/Dotemu

GAME DESIGN

CULT OF THE LAMB Development Team - Massive Monster/Devolver Digital

ELDEN RING Development Team – FromSoftware/BANDAI NAMCO Europe

GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK Jason McDonald, Andrew Chrysafidis, Luis Sanchez - Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST Development Team – Guerrilla/Sony Interactive Entertainment

TUNIC Development Team - TUNIC Team/FINJI

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS Development Team – poncle/poncle

God of War: Ragnarok (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

NARRATIVE

CITIZEN SLEEPER Gareth Damian Martin - Jump Over the Age/Fellow Traveller

GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK Matt Sophos, Richard Gaubert - Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment

IMMORTALITY Sam Barlow, Amelia Gray, Allan Scott - Half Mermaid Productions/Half Mermaid Productions

PENTIMENT Josh Sawyer, Kate Dollarhyde, Zoe Franznick - Obsidian Entertainment/Xbox Game Studio

A PLAGUE TALE: REQUIEM Writing Team - Asobo Studio/Focus Entertainment

STRAY Writing Team - BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

PERFORMER IN A LEADING ROLE

ALAIN MESA as Alejandro Vargas in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

CHARLOTTE MCBURNEY as Amicia de Rune in A Plague Tale: Requiem

CHRISTOPHER JUDGE as Kratos in God of War Ragnarök

MANON GAGE as Marissa Marcel in Immortality

SIOBHAN WILLIAMS as Laura in The Quarry

SUNNY SULJIC as Atreus in God of War Ragnarök

Horizon: Forbidden West (Playstation)

EE GAME OF THE YEAR (voted for by the public)

ELDEN RING FromSoftware/BANDAI NAMCO Europe

GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK Santa Monica Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST Guerrilla/Sony Interactive Entertainment

IMMORTALITY Half Mermaid Productions/Half Mermaid Productions

MARVEL SNAP Second Dinner Studios/Nuverse

STRAY BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

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