Speaking of awards season. There probably aren’t many days left until the TGA 2026 nominee announcements, which for Resonant is likely more important than the TGA event itself.
TGA nominees (and later winners) — especially in the GOTY category — get completely free marketing space on the front pages of every storefront during the most intense game sales period of the year. In my opinion, Resonant’s performance at TGA is crucial for its year-end forecasts and overall success, considering this year’s rock-solid competition, in the midst of which capturing attention and driving sales conversions is extremely difficult.
On the TGA website:
According to Gemini, since 2022 nominations have consistently arrived on Mondays, 4 days before the cutoff date. This year the cutoff is Nov 20, and Nov 16 is a Monday. Geoff will also likely want to get the nominations out of the way before the GTA VI launch on Nov 19. If so, an announcement regarding the nomination stream could be expected later today or over the weekend. Even if it doesn’t fall on Monday, early in the week is likely.
Personally, when it comes to nominations, I expect Resonant to outperform relative to how its review scores (and sales) lagged behind its main competitors. Why is that?
It comes down to how the nominations/selections are decided.
Nominees for most categories of The Game Awards are chosen by an international jury of over 100 global media and influencer outlets (opens in new tab), selected for their history of critical video game evaluation.
Each voting outlet completes a confidential, unranked ballot based on the collective and diverse opinion of its entire editorial staff, listing out its top five choices in each category.
Ballots are tabulated, and the five games that appear on the most ballots are put forth as nominees. In the event of a tie, six (or more) nominees will be announced in a category.
Remedy’s games are polarizing among players and critics alike, as has been repeated here ad nauseam. In the nomination process, critical voices have significantly less impact as long as enough people love the game. Also, the opinion of an individual review score doesn’t carry as much weight, since the selections are made by the collective vote of a gaming media outlet’s entire editorial staff rather than a single reviewer.
I asked Gemini to look up reviews from each of the 127 outlets on the TGA jury, if available.
Gemini found 49 scored reviews. Of these, 7 (14%) were 95–100 and 14 (29%) were ≥ 90. So 43% of the outlets gave a score of 90 or higher. Two-thirds (67%) of these critic scores were ≥ 83, which is equal to or higher than Resonant’s Metacritic score.
If you extrapolate the scored/found reviews across all 127 outlets and assume a score of at least 90 is required to become a GOTY candidate, then 54.5 outlets would have given a score of ≥ 90. Not all of them will still pick the game as a GOTY nominee, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that perhaps 40 of them might, which would mean appearing as a GOTY nominee on about 30% of all ballots. That would give it a realistic shot at being the 5th or 6th GOTY nominee.
With GTA VI, Zelda, RE9, and Phantom Blade practically locked in as GOTY nominees, the race for the final 2 spots could actually work in Resonant’s favor, as fewer competitors outside these four top games will manage to get onto the ballots.
What have critics and GOTY previews been saying so far?
The Golden Joystick performance was, in my opinion, surprisingly good for a popular vote, especially 4th place in the Ultimate Game of the Year race when going up against significantly better-selling titles, beating out many others (Forza 6, Dawnwalker, Pragmata, 007, Pokemon Pokopia). The nomination cut-off was September 25, just a day after Resonant’s launch, which partly explains why its shortlist nominations were so sparse. Winning the PlayStation Player’s Choice for September was also a good sign, of course.
Kinda Funny Games, a well-known US TGA GOTY outlet, even tentatively suggests Resonant as their #1 pick for GOTY: “It’s my number one with a fucking bullet right now”. Timestamp for when they start discussing Resonant:
DualShockers (also a TGA GOTY outlet) includes it in their top 6 GOTY nominee list: https://www.dualshockers.com/video-games-that-could-sweep-the-game-awards-2026-ranked/
Based on all of the above, reviews read, and gut feeling, I put together my own tongue-in-cheek predictions for The Game Awards 2026 nominations. My own judgment was used for these, not AI.
| Category | Nomination Probability | Win Probability | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Game of The Year | Possible (30-60%) | Extremely Unlikely (<5%) | ||
| Best Art Direction | Certain (>90%) | Coin Toss (50%) | ||
| Best Audio Design | High (60-90%) | Coin Toss (50%) | ||
| Best Action/Adventure | High (60-90%) | Low (10-30%) | ||
| Best Game Direction | Possible (30-60%) | Low (10-30%) | ||
| Best Narrative | Low (10-30%) | Low (10-30%) | ||
| Best Score and Music | Possible (30-60%) | Low (10-30%) | ||
| Best Performance (x1) | Low (10-30%) | Extremely Unlikely (<5%) | ||
| Innovation In Accessibility | Possible (30-60%) | Low (10-30%) |
In other words, my baseline expectation is around 4–5 nominations and one win (most likely Art Direction). A bear case would be 1–3 nominations, 0 wins. A bull case would be 6–8 nominations and 2 wins.
To refresh our memory, here is Control’s and Alan Wake 2’s past TGA success:
| Category | Control (TGA 2019) | Alan Wake 2 (TGA 2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Total Nominations / Wins | 8 Nominations / 1 Win | 8 Nominations / 3 Wins |
| Game of the Year | Nominated | Nominated |
| Best Game Direction | Nominated | Won |
| Best Narrative | Nominated | Won |
| Best Art Direction | Won | Won |
| Best Action/Adventure Game | Nominated | Nominated |
| Best Audio Design | Nominated | Nominated |
| Best Score and Music | — | Nominated (Petri Alanko) |
| Best Performance | Nominated ×2 (Courtney Hope; Matthew Porretta) | Nominated (Melanie Liburd) |
Table generated with Gemini, verified via Wikipedia
