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Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year winners

  • Red Dead RedemptionRed Dead Redemption is a 2010 Western from Rockstar San Diego, and it opens with a man who has run out of choices. In 1911, federal agents take the wife and son of a former outlaw named John Marston. The price of their freedom is his skill…
  • The Last of Us (video game)The Last of Us, a 2013 action-adventure game from Naughty Dog, ends with a man swearing to a girl that his story is true. It is not. Joel gives the oath because Ellie insists on it. Everything before that moment is a long walk toward it.…
  • Fallout 3Fallout 3 is a 2008 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it begins with a 19-year-old leaving the shelter where they grew up. Vault 101 is a high-tech fallout shelter, built for survivors of a nuclear war fought 200…
  • The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
  • God of War (2018 video game)God of War, the 2018 PlayStation 4 game from Santa Monica Studio, was formally announced at the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo with a short gameplay demo. In it, a fully bearded Kratos taught his young son how to hunt. Soon afterward…
  • Half-Life 2Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter from Valve Corporation, and it cost 40 million US dollars to make. Development lasted five years. By 2011 it had sold 12 million copies worldwide. In November 2024, twenty years after its release,…
  • Grand Theft Auto IIIGrand Theft Auto III began with an art director's complaint about the games of his day. Aaron Garbut felt that most of them were "a thing you played". He wanted this one to be "a place you lived in". The core team behind that ambition was…
  • Portal (video game)Portal, a 2007 puzzle-platform game from Valve, begins with an artificial intelligence promising a silent woman named Chell a reward of cake. The reward is for surviving a long run of laboratory tests. Players soon learn to distrust that…
  • Elden RingGeorge R. R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's backstory, not its in-game story. Some critics found his role unclear.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had sold 34.51 million copies by March 2025. That made it the bestselling Zelda game and one of the bestselling video games ever. It is a 2017 action-adventure from Nintendo EPD, built for the Wii U…
  • Hades (video game)Hades is a 2020 action game from Supergiant Games in which the hero dies again and again, and that failure is the point. Its hero, Zagreus, is the son of the ruler of the Underworld, and he badly wants to leave home. Every attempt turns…
  • The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
  • Baldur's Gate 3Wizards of the Coast first turned down Larian Studios' bid to make Baldur's Gate 3 in 2014.
  • Shadow of the ColossusIn Shadow of the Colossus, a young man named Wander lifts his sword into the sunlight, and the blade throws beams of light across the land. The beams converge when the sword points toward the next giant. Sony Computer Entertainment…
  • BalatroBalatro is a poker-themed card game made by a man who says he does not play poker. The developer goes by LocalThunk, an anonymous solo creator based in Saskatchewan, Canada. He has also said he does not want casinos or gamblers to use his…

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