It’s a downside of the award show template. If the “best game” is, say, an RPG, then there’s no logic that should say it would win “best game” but not “best RPG”, right? If it wasn’t an award show you could go from the top down instead of building up to GOTY and it’d be spread out more. Expedition 33 is GOTY, so “best RPG” is now de facto “best RPG not named Expedition 33”. But even that collides with awards like best soundtrack or best performance by a VA.
If anything, Golden Joystick “sandbagged” E33 by not including it in “best indie” - Sandfall is absolutely an indie studio by every meaningful definition of the term.
It’s a downside of the award show template. If the “best game” is, say, an RPG, then there’s no logic that should say it would win “best game” but not “best RPG”, right? If it wasn’t an award show you could go from the top down instead of building up to GOTY and it’d be spread out more. Expedition 33 is GOTY, so “best RPG” is now de facto “best RPG not named Expedition 33”. But even that collides with awards like best soundtrack or best performance by a VA.
If anything, Golden Joystick “sandbagged” E33 by not including it in “best indie” - Sandfall is absolutely an indie studio by every meaningful definition of the term.