Best RPG of 2022

A very interesting battle this one. The top two tied in the user vote, at 40.7% each - the runner-up led early on and at one point built up a huge lead of 25 votes, but this was eaten away at in the days that followed as more... casual(?) voters started to weigh in, and that game then grew its own lead, which was itself whittled away before they ended up being tied a couple of hours before voting closed.

So did they get the exact same amount of votes? Crazy.

In the community poll yes - 159 each. The staff broke the tie (55% to 20%, with the remainder going to other games).

Best DLC/Expansion of 2022

First I have to apologise - a 2021 release (Episode INTERmission) slipped onto the long list and none of us realised until after voting closed. Fortunately it didn't win, so it wasn't too awkward for us, but the 62 votes for it were wasted. Sorry about that - my fault.

As for the battle between eligible releases(!), the winner beat the runner-up by just 3.02% of the vote, and third place was only 0.09% behind the runner-up, making this one of the closer contests.

Don't feel too bad, The Game Awards 2022 included Genshin Impact (from 2020) in two categories, it even won the Player's Voice Award, and they still haven't realised it.

Best Indie Game of 2022

No run-away winner here, where thanks to broad support across all seven finalists the winning total was a fairly low 29.72%. The runner-up managed 22.26%.

Now we're onto some of my favourite awards - the special categories. We'll start with the performance ones:

Best Supporting Performance of 2022

The winner was just 2% ahead of the runner-up here. As Lee noted in his article, a certain game having three finalists likely denied one of its voice actors the award, as voting was split fairly evenly between the three (20.55%, 16.52%, and 10.66%). Not all votes would have transferred of course; my own vote went to one of the three, but my second pick was for another game entirely. But I expect had we limited each game to two finalists maximum then the runner-up here probably would have won.

Best Leading Performance of 2022

No such problem here. Although one game did have three finalists, even if they had all been combined they still wouldn't have come close to winning (they would've gotten 22.28% compared to the winner's 33.36%).

Best Narrative of 2022

A bit of a two horse race this one - the winner managed 34.32%, compared the the runner-up's 29.84%. Third place was well behind on 11.03%.

Best Art Direction of 2022

Here the winner had a healthy 19% lead over the runner-up (35% vs 16%). The other three titles to make it on the shortlist weren't far behind the runner-up, at 15%, 14%, and 11%.