There are more GOTY awards than there are movie awards it would seem, with every website, publication and news network with the remotest connection to videogames handing out GOTYs.

So how does one sort out the wheat from the chaff? I guess one way is to see who the game companies themselves pay most attention to.

So who hands out the most prestigious GOTYs?

VGChartz of course, that goes without saying

But as for the rest, who are the whos who of GOTY awards?

whichever gets them more sales.

Um probably none of them really.

Eh. Maybe, maybe not.

OT: The awards that are the most "prestigious" are probably the Game Developer's Choice Awards, held at the GDC conference every year.

Or more correctly, all of them perhaps? Games that win or are nominated for GOTY's come out with GOTY editions do they not? And these editions boost sales a tad. So if a publisher can claim their game has a GOTY then it's a marketing angle that other games don't have. So it doesn't matter if it's a little known GOTY, or a GOTY everyone knows about. A GOTY is a GOTY.

Thats just minor. After the Oscars for example its quite common for the winners of awards to go back to the cinema and sell a lot more tickets because of it. They also probably have larger rental and DVD sale revenue as well. In that context using the movie awards as a benchmark then one can say that no game development award truely captures the attention of both the whole industry and public at large.

Not every game comes out with a GoTY edition. The only ones that seem to do it consistently are the ones with DLC. I imagine if they require one the publisher can just bribe a couple of no name sites and there you go. I don't think they care if no one actually gave them a GoTY award though. It is all just marketting nonsense anyways.

For me it's gamespot, 1up and ign because those are the games websites that I follow (besides vg chartz).

The Interactive Achievemnt Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards. They're peer based awards (like the Oscars) so they're more important than awards handed out by the media (web sites, gaming magazines).