In case you missed it, the Game Awards voting consists of 90% jury and 10% fan votes. Media outlets, such as Gamereactor and a number of others, submit ballots with winners in each category, and these are then counted alongside fans' votes for the games.
So does this mean that the Metacritic score of a given game broadly tells us which games will win? Maybe it does. VGC has at least looked at each category and then determined the winner based on which game in the category has the highest Metacritic score.
If you do just that, you'll get the following list:
Game of the Year - Astro Bot
Best Independent Game - UFO 50
Best Debut Indie Game - Balatro
Best Action Game - Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Best Action / Adventure Game - Astro Bot
Best RPG - Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Best Fighting Game - Tekken 8
Best Family Game - Astro Bot
Best Sim / Strategy Game - Unicorn Overlord
Best Sports / Racing Game - WWE 2K24
Best Multiplayer Game - Tekken 8
Best Mobile Game - Balatro
Best VR / AR Game - Asgard's Wrath 2
Best Narrative - Metaphor: ReFantazio
Best Art Direction - Astro Bot
Best Adaptation - Arcane
The question is how close the actual awards ceremony is to this list. What do you think?