The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony kicks off tonight at 6:30 PM PT in San Francisco, and you have every reason to be glued to your screen. The 26th annual GDCA — the peer-voted awards show where developers honor the best work of their colleagues — has somehow ended up being one of the most RPG-stacked ceremonies in years. Four out of six Game of the Year nominees are RPGs or RPG-adjacent titles. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 alone is up for eight awards. This one is going to sting or sing depending on your allegiances.
Here’s everything you need to know before the curtain goes up tonight.
The Game of the Year Race
The GOTY field this year is genuinely stacked. Six finalists, and the competition is brutal:
- Blue Prince (Dogubomb / Raw Fury)
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive / Kepler Interactive)
- Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo EPD / Nintendo)
- Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)
- Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
- Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios / Electronic Arts)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 already swept The Game Awards 2025, winning Game of the Year there and picking up nominations across every major ceremony since. The GDCA voters are no strangers to crowning the same title twice — but they’re also known for surprises. Blue Prince is widely loved in developer circles for its puzzle-RPG design depth, and Silksong‘s long-awaited release has a lot of goodwill built up. Don’t count anyone out.
Clair Obscur’s Eight Nominations
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leads all games with nominations in eight categories — every category except Social Impact. To put that in perspective: that’s Best Game, Best Narrative, Best Visual Art, Best Audio, Best Technology, Best Design, Innovation, and the Audience Award pool. That’s a historic run for a debut studio.
Sandfall Interactive’s turn-based RPG — set in a painterly world where an artist erases people from existence each year — won over players and developers alike with its emotional storytelling and combat depth. If it sweeps tonight, it will be one of the most decorated games in GDCA history.
Other Categories Worth Watching
Beyond GOTY, there are a few category battles that RPG fans will want to track closely:
Best Narrative is where RPGs traditionally clean up, and this year is no different — Clair Obscur, Ghost of Yōtei, and Blue Prince are all in contention, alongside honorable mentions that include The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.
Best Design will be interesting. Clair Obscur‘s combat system is widely praised, but Blue Prince is a genuine design marvel — the kind of game developers tend to vote for enthusiastically when given the chance. Hollow Knight: Silksong is also nominated here.
The Audience Award is the only publicly voted category, chosen from all finalists across the main categories. This is the one where fan communities can make noise — and RPG fanbases are famously loud.
The Special Awards: A Love Letter to RPG History
Alongside the competitive categories, tonight’s ceremony will hand out two of the most prestigious individual honors in the industry — and both have deep, direct ties to RPG history.
Lifetime Achievement: Don Daglow
Don Daglow is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award for a career spanning 55 years and over 100 games — and his résumé reads like a list of firsts. He programmed what is widely recognized as the first RPG on a non-classroom computer (Dungeon, 1976). He later produced Neverwinter Nights (1991) — the first graphical MMORPG — which laid the groundwork for virtually every online RPG that followed. Before all of that, he built the first interactive baseball simulation and created one of the earliest chatbot programs.
For RPG players specifically, Daglow is one of those names that most fans have never heard — but whose work shaped almost every game they’ve ever loved. Recognizing him tonight is long overdue.
Ambassador Award (Posthumous): Rebecca Ann Heineman
This one carries real weight. Rebecca Heineman, who passed away in 2025, will receive the Ambassador Award posthumously. In 1980, she won the first-ever National Space Invaders Championship, becoming the inaugural U.S. video game tournament champion. That launched a 45-year career in which she contributed to over 250 games.
Her RPG legacy is enormous: she co-founded Interplay Productions and worked on The Bard’s Tale, Baldur’s Gate II, Icewind Dale, Dragon Wars, and many more. She also ported Wolfenstein 3D and Doom to multiple platforms, ensuring those titles reached far wider audiences. Heineman was also a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the games industry. She deserves every bit of this recognition.
How to Watch
The GDCA ceremony starts tonight at 6:30 PM PT / 9:30 PM ET and will be streamed live and free on the GDC Twitch channel and GDC YouTube channel. The IGF Awards — which took place last night on March 11 — have already been awarded, with Titanium Court taking the top indie prize.