The BGA Awards 2025: Meet the 6 Winners Across All Categories + 2 releases!

[MatroidX]

Really happy these awards pushed me to try 12 games I may have never gotten to otherwise. I played many several times! I really appreciated that this voting format wasn't just another popularity contest. We already have plenty of those.

Agreed. Even though I only finished one of the categories, this way of voting ensured I did not vote when I did not have enough information AND helped / forced me to try some games I wouldn't have looked at. (Some were misses of course, but I was happy with a few too. And some I had been interested in for a while, and this pushed me to finally learn the rules and actually try them.)

FWIW I didn't get the chance to vote for The Wolves, but that would've been my pick for that group. My pick for casual --- Flowers --- did much worse than I thought it would percentage-wise, though the winner --- Castle Combo --- would've been my 2nd pick.

I think extending the deadline helped a lot, but I think in the future, a full month would be even better. Some games take quite some time to try out, and I personally prefer to give some games a 2nd chance (i.e. so I don't just pick my pre-existing favorites, but give new-to-me games a fair shake).

Thanks for running these awards! Really appreciate the percentage breakdowns too!!

[katmk]

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to BGA for highlighting some good, fun games from the year, which I think is really what Awards are meant to do!

The Wolves was the only game I hadn't played from the Animals category, and I'm so glad I had the push to try it because it's the one I ended up voting for (and I own a copy of New York Zoo).

By setting the criteria to play all of them, the vote was always going to be Darwin's Journey because only the people who had played it got to vote, and although I did decide to put myself through a game of Darwin's Journey, just to vote for Terraforming Mars, the game I started has still not finished.

This has genuinely confused me. If people had played Darwin's Journey and voted for it, then they must have played Terraforming Mars too, as well as the other two games in the category. And then decided they liked Darwin's Journey the most. The percentage share was very close between them. They both had different advantages - TM has been on the site for longer, so has had more time to gain fans. DJ has the benefit of recency, and so more likely to be top of peoples' minds.

[konsul]

Considering the popularity of Terraforming Mars, I was also surprised to see Darwin's Journey win the expert category but I think that just means it may be worth trying Darwin's Journey some time.

Some of the percentages surprised me a bit as well. I found my own decision in the "Regular Game" category quite tough. In contrast to that, the voting result is quite clear.

From my point of view, the voting mode is a substantial improvement compared to last year's awards. Another possible improvement might be to give the community more time and/or notice, like already suggested by some others here. If I had had more time, I may have completed another category.

[LHCper]

Lol rigged awards. No way did Darwin beat out Terraforming Mars. Did people even play Darwins? It's barely even playable on Mobile. TM is undoubtedly a much better implementation.

I have played both. During 2024 on BGA I played TM 11 times and DJ 2 times.
It is more difficult to play DJ on a small display (e.g. mobile) than TM, but it does work.

I did enjoy DJ and have no problems having it as #1 Expert game, but would personally have voted neither as top expert game.

[thejuice027]

By setting the criteria to play all of them, the vote was always going to be Darwin's Journey because only the people who had played it got to vote, and although I did decide to put myself through a game of Darwin's Journey, just to vote for Terraforming Mars, the game I started has still not finished.

The voting criteria makes these awards a lot less interesting and certainly for longer games relatively pre-determined.

I agree, the awards here are most likely skewed and highly inaccurate.

You've defined none of the terms you're using. If by "skewed," you mean not representative of the entire player base, of course. Joe Average user isn't going to go through the trouble of playing all games in a category, especially the Expert category, if they don't even like those kinds of games. That doesn't make it inaccurate. I'd say it's far more accurate than last year when people were forced to vote in all categories and did not need to play a game to vote for it, and so were forced to vote in categories even if they'd played none of the games in it.

The asumption that forcing people to play all games before voting leads to a more ‘accurate’ result ignores the reality of how people engage with games. It doesn’t ensure a balanced perspective, it just filters the voting pool down to a niche group willing to invest time into every single game, regardless of personal preferences. That’s not objectivity; it’s selection bias.

This means certain types of games will always have an advantage simply because they are more accessible, more popular among the type of players who complete the full category, or easier to finish within the voting window. The previous system wasn’t perfect, but at least it accounted for the wider gaming community’s views rather than an ultra-narrow subset of completionists.

A truly fair voting system wouldn’t force uninformed votes or restrict voting only to those who can complete a full list. There are better ways to ensure meaningful input—such as requiring voters to have played a minimum percentage of games in a category rather than all of them. The current system just trades one bias for another.

[the52hertzwhale]

Where can we see the previous winners and nominees??

[Meeplelowda]

Where can we see the previous winners and nominees??

This was only the second year. The winners of the first year are here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34569

Unfortunately, the URL used for the nominees in 2024 was reused for this year's award. Maybe the 2024 nominees can be found somewhere else, but in theory you are as capable of searching for it as I am.