TGA: Bought and Sold

The only way someone can maintain legitimacy in anything is through consistency. Predicable means calculated, means trustworthy. If someone says chocolate tastes better than vanilla, it is only an actual opinion if that person consistently chooses chocolate.

The Game Awards made the mistake of showing their hand and electing AstroBot as Game Of The Year when Banishers released in the same year. Banishers would have been a consistent nod in the direction of high-budget, well-acted, story-driven, 3rd person action. 

But when PlayStation does not have that on offer, they still win by making a game that looks an awful lot like previous Nintendo games that were not nominated for Game Of The Year, even while Focus Home Interactive has released both Banishers and Space Marine 2 in the same year.

It doesn't defy expectations. It defies precedent and consistency. It claims to like chocolate, but buys vanilla flavor in everything. It is akin to The Academy Awards giving Picture of the Year to an animated feature written by Martin Scorsese, which mostly uses the story of a Ghibli film. 

There is no way to explain the decision outside of "it was on a PlayStation console". At this point there cannot be any denial over whether The Game Awards is an elaborate marketing ploy.