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10:45am on Saturday, 22nd November, 2025:
Anecdote
One of the duties of a BAFTA member is to vote for the annual awards. Being a new member this year, I decided that I should take this seriously.
As an inducement to play the games, rather than simply to look up their rating on Steam and go by that, a large number of them are provided for free. This is one of the perks of BAFTA membership, although of course you really should play the games before the voting deadline rather than hoard them for later.
There were 161 games on my list to play, only two of which I'd already played (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Dune: Awakening) and had therefore already bought for actual money. Two others (Atomfall and Civilization VII) were on my to-buy list, although Civ7 would have to have dropped in price quite considerably before I'd pay to check out how much worse than all the previous Civs it was.
I didn't play games that weren't available for free on Steam. I didn't play games that were console-only (I don't own a console) or that absolutely required a controller (as I don't have one and don't want one; as far as I'm concerned, controllers are new-fangled technology). This didn't put much of a dent in the overall number of games from which I could choose, but it probably knocked out some front-runners.
I read the descriptions of each game before I played. There are many game and story genres I don't particularly like and would never play normally, but unless they were red-flag bad (ones trying to give me an insight into some designer's internal mental health problems, for example) I considered giving them a shot. Thus, although I don't normally play games featuring dating, gambling, Alzheimer's disease, vampirism, word puzzles or Wuxia, I didn't dismiss them on that basis. At least two games from those genres were very good, by the way, so they made it to my shortlists even though I wasn't ever going to complete them (well, I did complete one, because it was only an hour long).
I already knew that I wouldn't be able to play the games all the way through because I didn't have the time, but as a designer I don't need to do that anyway to get a decent feel for them. I gave the ones released in the first batch a good chance to show themselves off, but as more and more were made available it became apparent that I'd need to be more selective in what I played and for how long. I therefore chose games I thought I might like, or that seemed unusual; when those ran out, I selected them based on how positive the Steam reviews were. Some deserved their positivity for their originality; others got it because they were well-executed examples of a generic format, or were super-deep games from some niche. I was still occasionally put off by very unappealing subject matter, so didn't try those games; I'm fairly sure that at least one that will be on many shortlists was absent from mine on that basis.
You'll note that I haven't named any of the games I voted for: this is because voting is still open, and I don't want to prejudice anyone else's opinions (not that anyone else likely to read this would be prejudiced, but it probably breaks some BAFTA regulation). I might give them once the final results are out (there's more than one round of voting), if I remember what I chose.
There were 17 categories I was eligible to vote for, and each voter gets to put in order up to six games in each category. I abstained from three that I didn't think I was sufficiently qualified for: Animation, Artistic Achievement (which means visual art, not game-design art) and Audio Achievement (which excludes music). I also didn't vote for Performer in a Leading Role, because that didn't show up on my list; I voted for Performer in a Supporting Role, though. For most of the others, I did use up all six of my slots, but there were one or two where I didn't think there were enough worthy entrants so left slots empty.
Some categories have showreels to demonstrate their offerings; some have statements. Surprisingly few of the statements were AI-generated, although some would have benefitted from a syntax check ("it's" when it should have been "its", that kind of thing). I didn't look at these until after I'd played the games, though; I didn't want them telling me what to look for (and not telling me what not to look for).
In the end, I played 40 of the games, or 39 if you don't count the one that wouldn't let me past the loading screen. If I found myself playing for longer than I'd intended, which happened more often than I'd expected it would, they made it to the shortlist. I uninstalled them all after playing, except Civ7 and Atomfall because they were on my wishlist anyway, and one other game that I won't name but that I actively want to see how it develops.
BAFTA membership is expensive, but given all these free games, it would be worth it even without the other benefits (which I have yet to explore).
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