Alanah Pearce, influencer and writer at Santa Monica Studio recently gave her opinion on The Game Awards. According to her, the show is nothing more than a popularity contest.
The Game Awards is an international popularity competition and is generally reflected in the votes in terms of the games with the biggest marketing budget being the games that are nominated for Game of the Year. There are undoubtedly games that I personally would have nominated that would never make the cut.
Even if I were at IGN and said, "I think Dredge should be nominated for game of the year," which I do, there's no chance of that coming out of IGN because there wouldn't be enough people in the office who would have played the game. They will play the games with the most marketing because those are the games they know.