ZywOo, Zonic, CS2 among The Game Awards 2023 Nominees

The Game Awards have announced the nominees for the 2023 edition of the awards. With 31 categories, 5 of them Esports-centric, the awards span across gaming and esports categories. A total of seven nominations have gone to Counter-Strike and its community members.

While there are obvious shoe-ins like Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut for Best Esports Athelete and Danny "zonic" Sørensen for Best Esports Coach along with the only Major of the year BLAST.tv Major Paris 2023 being nominated for the Best Esports Event, there are also more questionable choices like Vitality's nomination for Best Esports Team.

Of note is the decision to nominate CS2 for Best Esports Game not Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. CS2 so far has only had two tier 1 LAN events and has been played for far less maps as compared to CS:GO in 2023. Bizarrely, Rémy "XTQZZZ" Quoniam has been nominated for Best Esports Coach. So far in 2023, Rémy was largely inactive during the first part of the year, unofficially helping Vitality with their BLAST.tv Paris preps, before moving to TSM's international project return to CS.

The TSM stint also lasted a short time, before he got the call up to fill the vacany in Vitality left by Zonic's move to Falcons. With all this in mind, it is a shocking indictment of the TGA nomination system and system of checks that XTQZZZ has been nominated as the Best Esports Coach for Vitality, having not coached the team at a single event so far.

The Game Awards are currently accepting voting on the nominations, which alongside the Jury Decision (carrying 90% of the weight) will determine the final winners of these awards. The event goes live on December 7 from the Peacock Theatre, Los Angeles.