16 categories are featured in the inaugural edition of Polkastarter Gaming’s GAM3 Awards taking place on December 15th, 2022. Each category needed its top five, and following the first round of voting from the awards' jury members, we have got our 32 finalists. 106 distinctive games were put in front of our judges across 13 categories, with the challenging task of only choosing five of the nominated 20 games per category. This process narrowed down the final nominees to 32 unique games, representing the best of the best in web3 gaming.

The initial 106 games spanned 13 chains, with the top 3 networks represented being Polygon, BNB Chain, and Solana respectively. It goes without saying that this is proof blockchain gaming isn't reliant on a single network or the survival of a certain network, gaming will always find a home wherever it is for players to come and enjoy fun gameplay. This healthy split between networks carried over into the 32 finalists, with Polygon and Immutable X home to 8 of the nominees while Solana and Gala come in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Three categories were excluded from the first round of jury voting as they will follow a unique process to ensure a more transparent and fair opportunity to everyone. These three are the People's Choice Awards, Game's Choice Awards, and Best Content Creator. The latter are the main drivers of adoption and they are the ones that rally their loyal communities behind them. The list of content creators in web3 gaming is long, and spans across various regions, cultures, and languages. That’s why the Best Content Creator award will be 100% community voted for each to send their fans to vote for them to win the award at gam3awards.com.

The People’s Choice Award opened its doors for the community voting on November 16th. This is the only game-specific GAM3 Award that is 100% decided by community voting, and it sparked a movement within games of all genres and from all chains. 38 games shared tweets and announcements with their respective communities, with a combined social following of more than 3 Million. This process alone qualified over 50 games for the award tallied from over 5K unique votes submitted on the platform.

The Games' Choice Award is where game recognizes game, but in a more literal sense of the phrase. The 15th category in the GAM3 Awards is where each game nominates their favourite web3 title outside of themselves. It acts as a sign of respect and shows games within the space are all in a friendly competition to push the web3 gaming industry together.  

The GAM3 Awards Game of the Year Finalists

The GAM3 Awards was born out of the urge to recognize quality games within web3 gaming, The five Game of the Year finalists shown above are the perfect embodiment of how far blockchain gaming has evolved in just one year. The sky is the limit, and these five games, alongside the rest of the nominees, are all empowering everyone in the industry to keep pushing forward and leverage the incredible technology we have in our hands to change gaming forever. Big Time, Illuvium, The Harvest, Gods Unchained, and Superior. Whoever wins the GOTY title, it will be the result of the game studio’s dedication, hard work, and effort to build an undivided community.

An overwhelmingly positive reception by both games and judges alike on the initiative sparked incredible motivation within the web3 gaming industry. We managed to successfully hit a 100% participation rate among all 38 qualified jury members. On top of that, since the People’s Choice Award opened its doors on November 16th, over 50 games were nominated through our platform from over 5K unique community submissions. These were driven by over 12 Million of combined social reach between all the games, sponsors, and partners who shared the news. This includes the likes of Big Time, Nyan Heroes, Illuvium, among more than 40 other games rallying their communities to submit their votes.

This entire process enabled judges to discover hidden gems within the web3 gaming world they never saw before. On top of that, it proved to everyone we are working towards one goal, and that's ultimately blurring the line between traditional and web3 games. Urvit Goel, the Head of Global Games at Polygon Studios, emphasized the importance of gaming’s contribution to the growth of blockchain technology in his following quote:

It is an amazing list of quality games that really showcase what is coming in the blockchain gaming space. The GAM3 Awards has shown how many quality blockchain games are being built, and the passion of those builders. It's also clear that Polygon continues to be the leader when it comes to both quality, quantity, and diversity of web3 games.

Urvit Goel, the Head of Global Games at Polygon Studios

Our own Omar Ghanem, the Head of Gaming at Polkastarter, gave a more comprehensive summary of all the judges' feedback on the first round of voting and what is to come throughout the rest of the GAM3 Awards leading up to December 15th, 2022.

We would like to thank each and all of the 38 jury members involved in the first round of the GAM3 Awards voting. A 100% voting participation despite the task at hand with over 100 game titles to go through, is further proof of how excited everyone is to see the web3 gaming sector’s development and growth. The majority of jury members shared positive feedback on how pleasantly surprised they were to discover a number of hidden gems in the industry and this was further proof the GAM3 Awards is doing what it set out to do, recognize quality web3 games for their work.

Omar Ghanem, Head of Gaming at Polkastarter

For a reminder on the voting process of the GAM3 Awards, The jury’s vote will carry 90% weight, with the remaining 10% decided by the community voting. Community will be the deciding factor if there is a tie and their vote will have an influence on deciding the winners of all categories. All of which will be announced on December 15, 2022 during our livestream across all social platforms.

The full list of nominees is as follows:

Game of the Year

• Illuvium
• Big Time
  
• Gods Unchained
  
• The Harvest
  
• Superior  
  

Most Anticipated Game

• Illuvium: Overworld
• Shrapnel
  
• Star Atlas
  
• Ember Sword
  
• The Treeverse
  

Best Graphics

• Illuvium
• Star Atlas
• Metalcore
• Big Time
  
• My Pet Hooligan   
  

Best Action Game

• Big Time
• Illuvium
  
• Metalcore
  
• Guild of Guardians
  
• Superior
  

Best Mobile Game

• Guild of Guardians
• Splinterlands
  
• Blast Royale
  
• Thetan Arena
  
• Skyweaver
  

Best Adventure Game

• Big Time
• Earth from Another Sun
  
• My Pet Hooligan
  
• The Sandbox
  
• Aurory
  

Best Casual Game

• Blankos Block Party
• Thetan Arena
  
• My Pet Hooligan
  
• Axie Infinity Origins
  
• Legends of Venari
  

Best RPG

• Big Time
• Illuvium
  
• Aurory
  
• SIPHER
  
• Phantom Galaxies
  

Best Shooter Game

• Metalcore
• EV.IO
  
• Undead Blocks
  
• Delysium
  
• Earth from Another Sun
  

Best Strategy Game

• Gods Unchained
• Cross the Ages
  
• Skyweaver
  
• Immortal Game
  
• Cards of Ethernity
  

Best Card Game

• Gods Unchained
• Splinterlands
  
• Axie Infinity Origins
  
• Skyweaver
  
• Cards of Ethernity
  

Best Multiplayer Game

• Blankos Block Party
• My Pet Hooligan
  
• Metalcore
  
• Big Time
  
• EV.IO
  

Best Esports Game

• EV.IO
• Metalcore
  
• Gods Unchained
  
• Planet Mojo
  
• Spider Tanks
  

GAM3 Awards 2022 is the inaugural edition of the annual web3 gaming awards. Set for December 15th, with over 400K in prizes up for grabs to the winners of various categories, the stage is finally set with the final nominees of each category. Vote now for your favorite game.

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