A Player's Memory: The 2024 BAFTA Shortlist That Still Sparks Debates in 2026

I still remember the morning the BAFTA EE Players' Choice shortlist dropped. In 2026, it is easy to file that moment away as just another award-season footnote, but as a player who spent too many nights refreshing award feeds, it felt like a vending machine asked to dispense a five-course meal: technically possible, but you had to admire the audacity. Baldur's Gate 3 and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 were up for an award again, and the fanbase rivalry that had crackled around The Game Awards had found a new stage. The BAFTA category, like TGA's Players' Voice, was decided by the audience. That detail mattered. It turned a polite industry ritual into a public scrap with a scoreboard.

A shortlist with wildly different thread counts

The nominees were Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, and Lethal Company. On paper, that is a wide range of games to take the top spots. Only four were actually released in 2023, and of those four, Lethal Company was still in early access. The BAFTA shortlist was a patchwork quilt sewn with wildly different thread counts: a prestige RPG, a superhero blockbuster, a Nintendo epic, a redeemed cyberpunk saga, a live-service juggernaut, and a scrappy co-op horror experiment. Award season is a lighthouse beam sweeping across a harbor of very different ships; it illuminates whatever it touches, but it cannot make the ships the same size.

I was not a UK voter, so my ballot would have been imaginary. Voting was limited to UK residents only, and I remember thinking that this could produce very different results from other shows. BAFTA's audience is not identical to TGA's audience, and a UK-only vote can tilt toward local favorites, long-running communities, or games with a strong word-of-mouth pulse. That made the category feel less like a coronation and more like a pub quiz with national bragging rights.

The champion, the challengers, and the wildcards

Baldur's Gate 3 had swept the award shows so far. It won big at the Golden Joystick Awards, The Game Awards, the New York Game Awards, the DICE Awards, and many more. By the time BAFTA's shortlist arrived, it was the obvious frontrunner. But it had stiff competition with two other incredibly popular games from last year: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Tears of the Kingdom. Both had passionate fanbases, both had big launch moments, and both could mobilize voters who wanted to make a point. The rivalry between BG3 and Spider-Man 2 fans at The Game Awards had already shown how quickly a category can become a proxy war.

Nominee	What I remember about its case
🧙 Baldur's Gate 3	The sweep machine. Golden Joystick, TGA, New York Game Awards, DICE, and more. It looked unstoppable, but audience votes can be strange.
🕷️ Marvel's Spider-Man 2	The blockbuster challenger. Huge fanbase, cinematic spectacle, and a rivalry with BG3 that gave the vote extra heat.
🗡️ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom	The Nintendo epic. A critical darling with a deep well of loyalty, and a serious threat in any audience vote.
🌃 Cyberpunk 2077	The redemption story. The whole game was nominated, not just its Phantom Liberty story expansion. Fans had waited for the huge combat overhaul and final chapter, and they might mobilize.
🏗️ Fortnite	The live-service wildcard. Its fans had enjoyed a bunch of popular updates in recent months, and they know how to show up.
📦 Lethal Company	The early-access surprise. It went into early access last October, earned overwhelmingly positive reviews from players on Steam, and amassed a huge following. Making the BAFTA shortlist just months after launch showed a lot of goodwill.

That Cyberpunk 2077 detail was important to me. The category was not limited to new releases from 2023. Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole was nominated, not just Phantom Liberty. Considering how long fans had waited for the huge combat overhaul and final chapter to be added to the game, they may have mobilized to see it win another award. That is, if they could fend off Fortnite fans, who had enjoyed a bunch of popular updates in recent months. Lethal Company was the other wildcard: a survival game with overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews, a huge following, and a shortlist spot only months after launch. It had built up a lot of goodwill already.

What I expected next

This was just one category. The rest of the BAFTA gaming nominations were due to be revealed on March 7, a Thursday, and I remember marking it on my calendar like a small holiday. If it was anything like other award shows, I expected Baldur's Gate 3 to sweep every category it qualified for. I also expected Alan Wake 2 to scoop up a few nominations, as that had been a hit at the award shows too. The BAFTA Players' Choice shortlist was a reminder that audience awards are not always tidy. They are noisy, tribal, and sometimes beautifully irrational. Two years later, in 2026, I still look back at that shortlist as a time capsule of a very strange award season: a six-way scuffle where the frontrunner had trophies in both hands, the challengers had loyal crowds, and the wildcards had nothing to lose.