It's all subjective. If you make Balatro and I make BG3, there's no objective way to evaluate "Best Game" between the two. You've got to make some subjective judgement (or just put your hand out and collect bribes).

Giving one of them a full stack of awards doesn't signal quality, it signals bias.

It signals quality from the perspective of a poorly selected jury. I have massive issues with how the game awards runs itself, but the solution isn't to artificially restrict what a game can win.

Bias from a jury's selection is inherent in all awards, e33 winning 9 awards isn't evidence of unfair bias or bribes, its evidence of 1) e33 genuinely doing an amazing job in a lot of different areas and 2) the jury being made up of professional journalists who all run in the same circles.

Neither Sandfall or Kepler have the sort of connections you'd need to beat out Sony or Nintendo if all 3 were using shady tactics.

E33 wasn't the studio's first game. So it shouldn't be winning the "award for debut games" on the ground alone.

What other game has sandfall interactive made?

But yes, if you're winning the "indie game" (which E33's budget shouldn't have qualified it for anyway) spotlight another game under "debut" even if you're predisposed to favor turn based RPGs over platformers or puzzle games or simulators. In fact, especially then.

I think we're just gonna have to disagree here, I don't think the point of rewards should be to spotlight a bunch of different games, that's what the nominations are for.

It's recognizing the budget more often than not.

Yeah, that's fair, but it's not exclusively budget.