Josh has been playing video games for longer than he can remember, kicking things off with a Master System before upgrading to a Mega Drive. Covering the industry since 2018, if a game has a strong story – or even better, the decisions you make determine the course of that story – odds are he’s going to like it. Or, you know, put Sonic or Pikachu on the cover and that’ll get his attention too.
Even though The Game Awards didn’t begin until 2014, their Game of the Year lineage dates back to 2003 via the Spike Video Game Awards. In its inaugural year, its GOTY was awarded to Madden NFL 2004, and 22 years later, a new generation of games is trying to figure out how and why that happened.
Not just a new generation of gamers, actually. I was born in 1989, so I was naturally a Fully-Fledged Gamer™ by 2003, and I, too, would like to know how Madden was deemed the best game of that year, considering its stiff competition. That competition included GTA Vice City, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Knights of the Old Republic.
How Did Madden NFL 2004 Win Game Of The Year In 2003?
It was a strong year, yet somehow, whoever was in charge of making these decisions at the time overlooked all of those all-time classics and decided the latest installment of a football game we get every year was the best game released during the prior 12-month period. I’m not sure if that decision was challenged at the time, but now that the award has been rediscovered, the gaming world wants to know how it happened.
Surprisingly, one of the leading reasons given to those seeking explanations is that Madden 2004 was actually very good. I don’t doubt that for a second. As someone who fought in the FIFA trenches from 2001 until around 2013, I can confirm there were entries in that annual series which would probably make it into a ranking of my favorite games ever.
However, there is no year in which an entry in an annual sports game franchise should win Game of the Year. Particularly not in 2003, when those games faced competition from titles that are considered some of the best games ever made. Another excuse I’m seeing is that, given this was Spike’s first ever Game of the Year, the brand that would eventually evolve into today’s Game Awards was still finding its feet.
Madden s Game Of The Year Win Opened The Show
Turns out that not only did Spike give its first GOTY to Madden, but it kicked off the show with it. Imagine watching this year’s Game Awards and Geoff Keighley got us all warmed up for three hours of reveals by handing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 its biggest award of the night.
An odd decision, but it learned fast. Neither Madden nor any other sports game has been awarded the Game of the Year since. In fact, while there will be those who argue for other games every single year, there is no standout year like there was in 2003 where almost everyone looks at the winner and goes, “… huh?”
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GTA San Andreas won the award in 2004, even though it isn’t as good as Vice City (I said what I said), Resident Evil 4 took home the award the year after that, and then Oblivion was crowned GOTY in 2006. Every mainline GTA game has been awarded Game of the Year since San Andreas, which makes GTA 6’s potential eligibility rather interesting. GTA 6 is currently slated to launch on November 19, 2026, which means it would have to wait until 2027’s Game Awards to potentially continue that 23-year streak.
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It’s definitely the Spike first year thing. The awards shows back then could be ludicrous. Spike wanted the ratings and would push all sorts onto what was happening to appear “edgy”, that was their MO as a channel.
2026-01-01 13:52:08
