Overview

Game Awards 2022 Player's Choice was a drama that happened before the results of the "Player's Choice" were shown before the 2022 Game Awards between the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase and the Genshin Impact fanbase.

Background

On November 30th 2022, the Game Awards Twitter account has posted a tweet about the Player's Choice with games like Eldin Ring, God of War: Ragnarök, Stray, Sonic Frontiers and Genshin Impact. Many Sonic fans wanted Sonic Frontiers to win the award after the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 film lost to the "Best Adaptation" awards to Arcane. Sonic Frontiers surpassed the following games on Round 1, such as Eldin Ring and God of War: Ragnarok. Genshin Impact was the second one that surpassed the following games. Some people were skeptical about Genshin Impact due to it being a game from 2020. However, the Sonic fans started to harass the Genshin Impact fans on Twitter, which caused the latter to fight back. Both games were tied in the Round 2. As for Round 3, Sonic Frontiers gained a huge amounts of votes. Suddenly, Genshin Impact surpassed Sonic Frontiers. Leading to the Sonic fans thinking the Genshin Impact fans are cheating, thus bringing in more drama from both sides. Eventually, the Game Awards removed the results from their website to avoid more conflict.

Final results

On December 8th, 2022, at the 2022 Game Awards, it was revealed that Genshin Impact has won the "Player's Choice" award (shown below, left). Within the three weeks, the video has gained 5,1M views on YouTube.

The official Genshin Impact Twitter account tweeted about them thanking the fans for their support for the game, tweeting about the game winning the "Player's Choice" category, as well as nominated for both the "Best Mobile Game" and "Best Ongoing" categories (shown below, left). Within the three weeks, the first tweet has gained 57,9K likes on Twitter.

They also retweeted about them giving out Primogems from December 10th to December 13th to thank the fans for the support. The tweet itself has gained 44K likes on Twitter within the three weeks.

Even though Sonic Frontiers was only nominated and has not won the award, Morio Kishimoto, the director of Sonic Frontiers, tweeted about how happy he was still happy that the game itself still reached in the top 5, and him thanking to all the fans to support it. Within the three weeks, the tweet has gained 5,7K likes on Twitter.

Kishimoto said: "We made it into the top 5 of TGA Players' Voice! This is all thanks to your support! The third generation is off to a good start. I'm happy! I am sure that this result will be a big driving force for the next work. We promise you an experience of greater excitement and surprise. Finally, I would like to thank all the staff involved in this project."

Online presense

Despite the huge tension between the Sonic fans and the Genshin fans that happened, some people have made fanarts of the two franchises combined during and after the conflict between the two fanbases. Redditor Snorlaxite (aka Dynamocha) posted their fanart of Sonic and the other Genshin characters, such as Paimon, who got turned into anthropomorphic animals. The post itself gained 6,8K upvotes on Reddit within the three weeks. Twitter user Spideyhog also posted their fanart on Twitter of Sonic the Hedgehog and Lumine, from Genshin Impact, embracing each other. The tweet itself gained 29,4K likes on Twitter within the three weeks.