Another year has passed so quickly, and it’s already time to reflect on the work being done in games media. Over the last 48 weeks, our curators, with the help of the members of the Critical Distance Discord server, have read and presented over 760 articles in our weekly roundups, and with the end of the year approaching, we have already begun locking in what we think were our favorite articles of the year. But! There’s always a chance we missed something, which is where you come in: it’s time for you to submit your favorite articles of the year!
How To Submit Articles for #TYIVGB25
There are three main receptacles where we will accept article submissions for #TYIVGB25: directly at our email (which I promise will be regularly checked through this process), on social media with the hashtag #TYIVGB25 (the platform we are most active on is Bluesky, but we will also be checking Mastodon during this time as well), or by joining our Discord server and dropping your submission in the TYIVGB submissions bucket. You have until Midnight Pacific Time on December 15, 2025 to make your voices heard and submit what you think is the best writing on games from 2025.
What Qualifies
- Games criticism, analysis, commentary, etc which was first published in some form in 2025.
- Works on videogames, computer games, interactive fiction, board games, tabletop, word games, card games, sports, literally any kind of game.
- Written works.
- Audio works (must have transcript available).
- Video works (must have transcript available).
- Works not in English (must have an English-language summary available). [From Senior Curator Chris Lawrence: Our longstanding policy is that authors are welcome to submit non-English work without English summaries as long as they are okay with us reading it via Google Translate.]
- Things we have previously featured on TWIVGB.
- Things we have not previously featured on TWIVGB.
What Does Not Qualify
- Works first published before 2025.
- Works that don’t have anything substantially to do with games.
- Works that are not web-hosted and open-access, e.g., works locked behind a paywall with no gift link.
- Works of GenAI boosterism, and anything generated wholly or in part by AI.
- Anything which violates our inclusivity statement.
There are a couple of things I want to stress here, because historically certain perceptions of what we’re doing here have affected what has gotten submitted and by whom.
- This Year in Videogame Blogging is an annual roundup and celebration of good games writing. It is NOT an awards ceremony/show. As long as a piece of writing fits the guidelines above, you are free to submit whatever you like!
- You ARE allowed (and in fact, strongly encouraged) to submit your own work for consideration.
- Submitted work will at the very least be considered, regardless of whether it is published at a major outlet, self-hosted blog or on a long-form social site like Blogger or Tumblr.
- Curators (myself and Chris) must be able to access the work in order for it to be considered. We cannot accept private PDFs of articles that are not and/or will not be posted to the public Internet. We also cannot accept anything gated behind a hard paywall. Gift links are acceptable, but they cannot expire, or they will not qualify.
Get your submissions in within the next two weeks! We can’t wait to see what you’ve got for us!