The Game Awards Failed Developers and the Industry
A winter games showcase sure, an award show most certainly not.
This year’s Game Awards were an absolute joke.
I mean as a games showcase for the future, it was great. There’s no disputing that. Geoff Keighley and his team put together an event that contained a huge number of new game announcements like Blade, OD, and Light No Fire to name a few. Looking through my notes from the night now, there were about 50 announcements in total. So, if you were watching for the game reveals, then you had an amazing time, no question.
However, for the actual award show part that The Game Awards are supposedly named for, it was an unequivocal failure, a tone-deaf presentation that felt more disrespectful and insulting to developers than an actual celebration of them and their work from 2023.
No Time for Winners
For one, look at this time breakdown that Hayley Elise posted on Twitter (yes I refuse to call it by the other name).
If The Game Awards are supposed to be for the game industry at-large to come together and celebrate the past year in gaming, why was there so little time given to award winners?
As I wrote in my previous post on Thoughts from a Nerd, 2023 is arguably the greatest year we’ve ever had in games. Why are we not giving flowers to the year that was and celebrating all the exceptional titles like Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, or Hi-Fi Rush?
It’s been an unprecedented year for high quality games across all genres and we can’t revel in them? Celebrate them? We can’t allow winners to get emotional or receive the adulation from the audience that they deserve?
Remedy won Best Narrative for Alan Wake 2. When Sam Lake got up to the podium, he had about 55 seconds to deliver his acceptance speech before the music started to play him off.
Neil Newbon took home Best Performance for his role in Baldur’s Gate 3, he had about 50 seconds or so before they started to play him off.
Winners got seconds to say thanks but a game that didn’t have any gameplay to show, that had no release window to announce, that I still have no idea what it exactly is… got nearly 10 minutes!
Cool for Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele. I’m sure what they’re creating will be interesting, different, and a game changer in some way but why are we wasting so much time on something that’s not even close to being ready?
We at least had gameplay for the new game title Exodus that was announced by everyone’s favorite gamer Matthew McConaughey, but once again nearly 5 minutes were dedicated to a game with no release window.
Do gamers really care about Matthew McConaughey being in a game or does Geoff Keighley only care about Matthew McConaughey being at The Game Awards?
Blasting Through Award Winner Announcements
This year’s event had 31 awards given out over the course of the night. 8 of the 31 were given during the award preshow that ran from 6:30p CT to 7p CT. The other 23 awards were given over the course of the main show from 7p CT to about 10p CT. Here’s the thing though, only 12 of those 31 were announced to where there was a recipient who was actually able to accept the award. The rest were rapid fired in blocks where Geoff or preshow host Sydnee Goodman would stand on the side stage and announce winners in 4 to 5 categories back to back to back.
The video below has all the award winner announcements from the night and if you start it at the 5-minute mark you’ll see what I mean. Really if you start it from the beginning, you’ll see what I mean.
The award blasts made the awards feel like they were an inconvenience. Yes, they have given out awards this way in past years but after seeing how little time was being given to award recipients, the blast announcements just exacerbated the feeling that the awards were more of a nuisance and taking time away from game reveals.
Celebrity Cameos
I already mentioned that Matthew McConaughey and Jordan Peele made appearances. However, we also had Anthony Mackie, Simu Liu, Timothée Chalamet, Walton Goggins and the cast of the upcoming Fallout TV show, and the biggest of all… *checks notes* Gonzo from the Muppets.
Do they have links to games? I mean yes. Anthony Mackie stars in the TV series Twisted Metal based off the video game of the same name. Timothée Chalamet modded Xbox 360 controllers on his YouTube channel back in the day. But what did these celebs really do outside of taking time away from the award winners? Honestly, nothing.
Anthony Mackie took longer to get to the nominees for the category he was presenting than most of the award winners got for their acceptance speeches. Simu Liu talked about injuring his foot playing pickup basketball. Matthew McConaughey talked about being in his first video game but his character wasn’t even featured in the trailer. *confused face*
It felt like celebrities could go for as long as they wanted but the people, we were all there to celebrate, had 30 seconds or less. That should only be a rule for making pizzas or something not for award speeches.
I guess you could argue celebrities attending legitimizes the awards but honestly, it’s more cringey for the viewing experience than an enhancer. *cough* Al Pacino last year *cough*
Tone-Deaf to the Industry’s Ongoing Crisis
It’s been an abysmal year for the game industry with a multitude of companies announcing restructurings and cutbacks and studio closures like Volition or Free Radical shuttering. The industry is in crisis with an estimated 9,000 industry jobs lost this year according to VideoGameLayoffs.com, despite projected growth in revenue.
The least Geoff Keighley and The Game Awards could have done was acknowledge this overwhelming problem and the strife workers are facing within the industry.
Not one mention, even as protestors were outside of the venue.
Nor was there any mention of The Game Awards’ Future Class members who signed an open letter asking for recognition of the Gaza humanitarian crisis.
As an outsider looking in, to me it feels like industry professionals are not seen or heard right now even with everything happening. The outright dismissal of the ongoing issues felt like a slap in the face to developers everywhere. Without the developers we don’t have any of the games I mentioned earlier. They are the ones who deliver these amazing experiences that live in fans’ memories for a lifetime. Let them at the very least have their moment. At least let them know that we see what’s going on, we hear what they’re going through, and we support them through this incredibly difficult time.
As many pointed out afterwards, this has always been The Game Awards’ make up since the awards first began years ago. Yeah that’s true, but maybe they need to evolve or come to terms with what they are really, a winter games showcase because they sure aren’t an awards show.
Articles to Check Out
If you want to learn how to support game devs, check out what the International Game Developers Association is doing with the Stronger Together in Games campaign.
IGN released an awesome article that let winners give the speeches we didn’t hear.
The Verge had a great write-up about developers wanting more from The Game Awards.
Writer Travis Hymas has a great read about how The Game Awards failed.