Is The Game Awards Still an Awards Show?
With acceptance speeches cut to 30 seconds or less, this year's show felt more like "winter Summer Game Fest" than ever.
The Game Awards 2023 is officially in the books, with Baldur’s Gate 3 winning big. Larian Studios took home Best Performance, Best Community Support, Best RPG, Best Multiplayer Game, Players’ Voice, and the biggest award of them all: Game of the Year.
Alan Wake II also got plenty of recognition, winning Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, and Best Art Direction while Nintendo’s big release for the year, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was crowned Best Action/Adventure Game. Meanwhile, plenty of other big games fell to the wayside. Starfield was only nominated for Best RPG and lost to Baldur’s Gate 3 while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was nominated in eight categories and didn’t win a single award.
On stage, this year’s ceremony blurred the lines more than ever before between an awards show and an end of year E3. Through the years The Game Awards has gradually become less and less about celebrating the last year’s top games and more about the announcements and trailer drops that focus on what’s coming next.
2023 was an absolutely incredible year for video games in so many ways. Even just looking at the list of nominees for every category paints a picture of just how many amazing games we’ve gotten. Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Hi-Fi Rush, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Alan Wake II - the list goes on. Beyond those nominees are hundreds of phenomenal games that didn’t make the cut. Unfortunately, it seemed like developers took a backseat at this year’s show to focus more on keeping the gaming industry marketing machine moving regardless of whether they won or not.
For developers that made it to the stage to receive their award, their speeches were limited to 30 seconds. If anyone went beyond that, a “please wrap it up” note would pop up on the teleprompter. For people that have poured years of development into creating the games that give this show purpose, 30 seconds is a ridiculously small amount of time to allow them to say a few words especially when Larian was paying respects to a member of their team that passed away during development.
In fact, IGN did the math and found that only 18% of The Game Awards were dedicated to the actual awards. Breaking that down even more, if the YouTube video had a 3:37 runtime, that would mean that The Game Awards only allotted roughly 39 minutes to awards and acceptance speeches. And that’s if the award was considered big enough to get any stage time at all. Sea of Stars winning Best Indie was announced in passing like a sponsored ad read in a podcast. Meanwhile Geoff Keighley and Gonzo from The Muppets did a skit before Anthony Mackie went on a mini multi-minute tangent to announce Twisted Metal Season 2 on Peacock - oh, and present an award.
It’s already bad enough that developers are barely given any time to thank their teams and share a few words, but it’s particularly bad in a year that has packed some devastating punches for the gaming industry. Widespread layoffs and studio closures are impacting teams across the industry, even while some companies are reporting record profits. Epic Games laid off 16% of their staff this year while Volition Games, the studio behind Saints Row, closed down entirely after 27 years in business after mismanagement by Embracer Group. If The Game Awards is meant to be a celebration of games and the people who make them, it might not be the right venue - or be Geoff Keighley’s place - to shine a spotlight on the issues that the industry is having. But even if the issues aren’t put on blast, the very least that The Game Awards could do would be to give the people behind the games a minute or two to speak their piece, take in the moment, and celebrate their win.
Keighley has agreed with critics that say the music “was played too fast for award winners this year,” and that “while no one was actually cut off, it’s something to address going forward.” To his credit, Geoff has a tight line to walk between being an awards show and getting big publishers and advertisers onboard to help make this whole thing possible. With 6.4M views and 199K Likes on YouTube at the time of recording, The Game Awards 2023 has already reached a million more people than it did last year. Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards aren’t cheap, and that reach gives the show a lot of advertising power that companies are probably chomping at the bit to be a part of. Beyond that there is also some level of responsibility to keep the hype train going, celebrating the old and looking forward to the new.
My hope for The Game Awards 2024 is that developers are able to get a bit more of the spotlight without taking away from the spectacle of what The Game Awards have become. Sam Lake and The Old Gods of Asgard performing the musical number from Alan Wake II, Hideo Kojima officially announcing his next project, Christopher Judge roasting Modern Warfare III; these are all moments that make The Game Awards special. Now it’s up to Geoff and the team to take in the feedback, crunch the numbers, and find a way to meet fans and developers in the middle to bring more focus back to the awards during The Game Awards.