Last night, the ninth edition of the Winter Gaming Showcase aired and brought with it a slew of exciting announcements that one could argue are some of the biggest in the show’s lifespan. God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 16 got imminent DLC (one coming in five days, one shadow dropped). Xbox showed up this time, after being quiet the year before, with a long, extended look at Hellblade II: Senua’s Sacrifice, officially unveiling the results of their partnership with Hideo Kojima with his new horror game “OD”, and finally nipping in the bud the need for a superhero game with Arkane Lyon’s “Blade” game. And Sega is bringing back some of their most celebrated classic franchises with modern entries.
Other game announcements included a Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake, Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Usual June, Harmonium: The Musical, Windblown, Thrasher, a Dredge x Dave The Diver crossover, Exodus, Big Walk, No Rest for The Wicked, The Casting of Frank Stone, Visions of Mana, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, Mecha Break, Light no Fire and Monster Hunter Wilds.
Whether all of those games are for you or not is a different story, but on sheer announcement alone, it’s hard to complain about the breadth in display.
“But wait,” you may say. “What are you talking about? I thought last night was ‘The Game Awards?'”
Thank you for proving my point.
Ever since Geoff Keighley spun off into his own with The Game Awards after a long stint of doing his show under Spike TV, he has expressed the desire to have an Oscars/Golden Globes/Emmy equivalent with gaming with the goal to celebrate the medium and its creators. While a noble concept in and of itself (particularly with him doing this solo), in the decade since, what is the one thing people always come away talking about the show, anyway?
That’s right: Game Announcements.
Let’s all be honest for one minute: who genuinely loves sitting around for a 3+ hours award show? While there are a lot of people that absolutely love a formal event celebrating the hard work some individuals do in a given year, it’s just not something that’s the cup of tea for mainstream audiences (as the viewership declines of the Oscars and Golden Globes keep showing). Geoff Keighley absolutely wanted a gaming awards show to feel like a mainstream friendly event, and he built the show around that. It’s why he always keeps hyping up game announcements in the lead up to the event.
You know what he rarely hypes beforehand in the lead up to the show? The actual damn awards.
This has been a tension that has existed with this show the more it’s gone on. Despite its namesake, the ones that regularly keep getting shafted on and on are clearly the devs this show is MEANT to celebrate. Unless you are a Hideo Kojima who gets the red carpet treatment on stage to talk 15-20 minutes of nothing, the rest of the awards section of this show tends to just feel like legit afterthoughts. In this year’s edition of the show, it became borderline unacceptable.
Yes, it became a meme that actor Christopher Judge took a year and a half to deliver his acceptance speech in last year’s edition of the show. While it was a little too indulgent, it was still a worthy moment for him to have. What the show did as a counter for that happening this year, where they would start playing the exit music so soon after the few nominees that got to walk on stage to receive the award started their speech, was borderline comical. This was their moment. This show is meant to celebrate THEM. Instead, more time is spent with the presenters (who are mostly all celebrity movie cameos by the way) or random skits like Gonzo the Muppet, where they can ramble forever. And said rambling sometimes leads to, well, a game announcement.
“But hey,” you may say. “This is how it’s always been. Why get so angry at what is clearly just an advertising show anyway?”
Yes, the show has always had that problem percolating, but not as obvious as it was this year.
Yes, The Game Awards is just a big ad marketing campaign to get the holiday shopping going and preparing people for what they may be buying, at least for the next six months. But you can’t erase how the gaming press tends to rally around this show and how content creators even make their entire critical content and analysis on whether a game will even show up or win at the damn thing and not expect for people to insist that the show do better at what’s essentially its namesake. Already, the voting process has been flawed from the start due to the nature of when the show airs, screwing literally every game releasing mid November to December because the show that celebrates the past year of games can’t consciously wait until January to give all the games in a given calendar year a chance. And no, the excuse that “they are eligible for next year’s show” rings absolutely hollow because the jury Geoff Keighley has assembled (one that just last year nominated “Sifu” for best fighting game, by the way) doesn’t even show any care for what’s nominated, as even some categories this year showed.
On a year as bittersweet as this, where the quality and quantity of releases is at incredible odds with how many devs lost their jobs, even the lack of acknowledgement of that fact left me crestfallen at this “celebration” event as it tacitly and implicitly downplayed the importance of devs for the games that give us so much joy. Devs absolutely deserve better. They deserve to all get the limelight and remind people of those that bring us the things we love so much. I don’t want them to be shuffled off a stage in less than 30 seconds to keep an arbitrary show time going (one that doesn’t even air on TV, by the way). When you see how much ad space this thing takes, how much time is wasted on menial crap, for most of the awards themselves being literally read in a shotgun blast (including categories like Best RPG and Accessibility), you know the balance has gone incredibly awry. It would be better for the show (and for the people that care too much about it) to just stop pretending this is some sort of “be all, end all” coveted award and instead focus on what has clearly been the focus all along: announcements themselves.
It’s why I didn’t joke when I earlier called this “Winter Gaming Showcase.” Already online, I’m seeing how this was the best Game Awards yet. And when I ask people about why they say that, it’s because of the damn announcements. Never do I hear that this show does good by the awards side, and now, when devs deserve better treatment, I’d rather this show drop all pretenses and just focus on the thing that people who tune in clearly want. There are already other award shows early in the year, like DICE and BAFTA, that are all about honoring devs instead of a world premiere. And guess what, they happen at a time that gives all games released in a calendar year a chance to get their accolades. They barely get any coverage because, like I mentioned, a good majority of people in good faith don’t care about an awards show. But as niche as those awards ceremonies feel, at the very least their intent is pure, instead of this facade that is “The Game Awards” whose big ticket items are not who they are meant to celebrate.
I truly believe a rebrand would not hurt this show in the slightest. Instead of the unnecessary painful discourse that happens every time this comes around about what was done wrong (and don’t even get me started at the calamity that was this year’s nomination’s list when a certain big game from a big brand missed not being in the big six list), a pure event that showcases what’s next for a coming year can be a celebration of what’s coming without having to treat developers like afterthoughts in their own show. Because, as long as there is this tension between wanting to have big banger announcements and, for that to happen, kowtowing to so many ad dollars by bringing in celebrity cameos from Hollywood that sometimes get more importance than the people the show is meant to celebrate, it’d be better to just not care about the game awards side of “The Game Awards.”
I don’t want the show to not exist, but I’d rather it be known more for what it focuses on than pretending to be something it’s clearly not.
