A few hours’ drive on behalf of The Game Awards we are done for this year. One of the most watched broadcasts of the video game world, which is enjoying increasing popularity year after year, brought a number of interesting announcements and entertained the audience for more than three and a half hours. What, paradoxically, perhaps too little emphasis was placed on, was the presentation of awards as such. This is a bit of a defect for an event whose main content is to announce the best games of the year in several different categories.
The Game Awards has never been seen in anything but a positive light during its existence. However, this year the organizing team managed to frustrate the audience even more than ever and the bad feedback really cannot be ignored anymore. Social networks and online discussion forums are full of criticism from the disappointed community, and unfortunately, the criticism seems to be completely justified.
It must be said that already in the past the entire award ceremony to many it seemed like a huge PR campaign, where celebrities or paid promotions are slowly playing a bigger role than the video games themselves. This year was basically no different, but the question of to what extent The Game Awards event is just a long-winded advertisement began to be discussed much more.
But first, it will be fair to introduce The Game Awards a little more. The annual ceremony, celebrating the best video game titles, was first held in 2014, nine years ago. The main icon is game journalist Geoff Keighley, who gradually accompanies the event (we may also know him from the former Spike Video Game Awards or the currently very popular Summer Game Fest).
But The Game Awards has one key distinguishing feature that sets it apart from standard ceremonies – the evening includes not only the announcement of winners and the presentation of prizes as such, but also countless trailers and announcements regarding upcoming video game titles.
Source: ESAE3 will be no more. The biggest fair of the gaming industry has ended
And when I suggested that there really aren’t many of them, I meant it with 100% seriousness. Our editorial staff dealt with individual news throughout the night and the next day – as proof, you can look at our summary from this year’s edition, through which you can also access the separate news that we have prepared for you from the event.
It is the excessive attention paid to the upcoming games at the expense of the winners that is the cause of the concerns that are currently resonating in the gaming community. Clearly from the post created by journalist Hayley Elise it speaks to how big a role the winners themselves really play in The Game Awards.
Because I’m bored and have nothing better to do with myself, I broke down exactly how #TheGameAwards ~3 hour run time was allocated:
Winner’s speeches: 10 min
Musical numbers 13.5 min
Award presenters: 26.5 min
Other presenters: 42.5 min
Trailers/ads: 1 hr 28 min— Hayley Elise 😈💀🖤 (@_HayleyElise) December 8, 2023
While during the main transmission trailers or commercials took almost 90 minutes, all winners took only 10 minutes to thank the community as part of their speeches. If we count on the fact that the event lasted three hours (180 minutes), we could observe the winner on the stage only 6% of the total time.
An important addition to the aforementioned post by Hayley Elise: the “Other presenters” column, which takes up a substantial part of the program, includes all the promotional talk about the games whose trailer was available to watch, and under “Award presenters” we can imagine the presenters’ time spent discussing other topics , than the price they advertised.
How absurdly little time was available to the winners themselves was demonstrated, for example, by the speech of the developers from Larian Studios, behind the winning title Baldur’s Gate III. From the position of a viewer watching the online broadcast, it was basically impossible to notice anything special, but the footage captured by the viewers who were present on the spot is breathtaking. While the creators paid tribute to their late colleague, who did a great deal of work on the game, the organizers asked them to “wrap it up” already. Literally. After all, they ran out of allotted time, which they had plenty of… 30 seconds. Yes, half a minute for the overall winner of this year’s The Game Awards.
If I won game of the year and was dedicating the award to a member of my team who had died during development and saw the words “Please wrap it up” I’d be fucking pissed #TheGameAwards pic.twitter.com/be0hLfmfT2
— Javiera Cordero 🇵🇸 (@javierabegazo) December 8, 2023
And here we could easily go back to the mentioned contribution by Hayley Elise – the presenters talked for half an hour basically out of the way, while the developers, who according to common sense should be given the main bite of the entire evening, managed to say their speeches only with scratched ears.
That The Game Awards strives to “recognize those who improve the well-being of the community and highlight the voices that represent the future of this environment,” as the organization itself writes on its official websitethe very creators of “the most exciting, challenging and inspiring forms of entertainment [čtěte: her]”They didn’t get much space.
God bless the massively growing criticism expressed by Geoff Keighley himself. But with his statement he didn’t exactly please the players either. It seems as if he doesn’t understand at all (or at least he doesn’t show it enough) what the whole problem is.
“I agree that the music was played too fast for the honorees this year and I have asked our team to relax this rule over the course of the show. Although no one has actually been suspended, it is something we will continue to look at.” said the main host and host star on the X platform.
By the way – I do agree that the music was played too fast for award winners this year, and I asked our team to relax that rule as the show went on. While no one was actually cut off, it’s something to address going forward.
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) December 8, 2023
“The woman was cut. The Larian developers were talking about their co-workers who had died and ‘wrap it up’ appeared on the screen. The level of disrespect here is something else. You keep saying we need to celebrate the people who make our games, but you don’t give them a minute to share their emotions.” stands in reaction creator of Hype Your Games.
There are hundreds of pleas for more developers to appear on the stage in the coming years and for them to be given more time (and at the same time for the often unnecessary celebrities to disappear) under Keighley’s post.
A woman was cut off. Larian Devs were talking about their colleagues who passed away and the screen says to “wrap it up”. The level of disrespect is something else here. You keep saying we have to celebrate the people who make our games and yet you don’t give them a single minute…
— Hype Your Games (@HypeYourGames) December 8, 2023
More Creators and Devs on stage, less celebrity pandering.
Let these folks gush about their life’s work.Also maybe not forget to use the biggest industry platform presence of the year to discuss important industry issues, like all the layoffs and overwork going on out there.
— Kitty-Bit Games & Cosplay~ (@kitty_bit_games) December 8, 2023
They clearly didn’t listen then. Larian were talking about colleagues that passed away and had teleprompters telling them to wrap it up.
Heartfelt messages cutoff by outro music.
— ⚔Wandering Dutch🇳🇱 ᚴᚱᛁᛘᚠᚱᚬᛋᛏ (@WanderingDutchX) December 8, 2023
That NEEDS to be addressed next year. You can’t push these devs off the stage like that.
And also, you NEED to stop giving awards with just mentioning the winners without anyone coming on the stage. You’re not announcing lotta numbers here Geoff.
MORE DEVS/Creators on STAGE!
— Ali: Mak’G (@MakgSnake) December 8, 2023
However, in order to maintain at least a modicum of respect and objectivity, it is undoubtedly necessary to put into perspective what The Game Awards or similar broadcasts do for the gaming industry as such. While series and movies find a negligible amount of detractors in today’s society, video games are still frowned upon by many. Although they can clearly compete with cinematography in terms of art, a certain part of society still considers it a kind of “inferior” form of entertainment. Unbelievable as it is to us enthusiasts, even today, social media discussions are resoundingly with naysayers lamenting how the game is unhelpful or “crazy”.
The Game Awards does a great job of promoting the growing video game industry and showing it in the best possible light to the wider public. However, dedicating space to publicly known personalities even outside the game world can be quite crucial in view of the desire to interest “non-players” as well. In addition, I myself believe that if the whole event revolved only around the announcement of winners, the presentation of prizes and the broadcast of speeches, it would not be possible to reach people outside the enthusiastic bubble at all, which would probably destroy the main idea of the event. Spreading awareness about the positive qualities/impacts of video games and giving “regular people” a behind-the-scenes look at their development is an endeavor for which I have immense respect for The Game Awards and its entire organizing team. And I believe that I will not be alone in this.
However, The Game Awards should listen to the current feedback from the community and try to find a better balance between all that it offers to the audience. As I already mentioned, building a program only to rotate winner after winner would probably be boring, especially nowadays, when static and longer content without added personalizing elements is declining (and fast, dynamic content, on the contrary, is growing, an example is TikTok). Pushing developers, who spend years of intensive work preparing their games, into the background and giving priority to advertising, trailers, celebrities, music or wishy-washy comments doesn’t turn out to be a good strategy either…
2023-12-14 19:07:32
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