My Disappointment With The Game Awards 2023
Sadly this show forgot it was an award show this year
Let me begin by apologising for taking a long time to write another article of any kind. It’s been a whirlwind of a few weeks, to be honest, and I just haven’t had the energy to even game much let alone break down some high-level thoughts and put it down on paper. I did however manage to squeeze The Game Awards in which has always been one of my highlights of the gaming calendar. Sure there have always been issues with it but I have always enjoyed watching the awards and seeing developers and other notable people in the industry celebrated, having their moment to shine, especially when they are often hidden in the corner making these amazing games we all enjoy. Most of the time I don’t know who these people are but seeing them on stage collecting their awards allows me the opportunity to learn another name, learn about their experiences and see them get their dues even if I had a different personal choice for the winner.
I was a little torn about writing up this article in the first place because I try not to put negative energy out into the world because I truly believe negativity breeds more negativity but I do feel like there is space for constructive criticism especially because I am disappointed in this year's show. I live in the UK so this year the pre-show started at 00:30 and the show overall finished at around 04:00. It’s a bit of a commitment to get up and watch it year after year but I have done it ever since it started because I do love the show even if it means I struggle through work the next day. There has always been a balancing issue of the show between celebrating creators but also using the trailers as advert slots to fund the show and it’s not easy to get right.
I recognise that there are other more serious award shows out there but ultimately this show has positioned itself as the main award show to watch by using the trailers as a way to get people in to watch it but then spending the time in between celebrating the industry as a whole. My disappointment this year stems from the lack of celebration. Yes we had the trailers and a lot of them were interesting and the flow between trailers was great but the celebration aspect of the industry took such a back seat this year that it was egregious and made it feel way more like a capitalist product than it had felt before.
I have seen or heard the narrative that whilst arguably this year is the best year of video game releases, it was also one of the worst years for the video game industry. This website has been used by both GamesIndustry.biz and Polygon to estimate that over 9000 people at the time of writing have been made redundant in the industry this year alone. For too long capitalism has tried to make people at the bottom of the food chain feel like they should be grateful to people at the top for having jobs that probably don’t pay enough and come with a lot of stressors, meanwhile, people at the top are so far removed from anyone outside their clique that they don’t even value the hard work people below them have put in. They often don’t even value them as people and just refer to them as resources which to me has always felt like a cold way of saying tools we can use and dispose of as we see fit. All of this has led to renewed calls that the industry needs to unionise to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods. Images were taken outside The Game Awards of people protesting about the issue of layoffs. After all, we were being told to celebrate by going to or watching the show. To show love to an industry when the industry ultimately can often feel like it doesn’t love the workers back.
Aside from the above, The Game Awards has a section on its website called Future Class which is the organisation highlighting a diverse group of people to keep an eye on as their career grows in the industry. This year a significant portion of the Future Class has rallied together and written an open letter asking The Game Awards to address the genocide that is happening against the Palestinian people in a similar way that it would use its platform to raise concerns about other atrocities that are happening in the world. The letter garnered enough attention that other respected individuals who also work all over the industry were allowed to sign the letter too and it is currently on 3024 signatures. The idea behind the Future Class writing the letter in the first place was that they are the new voices who will be the future ushers of the industry and so they wish to be heard now. When asked why they are not discussing the lives lost in Israel Rabii who helped coin the letter said that advocating help for Palestinian lives does not mean they are supporting destroying Israeli lives. The notion being suggested in that article is that the world political stage focuses on Israeli lives that have been affected but not on the Palestinian lives being affected. For more information on the conflict that is happening in Palestine, I urge you to watch the People Make Games’s video which does an excellent job of demystifying the conflict in a much better way than I can.
People were hoping all of the above would be addressed in some shape or form at the start of The Game Awards and sadly it wasn’t. On the one hand, I am not always a fan of organisations, especially large ones taking any political stance because I often doubt how genuine it all is. The cynic in me often believes it’s just the obvious right thing to say at the time and it ends up being free marketing for them by writing a few words supporting the cause. On the other hand, organisations are made of people, people have certain beliefs and coming together does increase the odds of it being heard.
People were hoping Geoff Keighley and The Game Awards would use their huge voice and respect they have in the industry to champion the above causes. Instead, however, there was a deafening silence and in some ways, I understand this. Both topics have a huge chance of angering publishers because the former will affect how much money companies and senior executives make whilst the latter may mean publishers are associated with Palestine and sadly it is still deemed controversial to be opposed to genocide.
Unfortunately, the silence wasn’t the only thing that made this year's show feel superficial in a way that hadn’t been felt before. The Future Class for example who are supposed to be the shining stars of the future don’t even get seats where they can the celebrations clearly.
Most of the awards weren’t even presented properly on stage. I understand why all the awards might not be given because it would make the show too long. Whilst multiple teams work on games and different people contribute to different awards being won I guess there is an argument that if a game is nominated multiple times, multiple speeches saying the same thing would also ruin the pacing. However, only 18% of the show, roughly 30 mins of it were used to present awards. For a show claiming to be celebrating the industry, such a short time being given to actually present awards is uncomfortable.
Some of the major awards were just straight up not even presented either. Whilst I was a bit lukewarm on Sea of Stars and to an extent Indie games in general, winning Best Independent Game and not even getting the chance to accept the award is baffling. Smaller studios usually find it harder to win an award and this could have been that studios only ever win and just to be brushed past them like that is shocking. Maybe someone couldn’t physically make it down to the show but at least a video could have been played.
This wasn’t the only major award to not be presented either. Another disappointing moment for me was when Best Fighting Game was similarly brushed off to the side. This year was a huge year for Fighting Games with the release of Street Fighter 6 being deemed as a return to form and Mortal Kombat 1 being a reboot for the franchise. Tekken has also started its marketing cycle with the newest iteration being released early next year. Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat was literally in the building presenting an understandably different award but still, that category was not given a formal presentation.
The last big snub I wish to talk about is Best RPG. This game was a huge year for RPG or RPG-adjacent games and a lot of modern games feature RPG mechanics anyway. For that category to not be presented properly when its mechanics are now the heart-blood of the industry is just plain baffling although at least Baldur’s Gate 3 won Game of the Year. Also just a side note, it’s always felt like a missed opportunity that Best Soundtrack isn’t presented using the amazing orchestra.
The above is made worse because it turns out that award winners were asked to keep their speeches to 30 seconds before being played off and this led to an incredibly insensitive moment when Larian Studios who won Game of the Year wanted to make a small tribute to their deceased colleague but were instead being played off and told to wrap it up instead. The Game Awards didn’t even have sufficient time for the Game of the Year.
Kojima however was allowed to come out on stage and spend the best part of 10 minutes talking about his game but not showing much other than some great-looking Avatar faces and bringing Peele on stage to talk about their collaboration for the game. The sad reality is that Kojima was given all this time to talk but in reality, a lot of what he said wasn’t of substance and didn’t market the game well.
As Alanah pointed out in the tribute link above, Simu Liu was allowed more time to make jokes about his busted leg, Anthony Mackie was given plenty of time to jokingly tell hecklers to shut up and Timothy Chalamet who is indeed a gamer but not working in the industry was asked to present the Game of the Year award. All of this felt egregious and more about feeding the capitalist cycle rather than celebrating people working in the gaming industry.
In some ways, the narrative of the show was ironically set when Sam Lake from Remedy, the studio behind the amazing Alan Wake 2 went up to collective the Best Narrative award and was very quickly played off once he reached his 30 seconds when he wanted to talk about the intricacies of narrative. Sam Lake also went to collect Best Game Direction and spent a moment telling everyone to care for each other and have empathy for one another. Whilst he wasn’t specific, to me it felt like he was addressing all the controversies leading into the show in a supportive way to those being affected more so than the show's presenter.
Giving award winners only 30 seconds meant a lot of the speeches weren’t deep as they couldn’t be in the allotted time and considering so few awards were being presented anyway, would it really have extended the time much if a couple of adverts were taken out to make space for each person to have 1 to 1.5 minutes to say something instead? That change would have also made the show feel very wholesome instead. The cynic in me believes that part of the reason the speeches were made short, was to avoid anyone even taking the chance to address any of the controversies leading into the show.
Alas, this year's show for me was the worst one they have ever done and it left me feeling cold inside. A show that had a trailer for Final Fantasy XVI content and a great trailer combined with a musical performance for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, both of which are part of my favourite franchise ever still left me feeling cold inside. I got what I wanted from an announcement perspective in a lot of ways but I didn’t get the chance to celebrate the industry. Geoff has tried to address some of these issues but I feel like his statement is incomplete. At the moment the show feels in limbo, is it a games showcase that happens to feature some awards? The name of the show suggests it’s the other way around, however. Geoff’s tweet gives hope for the future but at this moment in time, I am unsure if I will watch it next year. I probably will, but if it’s disrespectful like this year's show was again, I will probably be skipping the following year.
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