https://www.destructoid.com/the-game-awards-2023-fell-short-of-honoring-its-own-industry/
Last night was The Game Awards 2023, one of the biggest nights in gaming. But for an awards show, it spent very little time on recognition.
Yeah I definitely felt that all the stuff I actually wanted to see were rushed and replaced instead with a ton of ads and generic looking game trailers. There were only a few trailers that were actually notable and for a 2h show that was super disappointing. The speeches getting rushed and a lot of them not even having time to go up was also very disrespectful to the devs. Just overall not great.
Curiously, what did you want to see?
A lot of us just treat this like the Superbowl and watch it just for the ads.
A lot of us just treat this like the Superbowl and watch it just for the ads.
That is crazy to admit. Here we have people trying to do their best to remove ads from their lives; using PiHoles, AdBlockers and VPNs to get rid of as many ads as possible, but they would sit down and willingly watch ads instead of watching world-class athletes battle for supremacy on their grandest stage.
The closest thing we have in Europe is the Football World Cup. I reckon due to the nature of the sport, they play for 45mins each half and fitting in ads during play would be met with fierce backlash and boycotting. It's insane to me that you'd look forward to ads instead!
Isn't that the difference here? Here we are choosing to watch ads -- more specifically I want to learn about new games coming out, versus ads that I don't, such as on most websites, YouTube, my TV, billboards, apps, etc.
It's an important distinction but a valid one
Yes, the key difference is that you're choosing to watch ads of the genre that the show is based on, but it felt like this year we were rolling RNG for 4 hours and the best we got was monster Hunter Wilds, Light no Fire, Hellblade 2 and checks notes FOUR Fortnite ads?
Many people felt bad that there was no Elden Ring DLC, no Titanfall, no Nintendo surprise even? Rockstar could have saved their trailer for TGA, but chose to have it on their own day. Absent were the plethora of AAA titles releasing 2024-2025. It felt like we rolled RNG for ads at actually want to see, and came away slightly disappointed?
The actual awards where they celebrate the games they are supposedly meant to celebrate. Some respect for the devs who poured all their time into making them instead of being rushed off the stage. And finally it would be nice for them to actually acknowledge the industries struggles this year and put a light on the fact that the gaming culture is kinda rotten and this is meant to counteract it, instead it seems to fall into the same hole.
It wasn't just a clown car with 90 clowns, it was a three ring circus. Not once was there mention of the nearly 6,200 positions lost by layoffs this year, at a time when gaming has never been more profitable.
This event needed a kid going up and being cringe at the end. At the end, it felt like the industry jerking itself off.
it felt like the industry jerking itself off
I mean, that's pretty much ALL awards shows
I don't know why people still watch these things. It's the same every year. There has never been a good gaming award show.
This isn't a show where CEOs get jerked off. It's not a celebration for the 1% at the top who get to smile and pick up an award after laying off hundreds of developers that earned them that trophy.
Developers make the games that are being awarded and shown off as "World Premiers". They get laid off right after launch as they're no longer needed once the crunch is over.
Acknowledging this would make the malpractice known to many of the viewers who are watching.
Says who? Just because you (or others) don't want it to be a show where CEOs/higher ups get jerked off doesn't mean it's not. The vast majority of categories are awards for games, which is an award for the game company and those companies are owned by "higher ups". The people who end up owning most of the awards will be the CEOs/higher ups. The show is very much about jerking off those CEOs/higher ups.
Which means you can't bring up the shitty things they do because next time Bungie will refuse to partake (not that their nomination wasn't a complete joke because they laid off the community managers who got them that nomination). CDPR loves to crunch so they might skip it next time, which would be a much bigger thing considering they actual won something. The show will never address the big issues in gaming because that's not what the show is about and those issues are not for the people who the show wants to impress. Kojima is a huge name in the industry and a close friend of Geoff, and you could see Keighley shitting his pants live on air trying to bring light to the shitty behavior of Konami. If such a big name already makes him shit his pants then I don't see how him doing anything of the sorts for anyone less than Kojima.
Let's just stop pretending like the show is supposed to be anymore more than vanity event to make important people feel like they're important. Not to mention year after year the show feels more like a vessel to feed you ads. You can't even give people time to give their speech, but there's always time to shove ads down our throat?
Ok I misspoke. This shouldn't be a show where CEO's get jerked off.
When a game gets an award, it rewards the entire process, from planning till release, with all the numerous developers coming together to make that vision a reality. Starfield didn't get any recognition, neither did Call of Duty, Overwatch 2 or the many other games that fester with malpractices. Sure, the CEO will pick up the award, but to get there you need to do things right. It's difficult to stand up on the stage as a truly scumbag company.
E3 died because companies pulled out. If there's enough community backlash to these events, and people stop actually appearing to pick up their awards or stop allowing their games to appear on TGA (and all you see on there are indie games and smaller studios), TGA will have the music played for them and be told to "wrap it up".
When the allegations against Blizzard came to light, they were banned from appearing at TGA, and could only be nominated. I do think Geoff is aware of the public perception of the show and is trying to balance making money, and giving time to winners. What happened to Neil was unfortunate as he was one of the first winners and Geoff Keighley did say he found people had too little time to talk and stopped enforcing it as the show went on.
I don't understand your point about Kojima. Isn't him calling out the company precisely what he should do? Sure, he needs to do it tactfully, but I don't see anything wrong with his delivery. That he sequed into a musical performance was hilarious and actually pretty cool.
I do agree with you about the ads though. The OD segment was far, far too long, for what wasn't even a teaser. I still don't understand what Gonzo was doing there, and the Alan Wake musical number (as well as the Hell blade 2 one) were fun, sure, but I'll take longer speeches over those anyday. The show is not without fault but it's the public who vote on the winners and make it what it is. I'm sure there's enough discourse this year about his failings for him to fix things next year, and I'm sure he'll address them.
What I'm concerned about though, is the lack of AAA titles. "World Premiere" seemed a bit grandiose a term to use for many of the titles shown. Everyone was waiting for Elden Ring, Titanfall, a surprise Nintendo announcement or, hell, a Fallout New Vegas remake maybe? Something?
We got Monster Hunter Wilds as the only really big game there. Light no Fire and Hellblade 2 are good offerings from established devs but hardly headliners. Major studios still don't think TGA is a platform worthy of their products and if public perception doesn't drastically improve, it may never be.
What a wasted opportunity. The Academy Awards don't resort to advertising upcoming movies the whole time, they take a pause to appreciate what they've made. The game of the year awards should do the same.
Yeah but I was here to know about those incoming game . its the only reason else was just cringe.
It doesn't take many minutes for compilation videos to show up on YouTube that only contain trailers for news games, etc.
Yup but its an other experience to see it in live , also I watched a streamer reacting to the live ,so the sarcastic react made the experience much better. But yeah I could have save 4h of my night by just watch trailers after the show.
Yeah I don't get the hubbub from all these sites? What are they expecting? Social justice and equality?
The whole thing is a marketing event with the awards there purely to hype people up over the most popular games. It's completely the wrong platform for what I keep reading all these people ask for, considering it's being funded by the games publishers themselves. If that was the case, they wouldn't bother paying to advertise their games.
The article seems to highlight that the money behind such a big event mainly goes to the hype for games yet unreleased, rather than focusing on praise and even advertising for really high-quality games that are already out.
Sometime I'd like it if video game marketing changed this way - it's much easier to market a game that already has tons of great reviews, and they've kind of generated many gamers that are unsure about any marketing they hear. The streamer I watched the awards with ended up finding out about a previously-released game by a developer he'd really enjoyed, thanks to the show.
These shows are mostly ads. I remember when Candy Crush was popular, and how they were mostly sweeping the awards while also promoting their next thing.
Also pretty sure they bought a LOT of ads too.
I'm learning that people actually care about the rewards and not just scrolling through the announcements list after the show is over.
I guess it depends on who you are, and if that's why you're watching.
CDPR has a disastrous launch but came through for their fans by committing to delivering a solid game that won them the "Best Ongoing Game" award, again, putting them in their fans' good graces again for the mistakes they made.
Neil Newbon, the voice actor for Astarion in BG3, spoke in the past about how his face wasn't a Hollywood face. Despite countless auditions, he was always turned down because of the way he looked. His voice acting and motion capture performance (i.e. actual acting!) in BG3 won him the "Best Performance" award, vindicating him from all those people who said he's not good enough.
Neil is just one of the many stories of what it takes for individuals and studios to get recognised. This was the peak of his career, to finally be seen for what he can do, and not for what he looks like (I've no idea what anyone is complaining about with regards to his appearance!).
They should have given him more than 15 seconds.
Neil Newbon, the voice actor for Astarion in BG3, spoke in the past about how his face wasn’t a Hollywood face.
This is Hollywood demanding standards so strict and unusual that it borders on bigotry. His face looks fine, and a helluva lot more chiseled than mine.
It's like when nobody considered casting an actor with dwarfism in a normal role, and then Peter Dinklage started appearing everywhere. But, Hollywood kinda forgot what that meant and didn't bother to repeat that with other actors with dwarfism.
This is why people still accuse Hollywood of racism and sexism. (Because it's still true...)
Exactly!
Neil is straight up attractive. I don't understand the disregard for his talents but I'm guessing something else happened that put him on the blacklist?
He has insane talents and I totally agree. Hollywood is vile to the core and it's no secret, with names big and small, old and young, veteran and rookie all content to say it as it is. It's sad that Neil was one of the unlucky ones. What's sadder is all the Neils who couldn't find a break like BG3 to revive them.
Such a good point about Peter Dinklage too! It was his star power that producers banked on. I'm sure they would never have cast him if he didn't stand out in GoT.
Same. I haven't looked up the nominees, winners or even categories. The next day I saw Monster Hunter Wilds and Metaphor news and that's really all I care about. I don't get award shows in general since they don't change anything for me - the product doesn't get better or worse depending on the outcome.
You’d think the tentpole genres would at least get a little more airtime.
They ran through the awards for Action Adventure, RPG, etc.
You could cut the "2023" from that, and it'd be no less true.
I mean sure, this year's ad-centric nature was particularly obvious, but come the fuck on, journalists/readers/whatever: Did you ever have any doubt, seriously, ANY doubt, that this is 100% ad-space? And if yes, how?! What part of this did you watch in what year that wasn't just ad-space for publishers?
I'm honestly glad I didn't bother watching this year. Kinda just forgot about it as it started and went and saw Godzilla Minus One. After reading about its reception I think I'd made the better choice.
It a show whose goal is to generate revenue. That's it. That's the whole thing.
If you want awards that are actually worthwhile by themselves, GDC and BAFTA are the better choices.