Since the creation of The Academy Awards in 1929, awards shows have been a staple of the creative arts. There's something crowds love about so-called acclaimed titles getting recognition from a handful of people whose opinions are clearly more important than our own. Ten years ago, Geoff Keighly made it his mission to create The Oscars of video games, The Game Awards.
The Game Awards has always been an event with mixed audience reception. It's an event to give recognition to the best games to come out in the past year, but it's also used to announce new titles. Despite being called The Game Awards, it's the announcements that bring in the viewers with the awards taking a backseat.
To put it bluntly: The Game Awards is a buffet of advertisements with a tiny dessert serving of awards. The awards themselves aren't treated as seriously as more prestigious award shows while the main focus is on the new game trailers. What makes this confusing is that there are actual ad spaces for other games. It's hard to tell when announcements end and where the ad breaks begin, especially with the host Geoff Keighly introducing the first ad in the block as if it were a normal announcement.
The awards aren't where the money is with The Game Awards and Geoff Keighly's other gaming event, the Summer Games Fest. According to a Kotaku article, a 1-minute trailer costs $250K at Summer Games Fest. It's safe to assume that the price is comparable, if not more so, at The Game Awards. Thankfully, there are some "free" slots for certain indie games. It's understandable to see why the awards and the winners aren't given the spotlight.
This year there were 29 categories, but like most awards shows, we didn't see all of them get announced with a fancy envelope. The Game Awards started with a half-hour "opening act" where a few smaller games were announced. Additionally, 8 awards were given, including all the esports awards and Innovation in Accessibility. As great as it is recognizing the efforts developers make to bring gaming to a wider audience, it cheapens the award by making it a footnote in the event.
There are times when I would have forgotten this was even an awards show if it weren't for #THEGAMEAWARDS being in the top right corner the entire time. There were also three occasions where, after a long string of announcements, Geoff Keighly read off the winners of 4 to 5 categories. Add these with the 8 awards given during the pre-show and you have two-thirds of the awards brushed aside at an awards show.
That's not to say that the game announcements aren't a reason to check out The Game Awards. In fact, this year's announcements blew previous years out of the water. We had announcements for The Witcher 4, Borderlands 4, and the return of the cult classic Capcom game Okami. These announcements are the reason most people tune in, and Geoff Keighly isn't a stranger to these events. Even in a post-E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) world, Geoff continues his Summer Games Fest annually.
Summer Games Fest is basically The Game Awards without the, well, awards. It's considered a hit or miss showcase of games, but occasionally you'll get gold like Killer Bean announcement. The biggest issue with Summer Games Fest is that it happens around the same time other studios, like Nintendo and Ubisoft, have their own press events. However, studios don't tend to announce things in December in the midst of the holiday shopping season. The Game Awards could change to Winter Game Fest and they probably wouldn't lose many viewers.
The issue with The Game Awards essentially being Winter Game Fest is that it doesn't properly recognize developers during a time that that games industry is in a decline. In 2023, just over 10,000 people experienced layoffs in the video game industry, and 14,000 were laid off just this year. Having a show designed to recognize the industry's greatest achievements become a barrage of advertisements seems a bit tone deaf.
In the event's defense, they did create the Game Changer award and specifically addressed the layoffs with a quick mention. The recipient of the Game Changer award was given to Amir Satvat, who put a lot of effort into finding jobs for those laid off by multi-billion dollar game publishers such as Microsoft and Embracer Group throughout 2023 and 2024. Satvat put together job listings, got legacy developers to coach, and placed over 3,000 people in new positions. His acceptance speech ended with teary eyes as he thanked his parents and it was a bittersweet moment during a show of blatant consumerism. Finally, a moment to recognize game developers and what they've overcome.
Almost immediately, they went right back to the onslaught of ads and quirky asides. Statler and Waldorf (of the Muppet variety) occasionally popped up to give their two cents. They even lampshaded two gripes I had: the rapid fire award announcements and the unusually high number of empty seats.
But they weren't the only non-gaming related distraction stuffed into the cavalcade of commercials, as both Twenty One Pilots and Snoop Dogg performed. While the former played music composed for Best Game Adaption nominee Arcane, Snoop seemed to only be there to remind everyone that he's in the new Fortnite chapter. Snoop Dog performed "Thank You" and "Gin and Juice," which didn't appear to be related to any of the games nominated or even announced.
When you have an event marketed as an awards show but you ignore over half the winners, you deny developers their chance to tell their brief story to thousands of people who wouldn't hear it otherwise. The Game Awards pulls in talent from the world and there are plenty of stories to tell. It's a shame that even Games for Impact, an award to honor developers who want to make a positive change in our world, only gives the developers a few seconds during the opening to talk to the crowd — while there's a countdown waiting for the "real" event.
Clearly Geoff is doing something right since The Game Awards are a hit every year — though it's dishonest to pretend that it's even about the awards, and there's nothing short of calling it Winter Game Fest that can be done to wash the awful taste of blatant consumerism out of our mouths.
