How to "Fix" The Game Awards

The Game Awards has always felt like a show that's trying really hard to be taken seriously but consistently falls short. That's beginning to feel like a thing of the past with respected industry members like Josh Sawyer here (Fallout New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, etc director), or Jacob Geller and Kelsey Lewin via the MinnMax Show podcast, or Patrick Klepek of Remap (Scoops!) heaping varying forms of criticism on the 2023 award show ranging from being embarrassing for casual viewers, not representing itself properly as an award show, not calling proper attention to the nightmare year that game development has had behind the scenes, and so on. Long story long, I think The Game Awards matter now - and based upon the (often negative) engagement I've seen across the internet and within the industry, people want the show to be great, but to also want it to be what it simply cannot.

I don't think think it's any secret that the success of The Game Awards (TGA) can be credited to its informal Winter E3 but not E3 branding. Hot take incoming: people like being excited about new video games that aren't out yet. I do think that this is of critical import to the show and it's long term success. Sure, I would still watch if this was an average award show akin to the Oscars or the Grammys, but it's obvious that the show would not pull the same numbers if it was. So how does Geoff Keighley balance what people want? While people on Twitter are ping ponging between 2022's prevailing criticisms of unregulated speech times and poor security and 2023's speeches being too short or non-existent ie. "a slap in the face to devs", I think the extremisms of these complaints don't really represent how close Keighley really is from a show that pleases most everyone. Here's how he can get there:

1. Keep the celebrities to a minimum and replace them with game industry figures.

This actually sort of happened this year too! Okay, well...once. Ed Boon was technically on that stage presenting an award, but that's not what people were talking about. Anthony Mackie, Timothee Chalamet, and Jordan Peele kind of took over this conversation. I think the prevailing opinion is that celebrities add very little to this show. I am in full agreement with this. Here's why. While I can't say for certain, I would imagine the core audience would be faaaaar more into seeing Reggie Fils-Aimé present an award than Anthony Mackie right? Of course we would! We love legends of the gaming industry and are mostly indifferent to celebrities. Limit the celebrity appearances to something actually great like Keanu Reeves and not a confused Al Pacino and we'll all feel breathtaking again.

2. Make it clear which categories will have speeches attached to them and which will not and allow up to 2-3 minutes for a speech before playing them off.

No award show has speeches for every category. It would be miserable to watch. The amount of speeches wasn't necessarily problematic to me, but what irked me is the lack of clarity on who and what gets a speech. Presumably Best Action Adventure game got a speech because Zelda won and Aonuma was there to give one? You wouldn't want to stiff Aonuma after all, but then no other genre category got a speech so...? It's just muddy and bound to make people angry. The solution? In my opinion, the winners of Games for Impact, Best Performance, Game Direction, Best Music, Best Narrative, Best Indie, and Game of the Year get speeches and you relax the time limit on those. It was made clear to speech givers to wrap up in 30 seconds and Keighley himself admitted that was too short. Give 'em 2-3 minutes to say their peace and that should be plenty.

3. The orchestra is too good not to use them more. In addition to the Game of the Year montage, add a montage for Best Music.

This one is pretty self explanatory but a consistent praise of the show is the orchestra. They are awesome and add another dimension to the show besides trailers and speeches. This is not meant to replace anything like the Old Gods of Asgard bit from Alan Wake 2 which also was very well received or even the Hellblade or FF7 Rebirth musical numbers.

4. Spread out the non-speech receiving awards between trailers and play a 30 second video montage of the game winner.

The rapid fire nature of announcing the non-speech receiving awards has been a consistent criticism and I think giving each award winner their own moment with a small amount of pomp and circumstance would be apt. It doesn't have to be a lot in my opinion, but enough to make their moment their own and to showcase their game to anyone who may be unfamiliar with it.

5. Move some of the trailers into the pre-show if need-be to make room for these other adjustments and market the pre-show heavier.

I straight up missed the follow up game from Motion Twin (the Dead Cells dev) because I didn't know there was a pre-show with big stuff in there. The adjustments needed will assuredly make the show longer or displace some of the game trailers, so moving some of the trailers into the pre-show and then marketing the pre-show heavier is a potential solution. I'm sure the cost to put a trailer in pre-show is less than the main event, but as noted at the top, I think this show matters now. It's important to get it right for the most people to ensure its growth and development.

6. KEEP DOING THE FUTURE CLASS THING

The Future Class highlighting up and coming indie devs was a wonderful addition to the show and I can't emphasize how much this type of thing is appreciated.

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All in all, no, I don't think TGA is embarrassing. I think that is reductive and overly negative for what is some really good fun for those interested and we are better off for having an independent entity like Geoff Keighley doing his best to figure it all out every year. Geoff deserves a ton of credit for bringing it to us in the first place and trying to get it right. That said, the show is not perfect. We do need the trailers for eyeballs and entertainment value and Geoff's got that down. But if he is able to take some of the criticisms to heart to do more to celebrate and honor the winners, I think we could be in for the best version of TGA in the very near future.

Counterpoint: The Game Awards aren't broken because the purpose of the Game Awards is to be a giant advertisement vehicle, not really an awards show.

Would Keighly like it to be more respected? Sure. May he make small changes to that effect? Possibly. Is it his primary concern?

No.

The Game Awards were always conceived of as a TV show. For older awards shows like the Oscars, they started as true industry events (private dinner, not televised) and grew into glitzy spectaculars. The Game Awards were always intended to turn a profit, and they do. Every part of them is designed that way. Everything else is secondary. And the Game Awards are getting tons of ad buys and making money. Celebrities add to that mix by getting attention outside the gaming press and providing value to advertisers by bringing in the non-Hardcore who might otherwise not see your ads.

So yeah they can extend speech time, use the orchestra more, and a few other small changes but the trailers are more important than the awards and are going nowhere. And the celebs are likely not going anywhere either.

This is a show about making money not celebrating art. In that it is the show the modern game industry deserves.

Voidburger's reaction to TGAs was basically "bring back E3". I agree. Mixing all of these announcements/advertisements for new products with an awards show just doesn't work. They need to be separate events. The people paying money for airtime contractually have to get that airtime and it seems like if anything goes long or otherwise throws off the schedule, the awards section of the show takes the blow. It's also way too much stuff for one evening. I was swapping between GB and Remap's watchalongs and both were losing patience with the show by the three hour mark. It's too much. Split it into two nights, one for awards and one for announcements. Anything is better than this.

Also, give someone else a chance at running this stuff. Keighley's had plenty of opportunities to do better and hasn't. It's somebody else's turn. E3 dying and everything somehow ending up under Keighley's control is a real monkey paw finger curling thing. Were people happy with the previous iteration of E3? No. But having some boring dude with the personality of plain yogurt hosting the biggest event of the year every year is not it. The industry can do better.

They lost me the second they cut off the Astarion voice actor's fairly touching speech when he was talking about how he'd had so many people reach out to him to talk about how important the character was to them and how thankful he was for everyone. He hadn't talked long and was having a genuine moment then they just cut him right off. It wasn't like he was rambling or anything like that guy last year.

Alanah Pearce correctly said that the celebrity appearances reeked of starfucking.

Geoff Keighley is an absolute fucking embarrassment to this industry. He's like a perpetual child who was made fun of once for liking video games, and responded with, "My parents are rich and I'll show you!" That's fine for a middle schooler, but he's been overcorrecting for 30 years.

Edit: I made the comment elsewhere that at least all of the celebrities were people who were involved in either a game or game-related show, but I was wrong. Game of the Year was announced by Timothée Chalamet, who has nothing to do with games.

The Game Awards have eyeballs because of the adverts, we already have prestigious awards like the BAFTAS and Game Developers Choice Awards which nobody watches.

Actually make it about awards, not ads.

Y'know, like the name suggests

@bladeofcreation: Chalamet was introduced by his old Youtue handle where he used to do controller modding as a hobby so he is at least a games enthusiast. That's....something maybe?

I don't think it's about the celebrities so much as it is about how people are presented.

Kojima is obviously a legendary game creator but he was there because of celebrity and because he's Keighley's friend and was given a bigger platform to promote his new game than any of the winners were to celebrate their victories.

Having Kojima come out for a big presentation about his new game would be like at the Oscars if they brought out Steven Spielberg to give a presentation on his upcoming movie. That's not what awards shows should be about. They should be about celebrating work people have done, not stuff that isn't finished and may actually be terrible. If the game is great it can go to the awards show on the year it's released.

Which is why this is not really an awards show.

It's funny, I've been calling out Geoff Keighley for some time now, and it seems like it took this awards show for people to finally get it. I always called him the Ryan Seacrest of the gaming industry, but he actually might be a lot worse.

I think the show should use game trailers and announcements as exciting moments in the show, a surprise for the audience, instead this year more than ever it felt like the awards themselves were a burden.

There are a lot of other things wrong with the show, but that change in focus would be a start.

I think, in addition to moving trailers to the pre-show, they should also do the post show. Plenty of people have called out that the TGAs serve dual masters, both as a Winter E3 for the gaming crowds, and a legitimate awards show for the industry (despite there being better awards shows, winning awards here directly translates to sales, so these awards matter), but I think separating the two a bit would add a lot to the show and make the parts distinct. Let people know that the pre-show will include *tons* of trailers, and the “community focused” awards such as the esports players or best event. Then do the awards show, but only focus on the awards. Add montages, spend a bit more time with the categories, be respectful to the industry. They could be done in an under an hour and still give 1.5 to 2 minutes to the speakers. Then do a post-show with all the major trailers. The audience at home doesn’t know the difference, it’s all just TGAs, but for the people in the theater, it would be a more focused event and not the four hour hell that many attendees currently describe it as.

What I'm finding based upon the responses so far kind of confirms what I've been thinking this whole time - TGA aren't special without both of its slightly clashing elements. Many are pointing out that the ads are essential for revenue, eyes on the screen, and entertainment value - absolutely correct. Others are showing frustration with how passed over the awards (its namesake after all) feel. Can't say I disagree there either.

I think finding the right balance to serve both masters is key - splitting the awards and the trailers completely separate the already polarized opinions on this but we're all watching together if the balance can be struck before Geoff alienates either side of the argument.

@av_gamer: People call him out every single year for his devotion to celebrities and advertisements. Talking (well-deserved) shit about Keighley after the awards is a time honored tradition. Alex Navarro called him out in an article on this very website way back in 2011.

It's just one GOTY list among an Internet full of GOTY lists, albeit one that has more production values than most. I agree with many of the criticisms yet at the same time I don't understand why people are treating Keighley like he's some well-known predator. It'll probably never be the show some want it to be, but at the same time I'm sure that it'll continue to get better.

@apewins: I don't thin Keighley is a predator or being treated like one. He's just bland and mercenary. Especially the latter.

This is his business and he runs it like a business. There's nothing inherently wrong with that except he also wants it to be treated as having serious critical merit, which it doesn't.

No serious awards show spends this much time hyping stuff that isn't out yet and this little actually honoring the achievements of the things that were released.

As for it "continuing" to get better...has it gotten better at all? It's gotten better production values but you can argue it's worse than the first few years. It's bloated and slick and less and less focused on the awards. I see no reason to expect it will get better.

Keighley's just a very basic, hard-hitting shill. Every trailer is amazing and ground-breaking or whatever and I just hate hearing his spiel. And at the same time the celebrity chasing feels like the moves porn does when wanting to court legitimacy.

Say what you want about E3, that thing HAD a legitimacy and a prestige.

@shindig: E3 had some degree of legitimacy but prestige? It was a trade show. A lot of crappy games bought booths there. It had legitimacy because the games that showed up there were generally backed by big publishers so you knew they were relatively unlikely to be vaporware (though many did end up as that.)

I mean there was certainly a time when at least it had a perceived prestige to it. I think it began to erode once every gaming outlet sort of decided to just livestream every second of it and fully reveal how the sausage is made but there was a time in its history when it was this mystical gaming mecca that everyone wished they could go to not knowing that actually it's just kind of an interesting nightmare in practice.

@efesell: I get what you're saying. I'm just saying that while attending E3 might have been prestigious I never thought that games being shown there added much prestige. Not like being on the Keighleys right before Jordan Peele!

the Keighley's are made in the image of the man who willed them into being- they won't change until he wills it so. and i don't think he's even incentivized to do so.

push the DICE awards instead (which only nerds like myself will watch anyway). awards are only as good as those awarding them, and getting something from your peers in the field will always be more significant than a vague assemblage of legacy media, personalities and influencers.

I'd never really put it into words like this before, but I think this sums up why the awards show doesn't just feel bad, it feels gross.

@bigsocrates: Shows like the Oscars and the Grammies and others existed long before the Internet and they were able to grow without competition until they just became a thing that nobody is questioning. Not so with gaming because everybody that has a gaming podcast also does GOTY so that's not a thing where they can stand out. So as much as I hate the shilling and the ultra-positivity too it's pretty much a necessity for this thing to exist financially. But I do think that it's a net positive for the industry if it gets more people into gaming.

You asked how the show is improving, last year they let winners talk as long as they wanted which just isn't great when your show is precisely timed and bored viewers end up changing the channel. This year the limit was too tight which Keighley has acknowledged. They'll find a sweet spot probably at around 2-3 minutes.

I'm really not sure TGA can be fixed per sé, given that it is actively working as intended for the people who put the money in to make it happen.

@apewins: The Game Developers Choice Awards is the game industry's only open, peer-based awards show and has been around 20 years, it's far closer to the Oscars of gaming than the Game Awards could ever be. The Game Awards will always struggle for legitimacy while trying to put on a show, its an impossible balancing act.

@redhorsespirit: I think this is a good breakdown. The one comment I would make to your comments is your note about Jordan Poole. He's working on a game with Hideo Kojima. So, having him come out makes a lot of sense to me. Now, if he just came out as "Jordan Poole actor/director," it would be different.

Sick burn

@broshmosh: the "fixing" feels a little imperative to me unless they want to further alienate the developers that are the backbone to the show. Sure, they're not the money backers, but their support of the show is pretty crucial to its ongoing success. Hell, Swen Vincke (BG3 director and Larian CEO) had to take to Twitter to post what he would've said in his acceptance speech but wasn't able to due to the time constraint. That's just a bad look for ol Geoff and one I think he'll be wise to avoid going forward.