Stop Complaining About The Game Awards
Tomorrow, on December 12th, 2024, The Game Awards will air. It’s a big night in gaming. There’s a lot of solid contenders this year for ‘Game of the Year’ (pulling for you, Balatro) but I’m not expecting anything akin to an underdog story here, unfortunately.
What are The Game Awards good for? Marketing. Advertising. Shared cultural moments. Game Industry Networking.
We will see A LOT of game announcements. Some we’re excited for (personally Borderlands 4), and some that will come completely out of left field (Metaphor: ReFantazio from 2023). We’ll have celebrity walk-ons (Simu Liu’s foot is fine now, I think), Pedro Eustache playing his flute to his heart’s content and who’s left of the game industry and journalists rubbing elbows.
It’s more a celebration of gaming culture. It’ll have moments we can meme over for a couple weeks and argue over when Elden Ring: The Erdtree pulls GOTY. It’s the Super Bowl, not a great game generally but some of the commercials are good enough to enter into the public psyche.
What we won’t see that much of are Awards. Geoff Keighley will smile, announce the category and the nominees, wait 3 seconds and announce the winner. He’ll then repeat this loop for a couple more categories and then will cut to the next announcement. Typically, Game of the Year and Best Actor/Actress get some stage time to give a speech, but they too will be hurried along in order to show the next big Marvel project.
You most likely won’t see any discussion that this year has been the worst year in game industry layoffs since they started shortly after the Pandemic. That is, unless someone at the dais goes rogue with their 20 seconds of speech time allotted.
I’ll personally be paying more attention to the BAFTA Game Awards & The Golden Joysticks going forward. At least the BAFTA’s have the balls to put Thank Goodness You’re Here (probably the funniest game I played in 2024) in the running for Game of the Year!
This year I decided to stop complaining about what the Game Awards could be, and instead decided to see them for what they are: a lot of pomp with not a lot of substance.
But hey, maybe we’ll see Kojima!
