The Game Awards 2023 are over and the winners have been announced, but some other sentiments are brewing among both developers and fans. Consequently, the live-streamed events show has been facing some intensive backlash since last night, with many news sources publishing articles calling out what has been called a lack of care for gaming by The Game Awards.
For the most part, The Game Awards has been a highly anticipated show by the industry and by players and fans. Of course, with the fall of E3 earlier this year, fans don’t really have many game awards and showcases to watch, but Geoff Keighly stepped in with his showcase. However, this year, the fanfare was reduced over what it used to be, according to many.
During the show, multiple developers who were excited to have won an award during the event were told to “please wrap it up” quickly in order to make way for a trailer or sponsorship. Award recipients were not given nearly enough time to make a speech. Indie developers were especially facing the brunt of this, getting less air time than prominent developers who were promoting their games or celebrities.
Josh Sawyer, the director of Pentiment, wrote on X that: “This year’s The Game Awards is an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it’s supposedly honoring.”
Many under that post on X have voiced similar sentiments, and some of the replies reveal that many are disappointed with the way the show was conducted. One user wrote: “Sam Lake getting hit with the “wrap it up” music almost immediately during AW2’s first award so they could run an ad was just disgusting.”
Rami Ismail, a former director at Vlambeer, wrote over on X how the Kojima showcase was far too long and that Kojima had “literally nothing to show yet” while Sam Lake was taken off the stage “after 30 seconds.”
Many are speaking out against the awards show last night for barely giving enough time to talk about game awards, with YouTubers trying to time just how much the show was dedicated to handing out awards. Bobby Wasabi found that 38 minutes were dedicated to the awards section itself. Hinterland Games marketing director, Raj Patel, stated that the awards show in total was about “three and a half hours long (210 minutes long)” in a post on X. He added that the “total runtime of awards acceptance speeches (13 awards) just 12 minutes long…less than 8%” of the total show.
Journalists Weigh In
Many journalists from major publications have also been speaking out about how The Game Awards was essentially sabotaging its reputation with what happened last night. Forbes’ Paul Tassi called the showcase a “parody of everything it’s often accused of being.”
Alice Bell at Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote a piece about how The Game Awards simply does not care about gaming:
“I’m very sorry to anyone who watched, live, as developers were hustled off stage in the middle of heartfelt acceptance speeches, and then expressed disappointment. You don’t need to finish the thought ‘if The Game Awards actually cared about games’, because, if we take a step back and suck air through our teeth as we size up the issue, well, there’s your problem, chief. The Game Awards as an entity does not care about games.”
Alice Bell
With all of this negative backlash, it seems like something will have to change for 2024, otherwise, this begs the question: Will The Game Awards’ fate be that of E3?
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
