The Game Awards was... something! (thoughts on Game Awards 2023!)

 Hey friends, so The Game Awards happened last Thursday, and I thought it would be important to just talk about a few things about it today! First of all, again, these awards mean nothing about you specifically. It's just for the people who work on the games, and the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year does not mean that you will necessarily love it. All of the games that won awards here are fantastic, and deserved the awards that they got, I'm sure, but you don't need to feel ashamed or upset if your favorite games didn't win anything. The Game Awards, as I said, should be a celebration of everything in the games industry from the past year, and I felt that they did a pretty good job of that. However, many people have said that there should have been some discussion of the number and severity of layoffs in the industry from this year, which were definitely extensive. We'll get into some other controversies later on, but I just want to say that I agree with this. It's a real shame that in such a huge and profitable medium, we still have so many people getting laid off from some of the richest companies in the whole industry. The developers that make these games deserve much more respect than they're given, based on the stories that I've heard of people in the industry and the amount of "crunch" that they've had to put up with. This may just be my naive young way of thinking about things, but it shouldn't be a hot button issue to treat the employees that are making these great products with a lot more respect than they are given. I feel like it wouldn't have taken a lot of time away from the show to talk a little bit about the human component of the games industry, but it would have probably hurt Geoff Keighley's brand sponsorships with different developers, so it would have been tricky to work that in probably. With this in mind, let's move forward into a lighter discussion about the games shown and just a few things about the awards themselves.

Take your time, but not too much time!

    I actually have to talk about the time limits on the speeches as well here. I understand that at last year's awards, Christopher Judge's 8 minute long speech slowed everything down and made the awards go on for a bit too long, but there has to be some sort of middle ground here. They added a "wrap-up" song like the Oscars this year, but I feel like they didn't allow anyone to have enough time for an actual speech here. These developers have been working on these incredible games for a long time, and I feel like they should have had more than 30 seconds or so to say what they wanted to say, especially for those who had never won an award before at this event. That being said, so many of these awards were presented in a way that didn't involve people coming up at all, there were just long periods where Geoff would announce the winners of four or five different categories at once. This isn't anything new, but I just think it's weird that certain awards get much more attention drawn to them than others. For instance, best Action/Adventure game got a spot on the podium, but best strategy/sports game was just announced in passing. I'm not sure how they decided on what would get the most attention, but it seemed like if there were several Game of the Year nominees included in the category, they would get the stage, otherwise they wouldn't get it. I know we can't give every award the same amount of time, or the show would last all night, but it just makes it seem kind of disrespectful when so many of the games didn't even get gameplay shown during the event. Now that we've gotten to the downer sides of this event, let's talk a little bit about the best part of the show, the reveals. 

Not a bad show for world premieres!

    The Game Awards has never had the kind of announcements that I'm really interested in, but this year felt pretty good. Obviously, Nintendo didn't have any announcement of any kind, but there were exciting announcements from much less expected players. I'll talk about the biggest ones first, and then get to some of the smaller ones that caught my eye. A free God of War Ragnarok DLC was announced to be coming out on December 12, introducing a new mode called Valhalla which acts as a "roguelike" built in this engine. I am so excited for that, and by the time you're reading this, definitely expect that I'll have played a good bit of this new mode. The other announcement that I was really excited about was the fact that Sega is making new games from old franchises. The ones listed were Streets of Rage, Shinobi, Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe, and Jet Set Radio. Though the list said "and more..." so I'm hoping for a new Space Channel 5 or something like that. I would also like to hope for a new Sonic and All-Stars Racing game with these old characters in it, but there was nothing even hinting at that, that's just a hope that I always have. Hideo Kojima showed up to discuss his new horror game called OD. Along with him, Jordan Peele came out to discuss that he is collaborating with Kojima for this project, along with many other artists that they referred to as, "The Avengers." I don't know what all is in store, but I hope  Along with these big announcements, there were also announcements from some smaller developer teams such as Finji, with their new game Usual June coming in 2025. From the makers of Dead Cells comes Windblown, which looks like a co-op roguelike almost in the vein of Hades, but playing as an axolotl and some other animal characters that have different powers to them. Pony Island 2 is coming from the developer of Inscryption and the original Pony Island, looking to be another game which begins with programming puzzles, but quickly devolves into something much more demonic in nature. I didn't play the original game, but I'm sure this one will be pretty wild just based on my experience so far with Inscryption. 

    World of Goo 2 was a nice announcement from the Tomorrow Corporation, makers of the original one and Little Inferno, as well as many other games. It looks very similar to the original game, based on the concepts of making bridges and other structures out of goo to get the goo to the ending goal, but just with a bunch of new components thrown in, which is always good for a physics-based puzzle game like this. There was another new trailer for Persona 3 Reload which is looking stunning based on what we've seen so far, so I'm really excited for that one. Arkane Lyon is working on a Blade game for Marvel, which I'm actually pretty excited about. I really like that Marvel is spreading out their IP, making it so there isn't just one project at a time. For example, of course, Insomniac made Marvel's Spider-Man 2 this year and they're working on a Wolverine game at the same time that this Blade game is in development, as well as the Captain America and Black Panther game that was announced a while ago. The follow up to No Man's Sky, Light No Fires looks like a cool idea, featuring an entirely open world where you can go anywhere. We'll see how it turns out, but it may come out in a similar state to No Man's Sky and the team could turn it around down the line, we'll have to see. I could honestly talk about the new exciting reveals all day, but I won't make you listen to me go on and on.

Some winners and other show stuff!

    I know that I said that these awards don't mean anything to us who just enjoy playing video games, but they absolutely mean something to the developers who work on these games, and there are a few that I would like to point out here. I am genuinely so happy that Alan Wake II got so many awards. Remedy brought home the awards for Best Studio/Game Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Narrative for their game this year, and even though I haven't played it yet, I'm sure that's very well deserved. Remedy is one of the weirdest and most creative studios out there, and I'm always happy to see them getting the recognition here. Along with this, I was very happy to see that Sea of Stars got the award for Best Indie game, while Cocoon got the award for best Debut Indie. Both games are so much fun and very cool, so I was glad to see them getting this.

    Along with the awards themselves, there were some pretty great performances this year. Of course, there was the obligatory Game of the Year medley played by the fantastic Game Awards Orchestra, which is always a highlight in my eyes, but there were a few other performances. Heilung, an experimental folk band played a song from the upcoming Hellblade II: Senua's Saga, complete with fires and a bunch of dancers that looked like something out of a cult. It was very weird imagery, but it fit well with the overall theme of the Hellblade series, based on what I know from playing the first game. It led into a new trailer for the sequel, and it was a really cool performance all around. The Old Gods of Asgard actually came out of the game Alan Wake II to perform at the Game Awards, along with Alan Wake himself and some other actors from the game and Sam Lake, the head writer (who also appears in the game). That was yet another bizarre performance, but it makes me even more excited to play the game whenever I have a chance to! There was also the world premiere performance of the theme song for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which sounds like it's going to be based on Aerith's theme. Luckily, Nobuo Oemetsu has written another Final Fantasy track, and it is beautiful. I'm so excited for that game that's coming out early next year.  Of course, Gonzo was there from The Muppets, which always makes me so happy whenever the Muppets are involved in this strange event, though sadly Reggie Fils-Aime didn't present an award this year. I'm not really sure why, but he didn't.

    With the awards all handed out for another year, the show came to a close, but we have so many things to look forward to, even just in the next few months! I'm always happy to celebrate games, and for better or for worse, the Game Awards gives a good reason to get together with friends and enjoy the few hours of announcements and reflection over the last year. There's definitely room to improve this show, and many games deserve more respect, especially considering that Independent games definitely need to be defined in a way that will allow actual Indie games to be in the Indie categories, but it's still a fun time. I hope you enjoyed busting out the old dress shoes and bow ties for the awards, I know I did.

    Thanks so much for reading my thoughts on the Game Awards 2023, friends! How did you feel about the show this year? Were there any announcements or performances that really got you excited about the near future? Let me know somewhere on the internet and I hope you didn't mind me being a little more critical this week of the different things that could be improved about the show. Thanks so much for all of your support, as always, and I hope you'll have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Awards Show Goer, and I'll talk to you again soon!