A yearly tradition for me is “frustrated-watching” the Game Awards, and this year I had an audience as we streamed the entire three (!!) hour show live. Watching it led to many different drinking games including take a drink when a celebrity was shown and take a drink when a grub hub commercial came up, but as I say every year, the thing that’s missing from the award show honoring the people who make videogames are the people who make videogames. So, before we must have an Amazon Prime commercial, I want to give my thoughts on the TGAs and why this show does not, and should not, represent the industry.
Standing Up for Devs
The show started off on a bad foot from the very first five minutes with Geoff giving a poor response to this year’s wave of development mistreatments, lawsuits, strikes, and sexual abuse. Talking about online harassment is important, but so is talking about what is affecting the people who make video games.
With that, I want to say that it is horrible to hear about what’s going on at Ubisoft, Activision/Blizzard, a recent expose on Bungie, (along with Naughty Dog last year). No video game is worth abusing employees over and it’s time for the industry as a whole to stop rewarding developers who make games off the suffering of its employees. Speaking of which, Geoff’s message was followed by the reveal of a new game by Quantic Dream and David Cage who has also had trouble when it comes to abuse in the game dev space.
it’s been a tough year for Activision-Blizzard
For a show that really cares about video games, there was more about the people surrounding the industry than those that was in it. The pieces about how videogames affect minorities and POCs, LGBTQ+, and those suffering from disabilities was great, but it would have also been poignant to talk to developers and have pieces on those trying to do more in these areas, as opposed to the fifth or six commercial about Amazon Prime or that Riot Games music thing (which I did get 12 different copyright claims about the music from YouTube). There was a “blink and you miss it” award for innovations in accessibility that I would have loved to have seen a little more about how that was developed. Better yet, they could have cut any of the movie and TV promos and fill that space talking to developers.
This has always been a problem for me with the TGAs — it cares more about the culture of videogames as opposed to the creation. Somewhere, there is a middle ground between the TGAs’ spectacle and the slower-paced Game Developer Awards that we need to find.
What is an Award?
There are two big problems that I have each year with the awards given at the TGAs. The first is trying to come up with a credible list of awards. I honestly don’t think anything esports team, esports player, or influencer-related belongs at a show celebrating the people who make videogames. I would love to see more technical awards surrounding the different kinds of art. As someone who studies and talks about design, there should be more awards surrounding the design of a game, as I still feel that people don’t give good game design enough credit these days. Then there are the genres and how arbitrary some of the listings are. The whole discussion over how action-adventure and action now take up almost every game, and that Hades and Doom Eternal were in the same category in 2020 boggles my mind.
The best moment for me was seeing Arkane recognized for Deathloop
I understand that it can’t be so delineated down that we’re talking “best racing game, best racing sim game, best 2d platformer, best Metroidvania” and so on, but it does the industry a disservice not to have more awards; especially excellence in 2D design. I think part of the problem is that so few games are even considered for the award show — with the majority either being indie darlings or just AA and AAA games. There are more games that could have been in the “games for change” category in the indie space, and not having a best first-person shooter award seems off to me. As a side effect, it would also open more indie games to winning awards who are doing things differently compared to the AAA space, as right now it makes winners like Celeste and Disco Elysium more like glitches in the system rather than a promising step forward.
And the second problem, and one that really needs fixing, is how so little time is dedicated to people who win awards. There’s something off when the advertisements for Grub hub are longer than the time developers have to speak. There were very few “awards” for an award show, with many of them casually mentioned in-between breaks. For many people watching, this can be the very first time they’re hearing of these games and seeing people behind them, and it would be great to show the people who make the games everyone loves.
The Game-Wisdom Awards
I keep joking about wanting to do my own full-fledged award show to honor the designers and designs each year, and someday I’ll be able to do that. For now, tune in starting on the 20th of December on Game-Wisdom and my YouTube channel where I’ll count down my favorite games of 2021. The game industry is always at the forefront of things, and we already have our overly stuffed, detached from the industry, award show in record time compared to other industries.
Check out my latest book on horror design out now, and look forward to Game Design Deep Dive: F2P coming in 2022
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