An Even Better “The Game Awards”?
It’s no great insight to say that The Game Awards’ primary interest is not in giving awards, but in making announcements. Could the show even survive without the promise of exclusive reveals of new games, with no eyes on the future, just on the past, like movie award shows do? I’m cynical.
Hype is the industry that we’re in. I don’t judge Geoff Keighley for working with the market he’s given. I can even stomach the occasional claims during the show that it’s all about “celebrating the past year” — that’s the wrapping, after all. But when that sort of line is parroted on-stage between a tease of Dragon Age 4 and the fourth Super Smash Bros Ultimate advert, it starts to sound disingenuous.
The show has two separate missions, and they conflict with one another. It’s hard to get engaged with award-giving when you’re thinking about the new trailer you just saw, and looking forward to the one they’ll show in a few minutes time.
I spent a lot of time during the show wondering what it would look like if the show committed to its premise. What if there were no announcements, no trailers, no “World Exclusive Reveals”. Only awards. Only a celebration of what’s already happened, and what made this year interesting. Could such a show thrive?
The part of The Game Awards that isn’t an E3-aping hype machine matches the Oscar format for movie award shows pretty closely. Industry people announce awards, there are acceptance speeches, lifetime achievement are accompanied by montages. A lot of this was built for the movies and works better in that context. Movies have stars, personalities who are themselves interesting, glamorous, works of art; immediately interesting for more than just what they’ve made. The Oscars does all needs to by saying “Here are the stars: enjoy.” Seeing them out of character and at their most extravagant is an event in itself. The same cannot be said for the videogame industry, where “Hype > Celebrity”, and “Product > Personality”.[1]
I couldn’t help noticing that at no almost point when a nomination or winner is called out is footage from that game presented. There were perhaps five minutes of game footage in the whole show. This strikes me as an obvious oversight. When they announce the “Best Esports Moment”, wouldn’t you expect them to show a clip of those nominated moments? They don’t. In categories like best student game, where a majority of the audience won’t even know about those nominees, isn’t it much better to play a second or two of video from “Jera”, or “Liff”, so we have an idea of what they are talking about?
Another way to look at it: if you think of “celebration” as a ritual to relive happy experiences, footage representing those experiences is a potent tool!
The majority of awards in the show were nothing but lists of game titles, one repeated. Barely a sketch of a presentation. The very reason for the show, supposedly, is treated as an afterthought; filler between new game announcements. It seems to me that rather than celebrating a year of developer’s creative sweat and player’s fond memories, TGA is doing them a disservice.
The best parts of the show were when a rare moment was taken to focus on one topic. The Greg Thomas/Visual Concepts montage was one example. The Ablegamers mini-documentary was another. Any time when a solid 30 seconds was devoted to a subject was a welcome exception. Greg Thomas himself doesn’t radiate charisma — he admits himself he isn’t comfortable with the spotlight. But by showing off his work and explaining his story, the The Game Awards 2018 allowed a little of his star power to shine through.
An award show relies on our emotional connection to the works and to the artform in general. For movie awards, the link between the show and the works is obvious: we see the actors and actresses that played the parts that we loved. We don’t have the same connections in videogames, where the creators who take the stage are not recognisable to us, because they work behind the digital curtain. The Game Awards can lift that curtain, if it puts the effort in. There is so much potential in an award show to unearth what shines behind the games. That show would be far more fascinating to me.
I imagine a show with fewer awards but more depth, where we explore the games that are nominated in some detail before the winner is announced, where the story of the nominees (both the creators and the creation) is set-up explicitly within the show.
For best soundtrack, for instance, The Game Awards would have interviewed Lena Raine and Bear McCreary and Woody Jackson before the show, and each would talk a little about their process and inspirations and how they tried to make their compositions the best they could, and of course in the background one of their songs would be playing along with clips of the game it from. Then the winner is announced, and one of those composers takes the stage, and we give a shit.
If the people that work on the game or aren’t available or don’t want to comment (or aren’t allowed), then at the very least talk to the journalists who make up the so-called “jury” to give their opinions on why a game was nominated and what, in their opinion, the creators did right.
I want a show that doesn’t just read out lists of games, but elaborates on nominations with answers to questions like: what is this game like? How was it made? What were the best moments? What did the creators think of the game, and do they think that they will win the award? What did journalists and players think? What challenges did the creators face? What new thing did it bring to the medium, and how did it achieve it? What sets it apart from the other nominees? Why might it not win?
Then, when the winner is announced, I want clips of the journalists and fans that voted answering the following questions:
- Tell me a story that demonstrates why you consider this game to be a winner.
- Why did you pick this game over the other nominees?
- Film yourself playing the game and give your comments.
- For Best Soundtrack: film yourself listening to the soundtrack and giving your comments.
- For Best Audio Design: what is your favourite sound effect in your chosen game?
Etc.
With all this implemented, I think we viewer would not only feel a lot closer to the games discussed, and feel that we understand them better, and feel more empathy and admiration for the people that created them, but finding out which game and which group of people that we’ve just got to know actually won the award would be more exciting. Hearing their reactions after winning (or even after losing), we would have a reason to care, and we would even want to discuss and debate which award winners were deserving and which perhaps were not, which is something I think few people cares about today because the very entity tasked with administering the awards treats them with disinterest.
The Game Awards 2018 impressed me. I would even say that it is was the strongest, and potentially most memorable, award show for video games I have ever seen, full stop. But not because of the World Premier announcements. New game announcements are always exciting, but that can happen on any day of the year, and when the next trailer is announced (or the game is released) how much does that first announcement matter? But a human connection is stronger. A celebration of the people behind the games of that year and the players of those games. Could such a show thrive? I’d certainly like it to.
