Game developers have a problem with this year’s Game Awards.
08.12.2023 - 14:17 / thegamer.com / Geoff Keighley / Hideo Kojima / Neil Druckmann / Neil Newbon
Hideo Kojima and Gonzo from The Muppets had just as much time on-stage at The Game Awards as the award winners themselves, who were hurried off-stage with a teleprompter reading "please wrap it up".
It's no secret that The Game Awards has more of a focus on game reveals and advertisements than it does the actual awards that the show is all about, but 2023 was a lot more egregious about it than usual. Not only did Geoff Keighley fail to mention the many layoffs that the industry suffered this year, but there was also very little time spent on celebrating the people that created the award-winning games that everyone was gathered to see.
The speech-rushing started early when Christopher Judge took the stage to give out the Best Performance award and made it clear that speeches as long as his was in 2022 weren't going to be allowed this year. Neil Newbon even made a reference to this when he accepted his Best Performance award, noting that he "doesn't have much time" and only talking for 78 seconds before the music cue hurried him off and more trailers were shown.
Newbon wasn't the only award-winner at the show who was hurried off-stage, either. Nobody who accepted an award spoke for more than 90 seconds, with some speeches even only lasting a little over 30, likely due to the "please wrap it up" sign on the teleprompter that would reportedly flash after 30 seconds on-stage. A lot of the winners also acknowledged the lack of time they were given, such as Neil Druckmann who said "clock's ticking" as he accepted the award for Best Adaptation.
Keighley wasn't just silent about the layoffs in gaming industry, as he also ignored an open letter signed by 79 Future Class members and more than 3,000 additional people that urged a statement in their name to call for the protection of Palestinian human rights.
That rush seemingly didn't apply to some of the guests that Kojima brought on to talk about upcoming games. The biggest example of this was Hideo Kojima, who revealed his long-rumoured Xbox horror game on-stage with a brief teaser, and then took up close to eight minutes of the runtime to barely reveal anything.
At least Hideo Kojima is actually involved in the gaming industry and talking about an upcoming project, though. Gonzo from The Muppets was on stage for more than two minutes for a lengthy bit that lasted longer than any award acceptance and surely could have been trimmed down or removed to give the winners time to celebrate their accolades. Gonzo and Kojima's sequences took up 11 minutes, which is nearly more than all of the award-acceptance speeches combined.
Perhaps the worst moment for this in the whole show was when Larian was awarded a well-deserved Game of the Year trophy for Baldur's Gate 3.
Game developers have a problem with this year’s Game Awards.
Following scrutiny from developers, The Game Awards founder and host Geoff Keighley has said he agrees the allotted speech time for each winner was too short this year.
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Larian Studios and Remedy led The Game Awards last night, with Baldur's Gate 3 winning six awards including Game of the Year, and Alan Wake 2 taking home three of the eight it was nominated for.
The Game Awards 2023 are in the bag, and while most people are no doubt talking about all the new trailers, there were, in fact, actual awards handed out! As many expected, Baldur’s Gate 3 walked away the big winner, nabbing Game of the Year and five other trophies, including Best RPG, Best Performance, and the Players’ Voice award. There were times when it seemed like Alan Wake 2 could take GOTY of the year, as it grabbed three awards in major artistic categories, including Best Direction, Best Narrative, and Best Art Direction. Beyond those two games, most of the awards were rather spread out, with major games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy XVI, Street Fighter 6, and Armored Core VI only receiving one trophy apiece.
Baldur's Gate III took home the top honour at The Game Awards 2023, held early Friday in Los Angeles, besting its lead competitor Alan Wake II. The Dungeons & Dragons-based sprawling RPG, which was strongly revered by both fans and critics alike, bagged six trophies, including Best Community Support and Best Performance. The latter was collected by Neil Newbon, who played Astarion, the silver-haired vampire spawn, holding our attention with his melodramatic persona and the occasional high-pitched screeches. Meanwhile, Remedy's Alan Wake 2 won four awards across some of the most important categories, with co-directors Sam Lake and Kyle Rowley emerging as the best game directors of the year, alongside a writing/ narrative nod.
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Gawd, it's like hyping yourself up before diving into a freezing cold ice lake. Okay, okay, okay. Brave face. Hey, it's time for The Game Awards 2023, everybody! Towards the end of every year, we all get to enjoy (or in our case, give up our evenings and ruin our fingers to the tune of) one of the gaming industry's biggest events. The Game Awards is not only an awards ceremony - it's a lavish smorgasbord of video game announcements, trailers, and news stretching into the early hours of the morning. At least for us Brits.
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The winners of the 2023 edition of The Game Awards have been announced.