The Game Awards 2023 fell short of honoring its own industry

08.12.2023 - 20:33 / destructoid.com / Swen Vincke / Stephen Totilo / Neil Newbon

The Game Awards 2023 concluded last night, with Baldur’s Gate 3 taking home the trophy for Game of the Year. It was a big moment for Larian, and during the winner’s speech, studio head Swen Vincke took time to honor those who put in so many hours and work, especially those who couldn’t see this award.

“Along the way, we lost quite a few people also, so we want to dedicate this to all the people that we lost,” Vincke said, specifically citing lead cinematic artist Jim Southworth, who died last month.

It was a touching moment, the kind that sticks with you from an awards show like this. And at the time, the prompter visible to speech winners displayed “Please wrap it up.” As Axios’ Stephen Totilo reports, this wrap-up sign would appear after 30 seconds, and start blinking after roughly 15 to 20.

For Vincke, at least, the play-off music did not start. Though if you watched the Awards last night, you probably heard it a few times. Developers of games released in 2023 got very little time on the stage, and that was for the few that made it up there; as with years past, many awards and winners were quickly read off in rapid succession. No speech. Only a short nod, and then on to the next.

What we did see for great stretches of time on-stage were upcoming games. Projects that were new, unreleased, sometimes even nascent. In one of the more infamous moments of the night, Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele took the stage to show off OD, a new… experience? I’m still not sure what it was, aside from a video of people’s faces screaming and a door.

It was neat, and I’ve always loved a good tumble down the theory pit that comes from any Kojima teaser. But it was just people, talking on a stage, about a game. As Aftermath quick-mathed out, 13.5 30-second speeches could have taken place in the time that Kojima and Peele spent on stage. It was an awards show for 2023 that spent more time looking at unreleased games coming “soon” than games it was awarding.

Speeches themselves have long been some of the most memorable, human moments of The Game Awards. Sure, Christopher Judge went a little long in his speech, but it was also a great one. Greg Miller’s win for Trending Gamer in 2015 led to a great speech, calling for recognition of devs who don’t always get to take the stage. Ryan Green’s moving speech for winning the 2016 Games For Impact Award for That Dragon, Cancer still tears me up now, watching it years later.

Meanwhile, Neil Newbon’s heartwarming acceptance from last night, about representation and fans feeling seen in Baldur’s Gate 3 was met with a “wrap it up” and music. He wasn’t the only one, either.

Showrunner Geoff Keighley has addressed this now, the day after, saying that the music was played “too fast” for