2023 marked a first for The Game Awards – it was the first time Player’s Voice and Game of the Year were won by the same game. There are some qualifiers for this – in 2020, the former award’s inception, Ghost of Tsushima won in a culture war vote against the critic’s pick of The Last of Us Part 2. In 2021, Halo Infinite won despite its late release date making it ineligible for any other category. And in 2022, Genshin Impact beat Sonic Frontiers in a battle of the bots. In 2023, we all agree – right?
Despite this first, it feels as though the most committed gaming fans and the industry at large have never been further apart. There has been an outcry from Spider-Man 2 fans after Baldur’s Gate 3’s win, and as someone who defended Spider-Man 2’s legitimacy for the gong, I can see why it has defenders. However, most of these defenders have revealed themselves to be popcorn munching casuals who can’t begin to understand the divergent pathways that intertwine within Baldur’s Gate 3.
In general, we’ve seen a lot of this before. People who only play Call of Duty and The Video Game Formerly Known As FIFA complain that games suck now because those two games suck now. This is not new, and Spider-Man 2 fans may be especially shocked to learn that Spidey likely came fourth in the vote behind Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom. Even then, it’s in a tight race with Resident Evil 4, but at least it probably finished above Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
This isn’t the major distance between fans and industry I’m talking about, though it perhaps is indicative of the bubble some fans live in. You can like whatever games you wish, and as someone who has been tried in The Hague for the crime of not liking Zelda, I can understand someone saying Baldur’s Gate 3 is not for them. But the differences this year go past the games to the show itself.
Not playing BG3 and deciding it’s terrible after an out of context combat clip isn’t giving it a fair shake, but it’s unreasonable to expect fans to have played every game at The Game Awards given how long and expensive they are, so there will always be cases like this, especially in crowded years.
In most previous years, there has been a general consensus as to whether the show was good or bad. Some individuals are always outliers (if a bad show announces a new game in the series you love, that may make it a good show for you), but the industry and the fans tend to agree in the broadest of terms. 2023 is different.
The production values of The Game Awards were at their best this year as TGA turned ten, and it came with a bunch of great reveals with just one minor leak (Arkane Blade) that seemed more like a rumour/guess rather than a full-blooded ‘this will happen’. Kojima was there with Jordan Peele. Some Fallout Power Armour marched on stage, along with a trailer that technically wasn’t new but most people who weren’t news writers or die hard fans hadn’t seen it. For a lot of people, that made it a great awards show.
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Elsewhere though, speeches were rushed through and played off with loud music while the disrespectfully blunt ‘Please Wrap It Up’ sign flashed incessantly. Aside from TGA’s usual policy of rushing through several awards without celebrating the winners, those lucky few allowed on stage were quickly whisked away as they got to the mic. The presenters, however, were allowed to prattle on about nothing.
While Anthony Mackie was there representing Twisted Metal and Simu Liu was revealing his own appearance in a game, both of them seemed desperate to have Keanu Moment, and felt out of place. With Liu talking endlessly about his injured foot, all it seemed to be doing was taking time away from the winners. The Baldur’s Gate 3 devs were played off when talking about their deceased colleagues after winning the biggest award of the night, and didn’t even get to reveal the shadowdrop on Xbox. In total, Gonzo and Kojima alone had the same amount of time on stage as all the winners combined.
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And yet, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for most fans. In fact, many feel the awards simply get in the way, disrupting the flow of the show to give us boring lectures. Industry professionals have told Keighley to ‘just make it Winter E3’ with a scornful tone, as if challenging him to admit he doesn’t really care about the awards. But fans have taken this and ran with it. Hell yeah, Winter E3!
It leaves Keighley with a conundrum. He loves rubbing shoulders with celebrities, and the importance of The Game Awards as a whole. The prestige would disappear without the awards, while the guest list of famous devs would be much smaller. It feels like our collective patience for the A in TGA standing for Adverts while awards are forced to play second fiddle is running out.
And yet, Keighley also loves the viewing figures that rise year on year, and the money that makes the show when charging for advertising space. Plus who doesn’t enjoy an adoring public? So how does the next show change – journalists and devs want more respect for the winners, while Keighley’s silence on the mass lay-offs and Future Class’ letter for a ceasefire was also noted with disappointment. But fans want it to get even bigger, with more reveals and more celebrities, nuts to the awards.
For a man who has always taken ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ as a suggestion rather than a rule, Keighley will need to choose whether to lean into currying favour with the devs he needs to give the show its allure, or the fans who make its profits. Continuing to appeal to both does not seem to have legs in the long term.
It’s an especially strange divide because The Game Awards has an incredibly populist jury. There are no taste-making critical choices in any category – they are almost always the biggest and most famous games eligible. The argument here is if a lot of people know and play and enjoy a game, then it’s good, but with the Oscars a movie can be plucked from relative obscurity and thrust into the spotlight because the voters are so moved by its artistic merit. The Game Awards doesn’t give you that, and still there’s this split.
2023 was the best The Game Awards has ever looked, with big surprises, a glut of famous guests, well-deserved winners, and little to no controversy. And yet, with so few awards given out, it feels like a crossroads. We’ll have to wait to see what 2024 brings.
The Game Awards 2023: Complete Round-Up
On this page you’ll find every piece of The Game Awards content we’ve produced. You can follow our continually evolving coverage here.
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