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.
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Everyone knows The Game Awards isn’t about who wins, but about what happens at the show.
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.
Future Games Class report thing
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. Swen Vincke spoke for less than a minute and was in the middle of dedicating the award to developers who had passed away during the making of Baldur’s Gate 3 before the music kicked in and told him to hurry it up, something that wasn’t done when Gonzo was running around with a chicken for no reason at all.
Game Of The Year Editor’s Pick, 2023 – George Foster
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