Phil Spencer received a lifetime achievement award last week. It was during the DICE awards ceremony in Las Vegas. For the occasion, the head of Microsoft Gaming returned to his career, from a young intern in a computer shop to the head of a giant in the video game industry. Thirty-five years of a career that will have seen difficult times in the Xbox One era and other much more positive times like Game Pass.
As well as his message to the wider industry, Phil also had a word for gamers. When asked about the ceremony at the mic by IGN, he reiterated the importance of looking at developers at their fair value.
Keep playing, keep using your voice, understand the power of creativity, the power of community. And the other thing I would say is respect the creators. I think it happens very often that creations can somehow be armed and used in battles between platforms and other things. I look to anyone brave enough to create something, to release it… for their peers, the industry, the players to play and analyze and talk about what they’re doing and just the fact celebrating that there are so many great games coming from so many creators and realizing that this is such a foundation for the direction this industry is going to take.
These words resonate with the news of the last few months. Developers are taken to task, death threats, pressure, etc. So much behavior that is intolerable and detrimental to the video game medium. Spencer is aware of the work still to be done and hopes to be followed by other representatives. You can find the sequence on Spencer just below:
