We all know the Oscars aren’t perfect. I, like many others, have a lot of criticism of them, and all of it is well deserved. But when you see something like The Game Awards, you can’t help but think “Man, is this what an awards show is like?” The Oscars really aren’t the best awards show!
Even this year, the Godzilla Minus One team got going, they gave impassioned speeches – in English I might add – despite the obvious difficulty of it, and they paid tribute to their late crew members. Yet even so, the Game Awards and its tyrannical ruler, Geoff Keighley, can’t make you feel a little embarrassed about the state of our industry.
iGamesNews
For one, while the Oscars do have ad breaks, they’re just ad breaks. A brief period of time to prepare for the next part of the show, which is not the main focus. Anyone who has watched The Game Awards knows that 1.) the ads are really the main thing, and 2.) they are there just to promote the ads.
I love a good reveal as much as the next person; I still remember the double reveal of Banjo-Kazooie and Super Smash Bros., followed by the announcement of a Breath of the Wild sequel. They’re exciting and even occasionally communal, but a show that aims to celebrate craftsmanship consistently fails to do so because the awards themselves take a backseat.
Ridiculously, year after year, Keighley would stand there and loudly hand out awards without even giving out statues to the winners, all so that we could see the next announcement or ad that paid for the show. Sometimes they aren’t even “minor” awards, as if that was a reason to begin with. To make matters worse, the 2023 Game Awards are now notorious for how quickly each winner is judged, all in an effort to avoid a repeat of 2022’s Kratos Christopher Judge verbosity The fallacy of the speech – let’s hope none of us take the time to respect the Game Awards. The work of their peers!
The Game Awards then tried to legitimize themselves in a number of ways, bringing in celebrity guests like Anthony Mackie, Simu Liu, Gonzo and Timothée Chalamet. I really can’t understand why Chalamet would present the biggest award of the night, the Game of the Year award, other than Keighley saying “Wouldn’t it be cool for Timothee Chalamet to be at the Game Awards?” No, Jeff, that’s not cool. It just makes us look a little desperate.
But at last night’s Oscars, some real talent was recognized and (mostly) given time to say what they wanted to say. The first winner of the night, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, delivered a wonderful speech, which wonderfully kicked off the awards ceremony. Anatomy of an Autumn is a film that spent a lot of time in French, and winning best original screenplay is something to celebrate.And, of course, there’s Ryan Gosling’s performance I’m just willingwas easily one of the best entries of the night (although there’s no denying that Alan Wake 2’s Harbinger of Darkness portion of The Game Awards was just as good.)
But that’s it, isn’t it? Everyone loves the cast of Alan Wake 2 singing and dancing on stage because it’s a great number for starters, but also because it feels like it’s celebrating one of the best moments in gaming in 2023 . Sam Lake looks so damn happy to be there, you just can’t help but feel secondhand happiness.
I just want to see more of this at gaming awards shows. I know the place that really honors the great workers in the gaming industry is the DICE Awards, but The Game Awards remain at least the slightly zany cousin, launching the equivalent of a naked John Cena.
The thing is, I know The Game Awards would never be that way with Keighley at the helm. Now we have gone too far. So I don’t want it to be a real Oscar, even if I wanted it to be. Then again, I don’t think the Oscars are the be-all and end-all of awards shows – it just didn’t make me sigh as deeply as what I saw at the Game Awards. Yes, I would still call it a breath of fresh air.
