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Developers blast the celeb-laden Game Awards as 'an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation… with little respect

Draugoth

Gold Member
In particular, the show has come under fire for the short time allotted to acceptance speeches and celebrations of nominated games, with some devs rankling at celebrities getting seemingly limitless time to ramble while game makers were told to "Please wrap it up" after barely half a minute.



Plenty of devs have taken to Twitter to voice their criticisms of the show, perhaps none more pointedly than Obsidian's studio design director Josh Sawyer (who you know from Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and Pentiment), who wrote "This year’s The Game Awards is an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it’s supposedly honoring."

Blistering stuff, but Sawyer was far from the only dev to take issue. Rami Ismail—of Luftrausers and Nuclear Throne fame—wrote that he had "a hard time reconciling playing Sam Lake off the stage after 30 seconds, or the publisher representing COCOON's devs after the same, but having a many minutes-long Kojima bit for a game that has literally nothing to show yet," adding "That felt wrong, genuinely."

The show began playing Lake off during his acceptance of the Best Narrative award for Alan Wake 2 after about a minute (although Axios reporter Stephen Totilo reports that award recipients got the now-notorious "Please wrap it up" sign after 30 seconds), while Kojima and collaborator Jordan Peele got about six and a half minutes to chat OD on stage with Keighley.

There were plenty of other dev comments along the same lines
. Firaxis narrative director Cat Manning sarcastically remarked that they "love doing prolonged unfunny bits rather than listening to game devs talk about their work." Another, Arbitrary Metric's Jessica Harvey, tweeted that it's "great how the game awards are treating the award winners like they're an inconvenience getting in the way of all the paid ads."



Source
 

mansoor1980

Member
the kojima segment was ridiculous also one female developer had a very awkward moment on stage when she wanted to speak.
anthony mackie and that other actor were not funny and wasted time.
paul atreides however was quick and to the point.
 
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SJRB

Gold Member
From the clips I've seen some of the stuff was needlessly disrespectful to the people who are actually supposed to be celebrated.

Imagine telling Sam Lake, arguably one of the greatest and most talented videogame writers and directors of all time, to fuck off after only 30 seconds and then see Geoff, Kojima and Peele circlejerking for 6 minutes over nothing. The guy flies halfway across the globe to accept your little award, for fuck's sake.
 

Shut0wen

Banned
Its a hard one, they need ad revenue but the celebrity stuff is just massively cringe, not needed at all especially considering that its catered to people who know nothing about games, they still wont give a fuck about the show, also are we surprised seeing kojima sucking the dorito king? No
 

Dynasty8

Member
Next year cut down some of the celeb talk. Anthony Mackey spent too long up there. Kojima and Jordan Peele segment was also way too long. They need to trim some of it next time, but overall the show was pretty good and entertaining.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Its a hard one, they need ad revenue
I can pick 100 game awards winners in various categories at length and I don't need any ad revenue lol.

Also E3 used to be just showing off trailers and developers, and they didn't need any ad revenue either. It literally is an ad. Usually game companies pay to advertise their games. Not make money from other advertisers to advertise their games. It's advertisement Inception. Money, money, money for Geoff.
 
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T4keD0wN

Member
Kojima got more time than all of the winners combined. Should be renamed to "The Game Announcements"

Feels like he didnt want a repeat of what happened last year, but the solution was a little bit too aggressive.
When the people giving out the awards themselves do not care about them why should anyone else?
 
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The time window's were fine for what they had to thank for. It's the other's that were too damn long. The whole Kojima/Peele circle jerk was the biggest embarrassment of colliding egos. Just fucking terrible to watch. Other than that the rest was fine, especially as someone who's mostly there for the trailers.
 
Question is will Keighley actually say something to address these criticisms, because they seem pretty severe(and very valid).

I was legitimately shocked that the GOTY winner got virtually no time to talk. It was so disrespectful to how much love, soul and sweat went into making a game like BG3.

Yeah, Chris judge went long. Oh well. It was funny, a great meme. But to exorbitantly punish these developers for it, to the point where they basically are like "Say thanks and shuffle off so we can WOrLD PrEmIerE"

I think the only thing that would force a change is if developers outright said they wouldn't attend any longer unless changes are made.
 

El Muerto

Member
The Oscars and Academy Awards give 45-60 seconds for an acceptance speech. Geoff had to keep the show going and didnt want to go over, blame Christopher Judge for the new acceptance speech length. The Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele game reveal was not an acceptance speech and time during the show was alotted for the reveal.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Then you are missing the whole point the Devs are making.

Not really its a award show that needs to be watchable. Having a dev talk about his cats and 30 colleges and his wife and 2 kids while pushing his life story is something nobody gives a fuck about. Get on the stage, say thanks and maybe say something more until 30 secs and fuck off on to the next part.

They already culled tons of awards speeches by just slamming the awards in between because honestly its already to long.
 
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HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
At least the show gave us

LFTRaHn.jpg
 

mitch1971

Member
Not really its a award show that needs to be watchable. Having a dev talk about his cats and 30 colleges and his wife and 2 kids while pushing his life story is something nobody gives a fuck about. Get on the stage, say thanks and maybe say something more until 30 secs and fuck off on to the next part.

They already culled tons of awards speeches by just slamming the awards in between because honestly its already to long.
You are moaning about an awards show being too long when the shortest part of the awards was the awards! You're blaming the wrong sections of the show for making it 3 hours long.
 
I agree with the criticisms, but the award shows that are all about the awards and people doing acceptance speeches are not talked about or watched at all. The 'awards' are just a front for new trailers and shit that people are actually there for.

I would cut the blowing of Kojima and lame celebrity stuff first. Geoff definitely over-corrected with the speech time limits this year
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
I don't have a problem with there being time limits for speeches. Everyone accepting and award should be given 1min to make a speech or something.

My issue though was with listing out winners of other awards and not allowing them the spotlight of accepting the award, yet somehow finding the time to let a celebrity come on stage to announce trailers?????

That's just wrong.
 
And here I thought it was only the melodramatic music being used as a cue for wrapping up things. Off, this is a lil bit much.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Give 10 minutes to Shang-Chi to joke about his torn Achilles, then only 30 seconds for the actual winner.

watched the show, pacing was great. dude wasn't standing there talking for 10 minutes about his leg, he just mentioned what happened because everybody probably wondered, i did.

Again winners are just winners, u walk up thanks your mom and dad and move on.

If u want 10 minutes of a snooze fest of the same "talks" good luck with that, nobody will be watching the next time.

Then cut out the fluff (most of the trailers) and cut it down to a handful of meaningful ones.

Yea and cut your funding by half while at it. Smart business right there. lol dude.

You are moaning about an awards show being too long when the shortest part of the awards was the awards! You're blaming the wrong sections of the show for making it 3 hours long.

Not really shit needs to be entertaining to stick with it and watch it. Having long speeches will just wreck the pacing and with that people will tune out and never come back again.
 
watched the show, pacing was great. dude wasn't standing there talking for 10 minutes about his leg, he just mentioned what happened because everybody probably wondered, i did.

Again winners are just winners, u walk up thanks your mom and dad and move on.

If u want 10 minutes of a snooze fest of the same "talks" good luck with that, nobody will be watching the next time.



Yea and cut your funding by half while at it. Smart business right there. lol dude.



Not really shit needs to be entertaining to stick with it and watch it. Having long speeches will just wreck the pacing and with that people will tune out and never come back again.

Ask the publishers to contribute. Have a consortium whereby if you want your games considered for awards then you help to fund it and have no voting members.

Get rid of the elaborate stage. Cut down on the music. Awards and 5 trailers that are heavily curated. It would be much shorter, much cheaper and would likely draw larger audience as the fluff would be gone.

And for the love of god put it on at a reasonable time.
 

reinking

Gold Member
I always assumed the celebs were there to attract a wider audience. No idea if it works or not. My biggest complaint from the show, and it doesn't really bother me much since I understand they need advertising, it felt like it was The Game Awards brought to you buy Fortnite. Which, I guess it kind of was.
 
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