While covering The Game Awards 2023, I started to get upset about the whole thing because of just how much it felt like the winners weren’t getting treated with respect.
The problem started for me during the pre-show. Sydnee Goodman, who hosted that portion of the show, announced the winners of several categories in rapid succession. Those were Best eSports Event, Best eSports Coach, Best eSports Athlete, and Best eSports Team.
Normally, I don’t care much about those categories. I’m not a particularly big eSports fan, but the entire thing struck me as a bit odd. After all, these were people being celebrated and awarded for their good work, and they were all being lumped together like Goodman was reading back an order at a restaurant to a bunch of impatient people.
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However, it was the treatment of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Neil Newbon, who won Best Performance for his masterful work as Astarion, that really started to make me annoyed at the show. Newbon was clearly emotional about winning the award, and it’s entirely understandable why. The actor has been open about how he nearly left acting prior to Baldur’s Gate 3. Him winning the award is something truly, truly beautiful.
Newbon was cut off by music early into his speech. He was specifically cut off while he talked about how fans had reached out to talk about how Baldur’s Gate 3 had made them feel seen, and the value of that. The sentiment itself was beautiful. The music playing him off almost set the mood. But it still felt like Newbon was being rushed.
It’s hard not to see the choice to play people off so quickly as a result of some speeches having gone long at last year’s Game Awards. Christopher Judge, for example, went on for several minutes in his speech for his win as Kratos in God of War Ragnarok. It was even a joke that was part of his introduction to the award.
Due to the magic of internet videos, though, I can tell you that Judge’s introduction went on for 1 minute and 20 seconds, not including the actual time he spent reading the card, which adds a fair bit to that. That’s no shade at Judge, who is delightful and genuinely funny. However in contrast, Newbon talked for about 45 seconds before the music started playing him off. He stayed on stage for about 1 minute and 12 seconds.
The problem of Newbon being rushed during his speech was one that came up with almost everyone else. People got onto the stage to accept an acknowledgement of years of hard work, only to start getting played off before they’d really finished talking. This happened over, and over again. Some people didn’t even get a chance to speak, as other titles were also announced as having won awards as part of a massive batch read at lightspeed by main host Geoff Keighley.
The amount of time that Newbon spoke for before the music started playing is, in fairness, relatively standard for awards celebrations at this point. Awards shows also need to stick to a relatively tight timeline in order to accommodate everything they’re doing. I understand that on an entirely practical level.
Let’s compare The Game Awards to other shows of that type, though, specifically the Academy Awards. According to the LA Times, around 48 minutes of the average ceremony for the Academy Awards between 2010 and 2018 was dedicated to commercials, promos, and outros. Presenters took up the most time at 55 minutes, with speeches for winners taking about 30 minutes.
For The Game Awards (I timed this out, because what else did I have to do on a Thursday night?), the winners spoke for a total of 10 minutes and 52 seconds. That’s despite the ceremonies being roughly the same length, with several going long.
The issue didn’t appear to be time. The Game Awards had plenty of time for ads, which absolutely dominated the show. There were entire segments that really just felt like extended ad spots for upcoming games in the early stages of production. Overall, the experience felt like watching a bunch of trailers and ads in rapid succession rather than an actual awards show. At The Game Awards, the titles that were supposed to be being honored felt like an afterthought. The people behind them deserved better. They deserved a moment in the spotlight.
This isn’t to disparage any of the work that was shown off at The Game Awards 2023. Those creators absolutely deserved to have what they’ve done showcased on a major stage that increases the chances of what they’ve done getting the commercial recognition that it deserves and needs down the line.
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My issue is, instead, that The Game Awards should not just be a celebration of what’s coming up, but also the legacy of the year that it’s supposed to be covering. Those games that released and that we enjoyed matter. I wanted to hear what people had to say, and whatever meaningful messages that they might have had. Instead, what speeches we got were cut short, and many winners had no chance to speak at all.
The whole thing felt like a cynical attempt to shove trailers down my eye holes for three and a half hours. However, what I really wanted was a chance to celebrate those wonderful games that I truly cherished this year. The industry has been absolutely devastated by layoffs, and the Game Awards should be a celebration of the hard work people have put in over the course of several years to make what we enjoyed this year happen.
There was time to do that. All they had to do was cut a few ads. There were so many of those I didn’t bother to compare their percentage of the show’s total runtime against the Academy Awards. I’d have just been depressed. There were so many I started tuning out and writing this article, which is perhaps not the effect you want your advertising to have. However, I was completely overwhelmed by the end, and nothing really clicked with me because of that.
I don’t feel like I’m the only one who had a problem with how The Game Awards treated its winners in 2023. In our work chat during the event, a lot of us echoed that sentiment, and I saw people noting the weird pacing and rushed feeling of the acceptances online. On some level, I think many of us want to see the people who’ve worked hard celebrate their accomplishments and to be able to stand in the spotlight for just a minute longer before the music plays them off, or to get a chance to speak at all.
I truly hope at The Game Awards 2024, the winners get that space to celebrate their work, and to hear the applause that they deserve.
