The Game Awards | December 3rd

Live from LA! December 3rd! We're nearly at the second 'The Game Awards' show. I watched it last year and was impressed by how slickly produced Geoff Keighley's show was. It was an interesting mix of actual awards, promotional content and live music. They awarded Dragon Age: Inquisition the game of the year award.

Interesting stuff for this year includes the apparent attendance of Kojima and a performance by chvrches, who are pretty great.

The Game of the Year nominees are Bloodborne, Fallout 4, Metal Gear Solid V, Super Mario Maker, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Full list of nominees here. I do think it is crazy that both Splatoon and Undertale are missing from their music nomination but hey ho.

Anyone here planning on checking this thing out?

Kojima is there? MGSV definitely going to win GOTY then.

Greg Miller better win or I riot.

With Keighley a free agent where does one stream this from? Also what the fuck is a Trending Gamer? Someone with a big social media presence?

Not because it is a masterpiece claimed by 99% of mainstream media?

@hayt: Last year it was in Vegas, not sure the name of the venue, but this year is gonna be in Los Angeles. Last year he got a lot of backing (and ads) from publishers, so I guess this year is going to be the same. It was a fairly big event, it was even streamed on Steam.

Lots of places. Last year you could watch it on Twitch and PS4 had an app or something for it. Think you could watch it through Steam too.

This year it'll probably be Twitch and/or Youtube and everywhere else. Steam, Sony and MS have all said they're going to have another sale to coincide with the awards. Steam had one last year, dunno about the other two.

My uncle from Nintendo said that he's going to walk out onstage with Norman Reedus and Del Toro and they're going to announce PTEx. But really lots of people said that they reckon his non-compete clause expires with Konami in time for this. I don't know if it actually does or not or if it's just another fever dream of Kojima fans.

Whoever came up with that header font shouldn't be allowed design fonts.

@hayt: Trending Gamer is based on fan voting so, to be crude, having the largest social media presence and mobilized fan base is a big part of getting the award. Which... makes sense? The most popular person wins the fan voted award.

In terms of where you can watch it, pretty much everywhere. Twitch, YouTube, Gamespot, Kotaku, PSN, Xbox Live, Steam and even the Wii U. Even the Wii U. So there are plenty of places to choose from.

After looking a bit more at the Kojima thing, it seems that he's actually just on the advisory board and won't necessarily make an appearance. So sorry if that's misinformation.

I always check these out. I really think Keighley wants to make a solid show, and last year had some really good stuff.

Hahaha Rise Of Incarnates

Is GB gonna talk over these or the PSX keynote this year? Or is the studio move still in progress and GOTY stuff getting in the way?

I just want to see the Mortal Kombat reveal honestly. I already know what GOTY is as far as I'm concerned.

10 supposed reveals ('world premiers' specifically, so new games, trailers, dlc etc...) and at least one from Nintendo is enough to make me interested.

Jeff has said no to both on this tumblr. He said he's looking to attend the PSX event in person.

Didn't say it wasn't, but him being there is the tipping scale. It being his last game should no way factor into it though.

I'm excited for it. I really enjoyed the show last year. Also, the little statue they get for winning is pretty awesome. It is also really cool seeing Jeff's name on the list of judges. I'm hoping Witcher 3 wins GOTY, but I think it will go to Fallout or MGS V.

I remember last year being a slight trainwreck and a pretty good segment for King's Quest.

Apparently, this is what I said about last year's awards:

"Better than past VGAs obviously, but I still found it generally quite boring and awkward to be honest. None of the announcements/reveals interested me. Almost everyone who picked up a mic aside from Keighley sounded like they didn't know what to say unless they were reading from a prompter. Almost every award was handled on that little mini stage off to the side with Keighley and even then they just sorta blew past most of them. The pacing of the show felt like someone trying to cram too much shit into too little time. There was too much shit. The audience was weak most of the time. And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some other things too."

So...yeah, I hope they fix all of that this year.

Trending gamer seems to mean 'raised eyebrow'.

Jeff better win every award.

@omgfather: How does that work? He's not the only one who judge what game is worthy for goty and other categories. 30+ something judges or did I got that wrong? On the other hand I was baffled when GTA 5 won over Last of Us.

Buh. Can't wait to hear who the internet's favorite white man is.

@babychoochoo:

I doubt we will see much improvement. We know there are 22 awards but only 10 will be on the stage, which mean 12 of them will be awkwardly handed off-stage like last year.

Whichever one of these they did with the guy from the Soup was absolutely amazing. Amazing in that "this is an absolute train wreck and its hilarious". It got a absolute metric ton of crap piled all over..yet I enjoyed every minute of it. Most of those being in the ironic sense but, even if you hate absolutely everything about these you have to admit, he gets some exclusives, there are things to see. At the very least first run trailers and some game announcements come out of this event that people will check the trailers out on elsewhere, read stories about or talk about in the forums or such.

And for something that I think was self funded/produced to some degree..it was fine. Like its not the best produced content ever but its not this awful mess that is a stain on video-games as a whole. So yah, I'll watch. It'll be silly, it'll be staged it's awards won't matter for crap..but hey, maybe we get something cool out of it, and I am absolutely sure I'll get some laughs out of it.

I'll most likely have this on half for the hilarious trainwreck that all meaningless awards bring with them and half because Keighley usually gets pretty high profile exclusives. This is where the whole Moby Dick Studios Phantom Pain thing happened though that was back when it was televised I think. Anyway going off that and how close Keighly and Kojima are I'm fully expecting a Kojima announcement of at least what his plans are here. Then at PSX I'm expecting a reveal of what the Final Fantasy 7 remake looks like since Squeenix has been saying more info would come out in December and a big Sony event is the only place I see that happening.

As an aside, does anybody know what Keighley's day job is anymore? As far as I know his Gametrailers show on TV went off a long time ago but I can't imagine any sponsorships or whatever for this can keep him doing well year round. Is he still affiliated with some publication/website somewhere?

@bladededge: The one with Joel McHale was two years ago iirc, and was every bit the glorious and terrible trainwreck people remember it as (one adult diaper joke every 5 minutes!), though it did have stuff like the reveal of future "most disappointing game" No Man's Sky.

I don't really remember last year's awards, though I believe I did watch them. Did they really give Dragon Age Inquisition the Game of the Year award? Eww. Betting it's going to be The Witcher 3 this year. For as much as Giant Bomb isn't so hot on it, the rest of the games media sure is.

EDIT: Other fun categories include the return of "Trending Gamer", the inclusion of Fallout Shelter in "Best Mobile/Handheld game" alongside Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and the nominees for "Best Fighting Game" consisting of an updated version of a game that came out last year, a game that is getting shut down, a game that is still in alpha, and Mortal Kombat X. Oh, and Pillars of Eternity gets a pity nomination in "Best Role-Playing game"

@arbitrarywater: I don't know man, as much as I would like to Witcher grab most goty awards this year, Fallout 4 is fresh on their minds. And MGS V seems to be more liked my critics.

I never really watch these, I just watch twitter for announcements.

Unless this charade of industry backpatting and marketing frenzy is paying well, I have no idea what Keighly even does unless he managed to network his way into a nebulous 'consulting' position.

How the awards should work

1) Dec 1st, blank ballots are sent to 30 International Print & Online Gaming Media outlets to choose nominees in 20 categories. These ballots are sent back to make teh OFFICIAL ballot, which has seven choices and one blank space for a write in vote in all categories.

2) The Official Ballot is sent last week in January out to the same 30 outlets. All ballots are secret, none of the media outlets can reveal their vote until the day after the ceremony. Simultaneously, the seven developer nominees for each category are asked to create a 58 second acceptance speech for each award they are nominated for as well as a small "general acceptance speech" for their studio.

3) Ballots and videos from the developers are returned second week in January. They then prepare the show over 2 months to air

4) The night of the event ALL the videos are cued, so that when they secret ballots are opened not even teh producers know what will happen. When a nominee is choose their pre-recorded video clip is shown....NO going on stage...NO nervous people...NO crap - the show lasts for a tight 2 hrs

The show will consts of 1/5 awards, 1/5 new trailers for hot games, 1/5 game music & montages of games that came out that year, 1/5 behind the scenes of how games are made videos, and 1/5 comedic variety acts themed about gaming. Audiences is 1/3 invited press in Gowns or Black Tie; 1/3 invited gaming developers in Gowns or Black Tie; and 1/6 invited You Tubers & 1/6 invited Cosplayers.

How This Helps: Well, game awards should be MOSTLY technical awards! Music, keyframe animation, motion capture, performance capture, sound, and all the others. Sure best character, best voice actor, and other awards are nice....but if they want this to be serious game awards need tio be 2/3 technical awards. Its hard to get the keyframe animators to show up to the awards show dressed correctly, BUT THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE ANIMATION LOOK GOOD!!!! By just having the people responsible make a video acceptance you allow for more important awards and better acceptances.

I might watch this year.

@dudeglove said:

I totally forgot about VR. Oh god. Here's hoping no-one gets motion sickness on stage.

With regards to 'Keighley's day job', I'm not actually sure? But I always imagine him working super hard. He seems to care a lot about games at any rate so that's cool. And whatever it is, more power to him: In this interview for a New York Times blog here he mentioned that he 'risked more than $1 million of his savings' to fund the show last year.

Also at the end of that interview is the following interesting line from Geoff with regards to having trailers and such:

'“Some people say that makes the show too commercial and it should be purely about awards,” Mr. Keighley said. “I’ve found that, for this audience, you need to blend the two.”

And I think he's actually right. Sitting through a couple of hours of nothing but awards is way less appealing than the chance of seeing some cool reveals. I understand that makes me sound like putty for advertising but still, I am a sucker for 'cool reveals.'

I'm just going to keep my unreasonable expectations in check and assume he's accepting some award or announcing some Mortal Kombat DLC or some shit. #neverbegameover #chapter3 #kojimafakedthemoonlanding

"Me and Kojima are doing 24: The Video Game!"

Wait. Someone did that already.

Kojima is one of the judges right? I don't think that necessarily means we'll actually see anything from him. Although his non-complete clause is apparently over now.

This thing is a little over 12 hours away! Just found out that the green room is officially called the 'Star Wars Battlefront green room presented by AMD'. I hope they say the whole thing every time they jump to it.

I think this may be among the first of the declarations for a GOTY? The Golden Joystick awards took place on October 30th which seems kinda early considering Fallout wasn't even out yet. It was mainly a public vote, with Witcher 3 winning. The critics choice was MGSV.

He's absolutely right. I just hope he still remembers that its an award show and still focuses on improving that part of the show more than the world premier part.

Now that I think about it, why don't like, the Oscars premier new trailers?

They probably don't have to because their awards actually mean something. Just like most actual awards.

And that's not me being pissy at the Video Game Awards. Just calling a spade a spade.

@hassun: Awards don't really mean anything. It is just some awards have been around for so long that people consider them credible, but at the end of the day it is just a group of people going "your thing is best thing released this year." The Academy increasing Best Picture nominees from five to 10 makes it more of just something to use in marketing than an actual meaningful distinction.

It is the same with The Emmy's. Big Bang Theory wins best comedy every year, and that show is fucking awful. Awards are just used for marketing now.

@brandondryrock: Of course awards are used for marketing and also just appeal to people because we crave recognition. What I mean is these awards mean far less than those other awards you mentioned. (Yes, even Grammys.)

The main draw of this show is the reveals, not the awards. Would Keighley like them to be the Oscars of video games? Sure. Are they? Nah. They would have to put a lot more effort into their nomination process to even be halfway legitimate.

Here is an example category of the Video Game Awards:

"Best Fighting Game"

• Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- (Game from 2014)
• MKX
• Rise of the Incarnates (Dead Game)
• Rising Thunder (Unreleased Game, currently in alpha stage)

Things like this really show just how much effort was put into nominating these video games.

@hassun:If we're being picky, Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN would have come out in the US after the cutoff date for nominations for last years awards, even if it was in December. But I take your point. Having Rise of the Incarnates on there does seem pretty tasteless at this point.

I don't follow fighting games, were there really that few this year?

The "Hey, we made an effort to get Ed Boon out here to reveal some new Mortal Kombat stuff, so here's an award" award.

@hassun: I see what you mean now. Yeah, it isn't the Oscars of video games, and since many other outlets have done GOTY stuff before this even existed, it won't ever be that. It makes more sense to just be like a celebration of video games for the past year than an Oscar-like show. But even then, I don't know what that would be like.

Are other lead developers not going to be there as well?

@paulmako: A few others came out this year. DOA5 Last Round, Blazblue whatever-the-fuck-this-version-is-called, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, and UNIEL are the only ones that immediately come to mind though. There's also Skullgirls 2nd Encore...sorta...kinda...technically. I will say though that I feel like Guilty Gear deserves a spot because it came out after the awards last year, but whatever.

Etiher way, I agree with @hassun on this one. That category reeks of people behind the scenes just not giving a shit. The Rise of Incarnates pick bothers me the most because not only was reception obviously weak (in that very few people played it and even fewer seemed to really enjoy it), but you literally will not be able to play that game in a few weeks.

And that's fine, as long as we can all understand and agree that Ed Boon revealing a new MK character is the real draw here. Not the awards.