The Game Awards 2024 Was a Great Show

Last year, after attending my first-ever Game Awards, I wrote an article calling it “A Mixed Bag.” While some of my criticisms still rang true this year, I now feel I better understand and appreciate this annual event. The Game Awards honors the past year's achievements, but it will always be halfway out the door to the future, hyping up what is to come rather than stopping to reflect. The numbers don’t lie. One hundred million people tuned in online to take part in the hype fest that was the reveal of The Witcher IV, a new “standalone” Elden Ring title, and a brand new Naughty Dog game. If the awards didn’t take a back seat to these huge reveals, then millions of people would do something else with their evening, choosing to check the headlines tomorrow instead to see what won. It’s such a success that there’s no doubt in my mind that someone at the Oscars has at least thought about revealing the next Marvel trailer during the show to see if they can get more people to tune in.

Game Changer Award

I have to give credit to Geoff Keighley, the host of the show, for accepting criticism and finding a way to address it. While the ongoing issue of massive layoffs this year got a mention at Summer Game Fest (another major Keighley-hosted event), Keighley took that acknowledgment to another level. The first-ever Game Changer Award was given to Amir Satvat for the pro-bono work he has done this year to help laid-off developers find new work within the video game industry. Satvat received a standing ovation as he took the stage and his speech left the entire crowd misty-eyed. This was the absolute highlight of the night for me (just nearly beating out the Okami sequel announcement) and I look forward to the potential for more Game Changer awards in future shows.

Swen Vincke, the director of 2023’s Game of the Year recipient, Baldur’s Gate 3, also gave an excellent speech when presenting this year’s most coveted award. He spoke about the “secret” to winning Game of the Year, a formula he said was often lost. He called it stupidly simple, saying “a studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn’t been created before.” Vincke continued, calling out practices all too common in the gaming industry over the last few years: “They didn’t make it to increase market share. They didn’t make it to serve the brand. They didn’t have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn’t meet those targets.” I hope many publishers, developers, and players remember these words as we head into the future of gaming.

A love of video games

Being there in the crowd was incredible. Years from now I will brag about being there for the memorable tenth-anniversary Game Awards. I will always remember watching across the aisle after The Witcher IV trailer as the CD Projekt Red team stood up to remove their jackets, revealing The Witcher IV branded shirts underneath. I’ll never forget watching Flute Guy (whose real name is Pedro Eustache) swap between several instruments during the orchestral Game of the Year medley. And I’ll always remember how lucky I was to be sitting in that theater at all.

Regarding the awards, I am very happy to see Astro Bot win Game of the Year and for Balatro to win three awards. Neva, from Nomada Studio, was also one of my favorite games this year, so I was happy to see it win the Game for Impact category. Plus, it was great to see Baldur’s Gate 3 win one more Game Award for Best Community Support. In terms of announcements, as a long-time fan of Okami, I never thought I would see the announcement of a sequel. Shadow of the Colossus was one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, so it goes without saying that I can’t wait to see what Fumito Ueda is doing next with this super stylized trailer about a shockwave and a giant robot. Split Fiction and Stage Fright both look like promising co-op experiences and of course, I can’t wait to experience Neil Druckmann’s next story in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

So while the awards did take a backseat to bombastic trailers, and Statler and Waldorf’s roasts felt a little more like brushing off valid criticism through comedy, this year’s Game Awards had a great energy to it. Sitting in that theater with hundreds of other people who love video games, I felt much more a part of the gaming industry than ever before. I cheered often and teared up a few times, some announcements shocked me and others disappointed me, but this Game Awards finally felt like it was finding answers to the tough questions and strengthening the bond that ties it all together: a love of video games.