Rushing at TGA Caused Swen Vincke to 'Forget' to Announce Baldur's Gate 3 for Xbox [Update]
Swen Vincke of Larian Studios did not announce the release of Baldur's Gate 3 on XSX/S at The Game Awards 2023, as he had to 'wrap it up' while receiving the Game of the Year award on stage. The slogan „Please Wrap It Up,” which was supposed to rush the speaking developers, has already become a (sad) Internet meme.
Update: Geoff Keighley published a message on X, in which he agreed with critics of the gala that music signaling the need for "wrapping things up" was played too quickly (although he says he asked that award-winning creators be given more time), and expressed a desire to solve this problem in a future edition of The Game Awards.
After the dust settled, the Internet started pointing out the shortcomings of The Game Awards 2023 gala, in particular focusing on the fact that the presentation of the eponymous awards and the speeches of the creators receiving them are actually on the sidelines of the event that is theoretically dedicated just to this very thing.
While it was strange to listen to Sam Lake, who "pieced together" as meaningful sentences as he could at a far too fast pace, the most absurd moment came when Swen Vincke - founder and CEO of Larian Studios, as well as director of Baldur's Gate III came to the stage.
This is because we expected that - as declared earlier - he would announce the release date of this game on Xbox Series X and S. However, this did not happen. Nevertheless, as you already know, Microsoft's console-dedicated version of the third "Baldur" launched During The Game Awards 2023 gala - such a surprise was prepared for players by Larian Studios.
So did Swen Vincke forget to mention this "detail"? He figured it was enough to write about it on X/Twitter? Nothing of the sort - he simply did not have enough time to be able to say what he basically came to the event for. As he later wrote on X/Twitter:
Why the rush? It turns out that in addition to the music that reverberated when a person spoke into the microphone for more than a minute, before the eyes of the speakers there was an overhead projector, showing the words "Please Wrap It Up".
Of course, as soon as this information spread online, Internet users began to create memes reflecting the "splendor" of this year's The Game Awards gala. It can be assumed that such restrictive measures were adopted after last year's speech by Christopher Judge - the actor who played Kratos in God of War and God of War: Ragnarok - who needed 7 minutes and 59 seconds to accept the award for his performance. Nevertheless, certainly the organizers did not manage to reach the golden mean.
This leads to the conclusion that next year the issue will be resolved even differently - perhaps it will even be turned into a joke, like Judge's aforementioned speech this year. Geoff Keighley, TGA's organizer and host, assured, that he is open to feedback.... to which an Internet user responded with:
Unfortunately, many of the creators who appeared on the stage will probably not be seen at the next gala (perhaps not at all). What's done is done, but surely both they and the gaming community at large would prefer the most important industry event to look different. Especially since the problem goes deeper.