At This Year’s Game Awards, Nobody Won

Sarah Elmaleh, the voice behind beloved characters in games like Halo Infinite, Gears 5, and Hi-Fi Rush, sits near the front of a Denny’s table, poking at a small stack of pancakes. The lights are a little too bright, feeling almost like a spotlight spread across a whole room. Sat next to Elmaleh is a crew of fellow video game performers, unionized under the SAG-AFTRA umbrella, chatting and digging into their own plasticine breakfast confections. One table over, there’s a contingent of developers from Game Workers of SoCal, a collective of game workers who seek to organize the video game industry. They’ve all just gotten done demonstrating outside the Peacock Theater in LA, where The Game Awards are taking place. The scene is one of jovial comradery, but discontent – alongside the scent of bacon – hangs heavy in the air.

The lead-up to this year’s Game Awards was fraught, to say the least. Months ahead of the show, developers and other industry figures wondered if host Geoff Keighley would take a beat during the annual onslaught of ads to reference this year’s near-nonstop avalanche of layoffs. A couple weeks before the show, members of The Game Awards Future Class – an official program that honors “individuals around the world who represent the bright, bold, and inclusive future for video games" – published a letter asking Keighley and the awards show to acknowledge Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, which has killed over 17,000 people, including over 7,000 children. TGA’s organizers made no reference to the letter publicly or privately prior to the show. Keighley did not mention it during the show, nor did he mention layoffs. Elmaleh and her fellow workers were there to protest these issues, as well as to continue demanding a better contract for voice actors from major video game companies.

As I speak to Elmaleh, the show is still unfolding. We discuss Black Myth: Wukong, an action-RPG whose trailer just debuted. It contains the following exchange between a master and pupil: 

Pupil: "Master, are there more good folks in the world or bad?"

Master: "More good, of course."

Pupil: "Then why is there always suffering? And why do the bad folks always win?"

Master: "Because goodness without teeth punishes naught. It only foments evil."

Given everything else that’s going on, these lines feel almost too on the nose. 

"I saw that trailer, and I was thinking all this stuff about resistance and determination, community,” says Elmaleh. “Our games are all loud and clear [about their values]. I feel like playing games and performing in them is rehearsal for courage: applying that in the real world – applying your values in the real world – and making a decision to hold a firm boundary or risk making someone feel slightly uncomfortable by saying, 'This is important to me." I feel like it's strange to not apply those messages."

Elmaleh, who in addition to performing in video games has hosted Indiecade’s annual award show for eight years, does not believe an award show needs to be at odds with the content it purports to celebrate. 

"I personally think that there need not be tension,” she says. “We don't make games that are devoid of values, that are devoid of a perspective on what's right and good. So for me I think it's completely consistent to use a moment of reflection and celebration to talk about what we think is important to apply the values that we have in our games and the things that inspire us into the world."

Wrap it up

In many ways, The Game Awards have come to represent more than the show’s organizers likely intended. As industry hallmarks like E3 crumble, and events like Keighley’s Summer Game Fest fail to meaningfully supplant them, The Game Awards function as one of the industry’s last remaining IRL flashpoints. Prominent industry figures gather in droves not just to take in the trailers and give speeches until they’re unceremoniously told to “wrap it up” 30 seconds later, but to meet up and reflect on the year. This year was an especially traumatic one for laid off and displaced devs, and that truth permeated not just the annual gathering in the nearby JW Marriott following the show – functionally the video game industry’s Christmas party – but also TGA-adjacent events before and after. Giant Bomb’s annual “couch” stream the night before The Game Awards played host to numerous such discussions, as did Double Fine’s indie-focused Day of the Devs event the day after.

But emotions were at their rawest immediately following the awards. As developers, execs, PR and marketing people, journalists, and content creators mingled near a colossal Christmas tree and a hotel bar that could not hope to adequately serve the hundreds-strong crowd in a million years, members of The Game Awards Future Class expressed disbelief at what they just saw. They told me that on top of Keighley’s non-acknowledgement of their Palestine letter, they’d been seated right behind camera equipment and could barely even see the stage. At this point, I asked a question our own Riley has often posed in Slack: What does the Future Class actually do?

“I really don’t know,” one member I spoke to replied despondently. 

It’s not that this year’s show was unsatisfactory in an unprecedented way. The Game Awards have always been a long, glorified commercial, inclusion in which can come with a “high six-figure” price tag for companies, according to a report from Digital Trends. But this was a uniquely traumatic year for many in the industry, and this year’s show felt like a ruthlessly well-oiled version of Keighley’s patented WORLD PREMIERE-centric format, one that played award winners off stage 30 seconds after their speeches began – if they got speeches at all. Meanwhile, Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima, long a fixture of Keighley’s shows, got to talk about his vaguely game-shaped new project for 13.5 speeches’ worth of time, and Keighley engaged in a truly dreadful attempt at comedy with Gonzo, famously a Muppet rather than a game developer. Keighley failed to read the room, or – with sponsors breathing down his neck – he chose not to. Either way, it was a total mismatch. The vibes were rancid. 

This led to immediate unrest online. During and after the show, game developers and other industry figures voiced their displeasure en masse. 

"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," Josh Sawyer, studio design director at Obsidian, wrote on Twitter.

“Personally I love doing prolonged unfunny bits rather than listening to game devs talking about their work,” wrote Cat Manning, narrative director at Firaxis. 

Online, Keighley ended up capitulating to exactly one line of criticism: “By the way,” he wrote on Twitter, “I do agree that the music was played too fast for award winners this year, and I asked our team to relax that rule as the show went on. While no one was actually cut off, it’s something to address going forward.”

But that was a surface-level symptom of much deeper rot, of a structure intended to facilitate faceless hype at the expense of all other components of game development. This is why Future Class members, especially, felt like they’d been swindled: They came to believe they’d been invited there to put a diverse human face on the show. 

"You feel like props, like accessories for the show – and not actual human beings,” Younès Rabii, the 2022 Future Class member who organized the Palestine letter effort, told me at Day of the Devs. They went on to say that while watching last year’s show from home, they noticed that the camera cut to Future Class members in the audience, giving an impression of pervasive diversity. However, attending The Game Awards this year, they were sorely disappointed.

“It showed a way more diverse industry than there actually was at the show. Sad to say, but most are white old rich men,” Rabii said. “This time it’s obvious: We were always meant to be props. We are not actual people. Our seats are not the same, our voices are not the same."

Florence Smith Nicholls, a researcher, game developer, and Future Class member who traveled from London alongside Rabii, explained that the two had to justify and secure funding from a university even to be present at The Game Awards. 

"It was a huge undertaking even to be here,” Nicholls said. “And so I think the fact that Geoff Keighley will not even acknowledge this letter in any way – has been totally silent – is just so disrespectful. He hasn't even replied to us privately, even to say, 'I can't talk about this for these reasons.'"

Members of the Future Class are still trying to figure out what happens next.

"Despite having low expectations, I'm even more disappointed to hear that the awards glossed over layoffs, gave very little time to award-winning devs, and put the accessibility award in the pre-show as opposed to the normal show," Mourad El-Dine Abdou, head of content strategy at esports and gaming agency Hotdrop, told me. "As a Future Class member, perhaps I can make a difference from the inside, but the only way that will happen is if Geoff and [Future Class director] Emily [Bouchoc] take the time to sit down with its members to hear their concerns and be advised on how they can do better." 

Others have less faith in The Game Awards as an institution. 

“I'm thankful for the community of fellow [Future Class] members, but it's affirming the need for us to rely on each other instead of institutions like TGA,” said illustrator, game designer, and 2022 Future Class member Chris Kindred. “They'll always be market-forward, and that's just not compatible with what real people need.”

Rabii proposed a few ideas: Perhaps, they said, Future Class members could organize some kind of show of their own, but they deemed it “unlikely.” They also said change from the inside remains on the table, but felt that possibility grows dimmer by the day. Then there’s the third option: leave and focus energies elsewhere. 

"Maybe bailing out from the program [is my best bet],” said Rabii. “Because The Game Awards have shown that they don't care about game workers, they don't care about people who make games. They care way more about possible links to the cinema industry or Muppet shows. What happened on stage has been a terrible insult to game developers everywhere, rather than trying to pay homage to people who have been laid off or killed."

The show(s) must go on

In the days following the show, many suggested online that Keighley and The Game Awards should strip out the whole “awards” angle altogether – just do Summer Games Fest, but in the winter. Clearly, though, there is an appeal to an Oscars-like game show, even if what we’ve got right now is more like the MTV Awards dressed in a suit that says, “I was on the way to The Oscars, I promise! I, uh, just got lost.” It remains, as so many things in the video game industry do, a cry for legitimacy, for recognition that video games are just as culturally significant as TV, film, literature, and music. It is, in that sense, not surprising to see Keighley’s stage littered with Hollywood talent rather than video games’ best and brightest. The Game Awards may not reflect the video game industry as a whole, but they do reflect its insecurities. 

The question then becomes: What purpose do we want an award show to serve? If the goal is really to honor those who create bold and beloved games, then there are other award shows people could be tuning into.

"Y'all, please watch the IGF/GDC + DICE Awards," said Jurge Cruz-Alvarez, a PR/marketing person at indie publisher Popagenda, in a tweet that's garnered over a thousand likes. "I don't mean this flippantly, I sincerely mean that we can raise the importance of those shows if we actually talk about 'em. TGA can be the MTV Movie Awards, and it's fine! We need to elevate the shows that are doing what we want!"

Those shows, and others like the Indiecade Awards, are much more focused on the creatives who make games possible. But, as you might have surmised from the tone of Cruz-Alvarez’s plea, their viewership is downright paltry compared to that of The Game Awards, which have previously pulled in over 100 million views across a plethora of streams. If we’re talking about pure numbers, Keighley has found a winning formula: hype sells. 

Others in and around the industry have taken notice. The day after The Game Awards, I attended a separate award show put on by OTK, a streamer organization fronted by big names like Asmongold (who has not disclosed his full name), Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris, and Emily “ExtraEmily” Zhang. In some ways, it was a distillation of the direction The Game Awards – an obvious inspiration – seem to be headed: entertainment, personalities, and product above all else. There were numerous awards, all presented over the course of the show’s two-ish hour runtime, but no acceptance speeches from developers. There was no live audience to speak of; just presenters, producers, and OTK staff.

Twitch stars – rather than Hollywood stars – took center stage, and almost every ad (of which there were many) were for products from OTK and companies under its umbrella, including gaming PC maker Starforge Systems and game publishing arm Mad Mushroom. In a lot of ways, this show was more enjoyable than The Game Awards: It knew what it was and did not try to pretend to be much else. Sure, some streamers had more trouble slipping into professional presenter shoes than others, but even this was played for laughs to the point that I sometimes couldn’t tell if streamers were actually stuttering through lines and leaving microphones in the wrong places, or if it was a bit.

The show was an ad, one that pulled solid viewership on Twitch – around 20,000 concurrent viewers all throughout the broadcast adding up to hundreds of thousands in total – due in large part to the names attached. In other words, Keighley’s winning formula picked up another W. This is where expectations and desires for what an award show should be diverge: Clearly, general audiences want hype, entertainment, and a little drama. This is true just as much in other industries as it is in games. (I mean, people are still talking about the fallout from Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at The Oscars in 2022.)

Artists and creatives want more: They want to see their own elevated – given the chance, for just a few minutes (rather than seconds), to look the world in the eyes and say something that matters. Or at least to be recognized for their hard work. But will the world look back? Or is creativity something most people take for granted in a landscape so rich with entertainment that literally everything – whether it’s a blockbuster film, mid-budget TV show, indie game, YouTube video, TikTok, news article, or award show – is competing for eyeballs?

Maybe none of that matters. Maybe in the context of award shows, simple recognition from one’s peers should be enough. But if the goal of art is to say something – to deliver a message – then there will always be at least some artists who want a bigger stage on which to say it.

"We actually want to change the world. This is one of the reasons we are artists, designers, or technologists: to somehow have this impact on audiences,” said Rabii. “We have this resistance of, 'No, stay in your place. You are only workers. You don't get to speak on stage. The things you want to do have to stay [in] stories.' But stories are so powerful, that can't be the case anymore. I think more people see the disconnect between what we have in our games and what's in real life. I'm disgusted and angry, but I have hope because things can't stay the same forever. Change will happen. It's just a question of how and when we can push through the years."

"Games helped prepare me for this, helped me prepare to understand how systems work," said Elmaleh after demonstrating outside The Game Awards. "And then you apply that systemic understanding to the rest of the world, and then you start to participate in trying to change those systems."