On November 24, members of The Game Awards Future Class – an official Game Awards program that honors 50 “individuals around the world who represent the bright, bold, and inclusive future for video games” per year – published an open letter urging the show’s organizers to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. One week, thousands of signatures, and multiple articles later, those who wrote and signed the letter still haven’t heard from Geoff Keighley or the show’s other organizers.
The letter, published the same day as the beginning of a (now-expired) temporary ceasefire in a conflict that has so far seen Israeli Defense Force barrages kill at least 14,800 Palestinians in retribution for an October Hamas attack that claimed 1,200 Israeli lives, asked for The Game Awards to speak up.
“In the past years, you’ve selected us to represent the future of the game industry,” the letter reads. “You didn’t choose us as symbols of what the game industry currently is, but of what it could be: a diverse, inclusive and caring workplace. A positive force in the world that can influence billions of people. … Like many of our peers, we are appalled by the war crimes the Palestinian people are victims of, and we grieve the loss of so many civilian lives. Adding to that pain is the knowledge that our industry is playing a role in this.”
The letter goes on to reference broader industry silence around the topic and, in particular, a situation that unfolded at the recent Golden Joystick award show in the UK, in which narrative designer Meghna Jayanth stepped down from presenting duties after being told she would not be allowed to make a short statement calling for a ceasefire in Palestine. The letter asks that Game Awards presenters – presumably Keighley – read a statement from the Future Class at the show on December 7 expressing support for the protection of Palestinian civil rights, calling for a long-term ceasefire, and encouraging the game industry to “invest resources and work against its systematic dehumanization of people from South-West Asia and North Africa.”
As of this article’s publishing, the letter had been signed by over 2,600 people – many of them game developers – including over 70 members of The Game Awards Future Class past and present. Major publications like Axios, Polygon, and Kotaku have also covered the letter. Despite this, game developer Younès Rabii, a 2022 Future Class member who organized the effort, has not heard anything privately or publicly from Geoff Keighley or Future Class director Emily Bouchoc.
“Even with multiple [rounds of] press coverage from major games news websites, it's still radio silence from The Game Awards,” Rabii told Aftermath.
They and others involved are beginning to lose hope in the idea of The Game Awards as a potential force for good in the industry.
“I'm considering quitting the Future Class altogether,” Rabii said. “I'm not happy with an organization using my name and face to present as diverse and inclusive, but not bat an eye when people who look like me and sound like me are going through an inhumane mass murder. This would betray a profound disdain for my life, and I would retract their right to use my name as credentials.”
“I don’t think there’s a single right way forward if TGA doesn’t acknowledge this,” Chris Kindred, an illustrator, game designer, and 2022 Future Class member, told Aftermath. “But our dissent will be obvious.”
During recent years, Keighley has demonstrated an increasing willingness to use The Game Awards as a platform to make statements – albeit vague ones – about major issues. In 2021, he gave a speech condemning abuse in the video game industry, seemingly spurred by reports of sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard. Still, for the most part The Game Awards have proven to be more pomp and circumstance than substance, an award show where the awards themselves play second fiddle to a confetti-spackled parade of commercials for games yet to come. As much as the show has come to brand itself as a celebration of video games, it’s also just as much an ad for the companies responsible for the industry’s endless churn. Why, you might wonder, would something so indebted to corporations that remain tacitly silent on controversial issues speak up in a moment like this?
“[The Game Awards are] a platform built on an industry run by the hard work of countless game devs,” Rabii said. “Yet they don't hesitate to hand awards to studios that have been involved in massive scandals of workplace harassment, sexual misconduct from executives, or unbearable crunch. Historically, The Game Awards have constantly let down the people they built their show on. I have hope that their answer to our letter could be a change in that course.”
Future Class members see utility in an institution like The Game Awards speaking out. It would, in their eyes, represent the beginnings of change for the better after years of damage done.
“The video game industry, as the most influential and lucrative creative industry of our times, is especially guilty of [dehumanizing Palestinian lives],” said Rabii. “You can try to count the number of times you pressed a button to take the life of an Arab character, and compare it to the number of times you were invited to sit down and eat with them instead. That ratio is scandalous. … An event that celebrates the game industry like The Game Awards is a place of choice for us to address our struggles and commit to do[ing] better.”
“My personal hope is that The Game Awards acknowledging the crisis will inspire more people to pressure their government for a ceasefire,” Mourad El-Dine Abdou, head of content strategy at esports and gaming agency Hotdrop, told Aftermath, “that it will lead to more donations and aid to be delivered to Palestine, and that it will help make people from Middle-Eastern/North African backgrounds feel as though the industry they love hasn't turned their back on them. It could inspire more people to want to learn about the history of Palestine prior to the October attacks – maybe even lead to people learning about the beautiful culture there to help keep it alive.”
The ball is now in The Game Awards’ court. Rabii, Abdou, and Kindred expect one of a couple possible conclusions: continued silence or, in their minds, an equally likely outcome in which Keighley and co equivocate decades of targeted, internationally sanctioned violence against Palestinians – nearly half of whom are children in Gaza – with the far smaller-scale response, however horrible, to that violence. In short, the “all lives matter” response.
“It would be a misleading and counterproductive statement, but because it would also be the safest, there are huge chances that if Keighley decides to do anything, it would be that,” said Rabii.
“I’m pessimistic and am fully prepared for this response, but he’s invited to prove us wrong!” said Kindred.
A statement like that would be something, added Abdou, but it would not be the right thing.
"It must be acknowledged that this whole crisis did not begin [in October],” he said. “It has been an ongoing issue for decades. It must be acknowledged that the Palestinian people have been suffering for a long time, that Gaza has been an open air concentration camp [since] way before October 7, [and] that Palestinians have been forced out of their homes in the West Bank due to settler colonialism."
