A retrospective on The Game Awards 2016

Another year, another edition of The Game Awards. Last year, I wrote that Geoff Keighley’s awards show was an imperfect but important industry event, needing only to develop in certain areas to become something truly great. One year on, we can now ask the question: has The Game Awards improved? Sadly, the answer is no, and this year’s edition proved in my mind that the show is far more interested in selling products than in celebrating games.

Even on causal viewing, the event’s marketisation was pretty evident. The entirety of the show was dominated by adverts for all sorts of things, ranging from the expected (video games) to the unexpected (razor blades). For the majority of the show, the adverts for products were given the limelight, while the actual awards were shoved to the side, treated like an embarrassing addition to the show that nobody really wanted to acknowledge.

This was at its most egregious when, at one point, it was announced that due to time constraints there wasn’t enough time to present all of the awards in the show. This announcement was immediately preceded by the appearance of Hydrobot, a man dressed as a razor robot, eating viable screen time that could have been dedicated to the awards.

The man himself, Geoff Keighley, poses with an award. Sadly Hydrobot didn’t pose with one as well… Image Credit: Vince Bucci/PictureGroup

This wasn’t even the only time we saw Hydrobot, the irritating bastard. He appeared in multiple skits throughout the night, despite the fact that each appearance was about as enjoyable as a playthrough of Aliens: Colonial Marines. I’m fairly sure the abomination ended up with more actual screen time than the awards themselves. Hell, it might have appeared more than Keighley. And it had nothing to do with video games!

Furthermore, this year also saw the return of the horrific Red Room, in which a backstage presenter awkwardly interviewed random people, while simultaneously trying to shill for the new Assassin’s Creed film and its VR experience. Each sequence felt fake and forced, with the interviewees barely able to hide their confusion as to why they were being harassed by a random woman about a VR experience they clearly didn’t care about. It didn’t take long for the facade to crumble, with the presenter soon pointing out  that she was being very paid well to be this excited for the products. A masterclass in interviewing, it was not.

As you can see, they were heavily promoting the Assassin’s Creed VR experience. Image Credit: Frank Micelotta/PictureGroup

Much of this only helped to highlight the uncomfortable relationship between the awards themselves and the publishers funding the event. It brings up questions of just how objective and unbiased the awards show can ever be when they are running adverts for many of the nominees throughout the night. This was especially apparent when adverts for Blizzard and Bethesda titles bookended the awards that these publishers picked up multiple times throughout the night. I understand that Keighley needs some way to finance the show, but this approach seems wrong and dirty. How can you rightly celebrate these awards when the ever-present shadow of the publishers hangs over them?

Even the usual draw of the world premieres, typically associated with the show, seems to have lost its lustre. The majority of the reveals felt underwhelming: A new Telltale game is increasingly difficult to get excited about, the Mass Effect gameplay was not as promising as many would have hoped for, and nobody is getting excited for random free-2-play games. And of course, there’s Death Stranding. I don’t even know what to say about that. It appears to be a game about babies, Mads Mikkelsen and squid tanks? It was simply too confusing to get excited about, especially as it probably won’t be released for many years at that.

The live performance of the Doom soundtrack was one of the standout moments of the night. Image Credit: Frank Micelotta/PictureGroup

However, this isn’t to say that the whole show was bad. There were some good moments throughout the night; the performance of the Doom soundtrack was spectacular (and far more appropriate than the other performances of the night); Geoff Keighley essentially sticking his two fingers up to Konami was fitting; and the acceptance speech from the maker of That Dragon, Cancer might have been the only truly real moment in the whole show.

But sadly, the true nature of The Game Awards seems far too opaque to me this year. The show exists purely for AAA publishers to sell their products. It isn’t about the awards, which are now treated like an afterthought, it’s about the rampant consumerism of the games industry coming to the forefront and unloading their products on viewers. If you want to watch a serious awards show dedicated to celebrating games, then this is not the show for you. However, if you’re looking for a two-hour long ad for games, with meaningless awards interspersed in between, this may be.