Yesterday Keza MacDonald wrote a piece for her Pushing Buttons column in The Guardian posing the question if there should be more of a focus on The Awards portion of the Video Game awards rather than the extreme focus on trailers. Last week I wrote about how much fun I had watching the show with a few friends while hanging out on Discord and I can tell you… it wasn’t the oppressively long Christopher Judge speech that excited us, it was all of the shiny new trailers. Granted at the time it felt like that speech lasted about twenty minutes, but it seems like in truth it was somewhere in the neighborhood of nine, but it did absolutely destroy the momentum of an otherwise delightful evening. So when posed the question if the show should focus more on the awards I have to tell you a very clear and resounding no.
Game Award shows are generally awful. The viewership has been in a freefall for decades, and I think more than anything this is due to the impact of the internet. When you can just find out the winners the day after the show… why watch the show? I remember as a kid watching these not necessarily because I wanted to… but because there was a significant lack of other things to watch at the same time when confronted with my rural existence and having only three channels. As an adult, however, I cannot tell you the last time I watched part of one of these award shows. That said I make a point of setting aside time every year to watch The Game Awards live broadcast, because it effectively sets the tone for the next year’s game announcements.
The other problem with Awards shows is that they are generally lagging behind the trends, yet still trying desperately to act like cool kids and pander to them. I remember the exact moment I stopped caring about Awards shows… the year was 1989 and the Grammy’s added a new category for “Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance”. I tuned in largely to watch Metallica who was going to be doing a live performance of One. We all assumed they would win because the And Justice for All album was such a powerhouse. They even managed to get good presenters, Lita Ford and Alice Cooper. Then I remember my jaw hitting the floor when the award went to Jethro Tull… some fucked up jazz fusion holdout from the 70s. I’ve since as an adult listened to Tull and it is “fine” but not really my jam, but I remember holding a grudge against the band and the Grammys for years as a result of this.
I think it is telling that the highlight of the Oscars is generally the live musical performances of songs from films. For years they have leaned hard on trying to make the entire proceedings more entertaining and not just a sequence of reading cards and playing brief clips of films. Whether or not the Oscars are a success is generally entirely dependent upon whoever they got to run the show, which is generally speaking a comedian. Basically, I think there is a disconnect between being a serious awards show and also being something that is fun for the audience to watch at home. As much as we might appreciate the effort that goes into creating the things we love… it is so much better to consume the Monday after by reading a quick synopsis rather than listening to yet another “trying to thank everyone” speech.
So while I love Christopher Judge as Kratos… and loved the hell out of him as Teal’c before that… I have no interest in listening to him ponder the success of his role when I could be watching trailers instead. That probably sounds harsh but it is the truth. I want him to be recognized for the effort that he has done, but also my spending $70 on a video game is already doing that. I think the harsh truth is that the Awards are for the Industry, but the broadcast is for the people. Give the people what they want, and at least in the case of the Game Awards… it is more video game trailers. We have long joked about how the entire show is just a bunch of trailers with occasional brief intermissions to hand out some awards, and that is honestly a good thing. In a world without E3 as a cogent thing… The Game Awards have sprung forth to fill that gap and give us our Christmas Wishbook experience of pondering the shiny things that are just beyond the horizon.
At least that is my take on this. I am sure there will be many others. If you have a particular stance, feel free to drop me a line below.
The post Should We Care About the Awards? appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
I spent my night like so many gamers did while trying to maintain a connection to the Game Awards stream on both Steam.tv and Twitch.tv so I could earn potential rewards in both locations. I think everyone was out chasing the possibility of winning a Steam Deck, and it seems as though maybe Valve had some technical difficulties with this giveaway because about 20 minutes into the show they finally seemed to start announcing the winners. I did not win a Steam Deck which is probably a good thing because I already have one… but I promise it would have gone to a good home if I did end up with a second one. Here is hoping someone out there that I know actually managed to snag one.
We all know we tune into “The Game Awards” for the cavalcade of trailers because the rewards themselves are largely inconsequential. They will feature some esports people you have never heard of and a bunch of games that you didn’t play… with a single AAA game winning almost every single award. This year I thought it was going to be all about Elden Ring but it seems that God of War Ragnarok was the main character of the evening. What was significantly different this year however is how I commented about what I was seeing. Normally speaking on a game show like this I would have Twitter open and keep a running sequence of commentary going along with all of my other friends doing the same thing. Since I am no longer on Twitter however a few of us opted for something different.
I spent a delightful evening hanging out with Arkenor, Scopique, and Tipa as we attempted to all stay in synch while hanging out on voice chat while watching the show. It did not work as planned. The original goal was to have everyone tune in to discord which would in theory rebroadcast the same stream at the same time to all of us so we would be able to comment on the same things. What ended up happening instead is that the rebroadcast was wigging out for a few people, which lead some of us to be watching YouTube, others on Twitch, and myself trying to keep tabs on the Steam version of the broadcast. This caused some hilariously out-of-sequence comment moments, but in spite of all of that, it was a heck of a lot of fun. This is definitely the most enjoyable way to watch a big corporate games presentation.
There were way too many things covered to talk about in a blog post, so here are some of my rapid-fire comments about the things that really stood out to me on a personal level.
Dead Cells Return to Castlevania
You had me at Castlevania. I enjoy Dead Cells but have not played it anywhere near as much as I should. Once this DLC drops I will do my best to remedy this failure. I have so many fond memories of the Belmonts, and Alucard, and count Symphony of the Night as my one true favorite game of all time. There was no way I was not going t o play this.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
This looks really interesting. It gives me deep Witcher vibes as maybe a more spiritualist/druidic take on that franchise. The trailer definitely piqued my interest enough to wishlist this. My hope is it feels like the big open-world witcher nonsense that I love so much. It definitely seems like the sort of game I would go in for.
Hellboy: Web of Wyrd
Scopique and I were talking about this during the show, but we did not realize that we had apparently not gotten a Hellboy game before now. This is apparently not true and that there were two games previously… one in 2000 and one in 2004 but I remember the existence of neither. What impressed me about this game particularly is how closely it seemed to replicate the unique art stylings of Mike Mignola. I love Hellboy and more particularly I love the Hellboy comics. I will be watching this game closely.
Star Wars Jedi Survivor
I don’t have this problem when I am playing the game but in person… I cannot see Cameron Monaghan as anything other than his character from Shameless which is a hilarious show if you have never watched it. I loved Jedi Fallen Order so this is absolutely going to be a “day one drop everything else” type game for me. I will be picking it up on the PC and I will be ignoring again the warnings against playing with a keyboard and mouse because that control scheme greatly improved my enjoyment of the first title. I will also be playing this on a low difficulty because at that point it no longer feels like a “soulslike”.
Judas
Bioshock in Outer Space? Yes please, sign me the fuck up. Like if you had told me nothing else about this game but that elevator pitch you would have had me on board with it. I loved the Bioshock games and played the first two multiple times. There was something about Infinite that made me less interested in the replay. Regardless I am extremely interested in this game.
Dune Awakening
Okay, I love the Dune franchise and have been wanting to have a Dune-based MMORPG since I first started playing these games in the 2000s. There were a few rumored projects that went nowhere and now we have Funcom carrying this banner forward. Funcom is both the company behind Secret World that I loved and Conan that I had no interest in. I am hoping this does not end up being a forced PVP murder box and has a way in which I can play it in a purely PVE-focused nature. I am not super optimistic however because I am almost certain that faction lines will be drawn crossed the Great Houses of the Landsraad.
Hades II
I have to be honest, this reveals somewhat shocked me. When I saw Supergiant scroll across the screen I remember commenting to my friends that I wondered what genre they would be tackling this time. Basically, up until this point, each time Supergiant released a game it would dive into a new style of gameplay. Bastion was mostly a Zelda-like beat-em-up, Transistor was a strategic dungeon crawler, Pyre was a story-driven “sportsball” game, and Hades was maybe the purest version of the rogue-lite I had seen in a while. I guess Hades was just too popular not to warrant a direct sequel. I am on board for more Hades world from a different perspective, but also I am kinda hoping that the studio has gotten big enough to have folks also be working on another quirky venture into a new genre.
Death Stranding 2
This was my highlight of the evening without a doubt. I loved Death Stranding and I played it at a very specific moment in life, during the lockdowns of the pandemic… and as a result, the storyline felt deeply poignant. I want to know more about this world and it seems like we are going to get that. I became way the heck too attached to BB, which I know is a bit weird. I am just hoping we get a simultaneous release on PC and Console because I have no interest in trying to play this with a controller. It was excellent with a mouse and keyboard and I want more of that.
Reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton
The highlight of the night however was at the very end of the show, when a kid seemingly snuck up on stage along with the confused developers of FROM Software. This gave The Game Awards their “Soy Bomb” moment, so I guess they have officially arrived on the world’s stage. Essentially after the devs gave their comments, the kid sneaks up to the microphone and in a faux broken English accent he dedicates the award to his “reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton”. According to Geoff Keighley, he was arrested… which I guess is a bit sad because it added a moment of true levity to an otherwise stuffy occasion. There is another twitter thread indicating he did something similar on Info Wars with a Free Taiwan message, but I have not been able to find a clip of whatever that was. The same thread also indicates that he had planned this ahead of time.
Did you watch The Game Awards? What were your highlights? Drop me a line below.
The post The Game Awards 2022 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Â Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, Thalen and special guest lurker Shiana
Tonight we had more topics than we had time to talk about them, but we managed to hit the majority of them.  First up Bel talks about his frustrations with Black Armory the latest content drop in Destiny 2 and their overarching plan of content releases going forward.  He also talks a bit about the Last Wish raid that he got drug through this week. From there we talk a bit about the Game Awards and how weird it is that they are actually relevant.  We discuss how it is turning into E3 part two as major shows give big release information… and occasionally they give an award for things between the commercials. Grace talks about Hades the new title from Supergiant Games and how it jumps right into her wheelhouse of the Action RPG blended with a Rogue Lite.  This also starts a discussion about how Epic Games is vying for serious competition with Steam by discounting their cut of sales. Finally we talk about the new Smash Bros game and the World of Light adventure mode.
Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tam talk mostly about Final Fantasy XV
Belghast laments the feeling of not exactly knowing what day it is… as we return from our Thanksgiving break to start the show once more.  This week there really is only one game we could be talking about that that is Final Fantasy XV which has all of us playing it…  in completely different styles.  We try our best to talk about non spoilery elements of the game, and mostly talk about the look and feel and play style.  Additionally we talk a bit about The Game Awards and some of the announcements and games footage that was shown there.  Similarly we talk a bit about the Playstation Experience and a few of the games that were shown there as well.  Finally we wrap up with some discussion about Moebius Final Fantasy and how it has become Tam’s new sleepytime game.
