What about the year before? The Game Awards are tomorrow and I realized I can’t remember any previous winners. This year there’s far more anticipation over what games will be announced than what will win. That feels like a failure.
What should change about The Game Awards to make them more impactful? Do we even need an “Oscars of games”? What exactly is a “game for impact”?
Without looking it up, I can barely remember who won any awards in any medium last year. Parasite won Best Picture and um… GiantBomb GOTY went to Outer Worlds. That’s all I got.
Uuuuuhhhhh, Control?
I dunno, the only thing I remember from last year is the Xbox Series X reveal. I’m also of the opinion the there doesn’t need to be an Oscars for movies, so I definitely don’t think video games need one. But hey, there’s gonna be some cool game reveals tomorrow, so I’ll tune in I guess.
I remember the year that Lena Raine got to play with the orchestra? And the year we all won when Danika, Natalie and Austin streamed it.
If Sekiro came out last year, I think Sekiro won GOTY. And the “Games for Impact” reward went to GRIS whatever year that was because they got both the Muppets and HouseHouse (of Untitled Goose Game fame) in on what is easily the best gag anybody will ever come up with at a show like that. Beyond that, who knows
I know Disco Elysium won something cos someone said “shoutout to Marx” during their speech.
EDIT: @trty0 HA! Speed is not your ally on this day!
Of course I remember, because Disco Elysium won every category it was nominated for and the developers gave a shout out to Marx and Lenin on stage
I can tell you that Celeste was robbed for Best Soundtrack
I remember Sekiro won. I also remember 2018, but only because Rockstar walked out after God of War won.
Hermes has abandoned me in my time of greatest need
Outer Wilds 
I remember by thinking about which one has the the in the title. Outer Wilds has no the and is amazing. The Outer Worlds has a the and is mediocre.
Untitled Goose Game swept the awards. One might even say they were stolen.
This is my recollection and nothing can convince me otherwise.
Considering everyone was surprised sekiro actually won yeah it’s easy to remember
Ask me what games came out last year.
Yeah, this is what actually happened. I was there, I saw it.
No idea. I honestly can’t stand these things. In a similar way that I don’t like choosing favourites for myself, I feel more let down by the projects that didn’t win (or even get nominated) than I feel happy for the ones that win. There’s also a huge awkwardness to these affairs (where people seem to be trying to find a way to show enthusiasm that doesn’t feel real) that hits my social anxiety hard.
If we wanted to make them more meaningful, I think they would have a single specific agenda (awarding small teams with coverage they wouldn’t normally get, promoting access, promoting marginalized voices, etc…) instead of a broad spectrum that inevitably waters the excitement down to games with the biggest bribery marketing budget.
I do not give the slightest f*ck about the game awards (or any other award show for that matter). The only interesting thing here is the potential new information about games.
Did any smash characters get announced last year? I think not. That’s what I’m really all about.
The Oscars and Game Awards are both entertainment industry marketing events, but they function in different ways. The Oscars exist to develop the image of Hollywood as a creatively vital place where important art is made. It’s a transparently constructed image, but by asserting it for long enough they made it work. The Game Awards want to do that for the video game industry and also hype upcoming games and that’s a fundamental conflict. It’s hard to believe the awards are important when the event doesn’t treat them as important. But of course that’s the only way the event could exist: the game industry doesn’t have Hollywood’s ego and it doesn’t believe artistic credibility would help it commercially, so it’s not going to host an awards show for the sake of the awards.
That’s not to say the awards don’t have meaning. What they mean is that a jury of critics thought the nominated & winning games were among the best of the year in some way, and that’s cool for the people who made those games. It’s just not much more prestigious than a high Metacritic score and I don’t see a path to gain that prestige.
Fair, time and memory lost their meaning sometime in July
