Topic: The Game Awards 2023

@Keman My thoughts exactly.

Regarding Oscars - I think "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" was actually a great movie, and yet it still got an Oscar, but other than that I do not recall even remembering anything worth watching (out of live action movies, because there have been great animations that deserve recognition, like Bubble or A Whisker Away or Child of Kamiari Month). La La Land was just okayish.

I think the problem lies with the fact that Game Awards, like many other award giveaway events, have become extremely hermetic, self contained. They are made to appeal to a very specific group of developers and their clients, and most of the industry is not even represented in those events. I heard more than one time that it's becuase the awards are bought, but many people seem not to believe that. If it's not the case, then it's just that the critics are very new to gaming and can't even be bothered to play something that isn't specifically tailored to the lowest denominator.

But I think that the Game Awards are actually the litmus test of a bigger problem in the whole industry - there is no mainstream anymore. Western big media outlets are trying to artificially create the vision of mainstream where everything the gaming industry has to offer are CoDs, Fifas, Assassins Creeds, and a couple of more. Everything else is portrayed as "niche", and because the "mainstream" has become extremely narrow, it is now "niche" as well, so players are divided into many, many "slots" like "normies", "fighting games players", "rhythm game players", "RPG players", and so on.

Most of the best games are not even considered newsworthy or award worthy, so most players don't even know when the Next Big Thing releases

I agree, but the Ad Awards + Games were never meant to be taken seriously.

There was a ton of competition for some of the general categories like GotY so no surprise Hogwart's wasn't there, but I am a little surprised it wasn't nominated for RPG. Hogwart's legacy reviewed slightly better than Starfield and Lies of P and certainly sold much more than Lies of P. I know there has been some controversy of whether it really 'counts' as an RPG, but if the game awards doesn't think games like that are RPGs, they clearly need some new categories.

Cant wait to watch this!... after its over.
I cant watch these things live they are too long and boring for me.
Hope Nintendo gets some wins and maybe some more game news.

yeah i just want to see what happens

I think even the people who liked the game just didn't want to hear more online discourse about it. Least fun game discussion since Last of Us part 2. (and I say this as someone who has very obvious reasons to be...strongly disinterested in it)

But beyond that, I'll agree with others and say it was a packed year, and despite a lot of praise, I have seen enough people find the game to be overhyped and underwhelming beyond politics. If Street Fighter 6 can't get in for GOTY, no way Hogwarts does much, that makes no sense to me.

also the lame Pokemon D/P remakes outsold it, sales validate nothing :V

Leaving the politics aside, I'd think of Hogwart's Legacy as something that the Harry Potter fandom went ape about but had practically no impact at all outside it. To the hardcore fans, of course it's their GOTY, but to everyone else it's an also ran in a very strong year, and there's a lot more people in that latter group.

It's like when people overpraise Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. I like the game too but its not some high point of gaming (its not even the best licensed games on Gamecube that year, I dare say).

Kinda stinks chained echoes got the shaft with no nominations.. the game was incredible for an indie rpg.

Regarding the RPG category, I feel like it should be split into 2 categories. Action RPG and other RPGs (e.g. turn based).

The Action RPG nominees would be something like:

• FFXVI
• TotK
• Star Ocean The Second Story R
• Starfield
• Lies of P

Then the other RPG category nominees would be something like:

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Sea of Stars
• Octopath Traveler II
• Super Mario RPG
• Chained Echoes

@Grumblevolcano fully agree. It's way too broad a term

@Grumblevolcano I agree. It feels weird to have every sort of RPG just mashed into one category. Having Sea of Stars and Starfield going against each other in the same category even though they're extremely different from each other as RPGs just doesn't seem right. Sea of Stars is a traditional turn-based RPG, whereas Starfield, FFXVI, and Lies of P are more of your Action RPGs. It could help give more RPGs a turn in the spotlight for sure.

The RPG category ain't great, but the Action / Adventure one is even worse. It's like you've got half of video games - including four of the GOTY nominees - smashed into a single genre.

Ultimately, they can only have so many genre awards when they also want to have technical categories and promote things like community support, accessibility, and so on. Personally, I'd cull the e-sports, content creator, adaptation and future hype awards to make room for a few more, but it's not my show.

To be fair, action-adventure has always been a vague term that only means something if you know specifically the kind of games it refers to (and even that's arguable). This has been a problem for my entire time on the internet, it has never changed.

They always have a category for best content creator and every year I'm unfamiliar with the nominees 😂

I've heard of People Make Games. They're the ones who blew the lid on the toxic workplaces in the indie scene, illegal CS:GO gambling, the exploitation of Roblox developers and other seedy industry practices. They're well worth watching.

That's a marked improvement from previous years because the last time I'd heard of a nominee was because he was caught cheating at a speedrun. He then proceeded to win the award!

Twitch, YouTube and other social media platforms have their own awards for this kind of stuff though and it feels rather tacked on to The Game Awards.

I really think that the Game Awards needs a new category "Best Remake/Remaster" - considering how many games these days fall into that category.

I still think games in this remit should be eligible for other category wins also, including the main 'GOTY' award, but equally I think it would be a good category for things like Prime Remaster, Resi4 Remake, Dead Space etc. Gives those titles a fighting chance to walk away with something! (Dead Space remake in particular was a pleasant surprise)

I would say it's a hard-to-define category (one could argue for everything between ports-which-changed-things and full reboots) but of course action-adventure is also hard to define. The Game Awards of course used to have a remaster category and discontinued it, but I don't know the exact reasoning they had for removing it.

@Matt_Barber

Because Baldur's Gate III and Sea of Stars are the only actual RPGs in the RPG category.

Final Fantasy XVI, Lies of P, and Midfield are action/adventure games with RPG elements.

@CJD87 I wonder what the nominees would have been for this year if they kept it around. Maybe...

Metroid Prime Remastered
Dead Space Remake
Star Ocean The Second Story R
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
Resident Evil 4 Remake