The Game Awards Criticized For Giving Celebs Significantly More Air Time Than Devs
The gaming community came together once again to pay homage to the best video games of the year and its developers in The Game Awards 2023 earlier this week.
This year’s celebrity-laden award show, however, was heavily criticized for allowing just 30 seconds for developers to give their acceptance speeches before flashing “Please Wrap It Up” on the teleprompter while giving the said celebrities seemingly infinite airtime.
One notable point was when the now-infamous prompt flashed while Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke was dedicating their Game of the Year award to members of the Baldur’s Gate 3 team who died over the course of the game’s development. In comparison, comedian Jordan Peele was allowed roughly six minutes on stage.
Developers promptly began blasting the awards show on X, formerly Twitter, with snarky remarks such as Firaxis narrative director Cat Manning’s tweet: “[…] I love doing prolonged unfunny bits rather than listening to game devs talking about their work.”
Obsidian Entertainment’s design director Josh Sawyer also offered a scathing remark on the social media platform, saying that, “This year’s The Game Awards is an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it’s supposedly honoring.”
The Game Awards founder, producer, and host Geoff Keighly has since responded to the backlash with his own tweet, “I do agree that the music was played too fast for award winners this year, and I asked our team to relax that rule as the show went on,” he wrote. “While no one was actually cut off, it's something to address going forward.”
Award shows have had their fair share of controversies, from Ricky Gervais’ savage opening monologue for Golden Globes 2020 to the meme-worthy slapping incident at last year’s Oscars. As the Oscars of the video game world, it’s probably safe to say that The Game Awards can expect a lot more drama in the future, assuming that it doesn’t get cancelled by the community. You can check out the full list of winners here.
