This year's Game Awards were essentially what I expected they’d be: yet another three-hour-long advertisement that sweeps the problems plaguing the industry under the rug.
The vibes were generic, with many games looking indistinguishable from one another. There are a handful of gacha games, which, full disclosure, I will play at least one of, a bunch of hack-and-slash soulslikes, a Mass Effect clone starring Matthew McConaughey, and a plethora of overly graphic fantasy games. That Divinity trailer was fucking disgusting, seriously.
The awards themselves, aside from a select few, were rattled off at a rapid-fire pace and felt largely unimportant to the whole show. I want to say this is disappointing, but it’s expected by this point.
I feel like I’m pretty hard on TGAs every year, but I’ve heard they’re often seen as more harmful than helpful to game devs. Whether intentional or not, they pit games and their communities against each other and perpetuate a lot of the gamer-related stereotypes.
Geoff Keighley has no issue championing the best parts of the gaming experience while conveniently ignoring and sidestepping the worst, most prominent issues like widespread layoffs, online harassment of developers, blatant racism and homophobia by players, and more. It’s been reported that the Future Class program was essentially a prop to make the whole thing look better. It's all just a huge bummer to be honest.
There are plenty of people who don’t see this as a problem, and that’s their prerogative, I suppose. For me, it’ll always sour the experience until it’s addressed.