I watched the game awards 2023 so you don't have to

[Admin]

First off as we already knew the categories are idiotic.

31 categories but no awards specifically for great gameplay or great controls.

Instead the game awards is very focused on things like cisuals, voice actor performance, cutscenes, etc.

And of course it's pack full of advertisements called "World premieres" even though many of those games were already known before.

The "Best debut indie game" category should probably just be scrapped, doesn't make sense to only give each new studio one chance to win. Instead it would have been better to just make the awards in general more friendly towards indie game by having instead adding the awards "best gameplay" and "best gameplay innovation".

 

[Admin]

Microsoft won 3 awards but 0 for starfield
Starfield didn't even deserve the nomination for the "best RPG" category, arguably doesn't quality in said category and the game is trash anyway.

https://vintologi.com/threads/ongoing-starfield-trainwreck.1382/

None of the awards they won really matter though.

https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/all-the-game-awards-2023-winners-revealed/2900-4977/

 

[Admin]

Spiderman 2 got nominated 8 times but won 0 awards
This is actually funny and arguably it didn't really deserve any award in the first place.

A general issue with these sony games is that while they do deliver quality the excellence simply isn't there.

The game award format also favor popular game and spiderman 2 could only be played on the PS5 which limited the audience.

 

[Admin]

you could do your own game awards here.

I don't really have much time to spend trying games and it's rare for me to come across of something worthy of an award in the first place.

There are also some genres that i avoid, i never even tried Baldur's gate 3 since i avoid that category (single player strategy games) completely.

 

[Admin]

Why was destiny 2 and diablo 4 nominated for "best community support" ?
Sure they didn't win (baldur's gate 3 took that) but why were they nominated in the first place?

Diablo 4 and destiny 2 are both failing as they are being filled with predatory monetization.

 

[Creamer]

the game "project mugen" seems promising

 

[Admin]

Forza motorsports didn't deserve any award
It has awful userscores on steam so clearly it isn't a particularly great game. It very much did not deserve any award for best sports/racing game.

Recent Reviews: 39%
All reviews: 51%
SteamDB: 39.42%

I don't know if it deserved award for "best innovations in accessability". Letting more people play an awful game isn't something that we should celebrate in the first place. Why is there award for letting a few percent with disability play videogames but no award for gameplay innovation?

 

[Admin]

Developers who won awards only got 30 seconds (or less) to speak
And often they got even less time or no attention at all.

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/game-awards-2023-fail-rushed-speeches

Award recipients were told that they had only 30 seconds to accept their honors. An oh-so-helpful countdown clock kept them on track, and loud music drowned out anyone who got notions of saying anything but the barest “I’d like to thank the team” acknowledgements.

Baldur’s Gate 3s tudio head Swen Vincke wasn’t even granted a few extra seconds when he dedicated the Game of the Year award to team members who passed away during the game’s production. Instead, music overwhelmed their words as these people were rushed off stage.

And that’s only speaking of the lucky developers who were deemed worthy of stage time at all. More than a dozen awards were shoved into rapid-fire segments where host Geoff Keighley read off four or five winners at a time, barely allowing a break for applause, let alone any appreciation for the developers behind the games. Even FromSoftware, the winner of last year’s Game of the Year award for Elden Ring, was relegated to the lightning round this year.

Instead loads of time were focused on ads and having overrated actors waste peoples time.

The winner of game of the year deserved more than just 30 seconds to make a speech.

 

[Admin]

The public vote was only 10%, 90% was the corporate jury
While this itself doesn't have to be bad the issue is that the jury is filled with people who do not value games with great gameplay. This is why third person narrative driven games win almost all of the awards shutting out games that are actually great from even getting nominated.

Note that the corporate jury might still look at what's popular before deciding on game of the year. If the audience overwhelmingly vote for one game that may influence the jury to let it win for the sake of pleasing all the people watching through the constant advertisements.

 

[Admin]

How much of it is ads?
Only 15.2% of the time (202 minutes total) was spent for actual awards. The rest was "world premiers" and loads of shitty ads.

By IGN's estimations, the time spent on the awards and speeches was only about 30 minutes and 42 seconds out of the total two-hour and 52-minute runtime of the show, not including the pre-show.

https://nordic.ign.com/news/76483/the-game-awards-criticized-for-giving-winners-little-time-to-speak-amid-silence-on-industry-layoffs

I also saw this article with a funny headline but no explanation for where they got the 7 minute figure from so it could just be made up.

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/ad-blocker-makes-game-awards-7-minutes-long/

It's likely that the organisers have realized that people for the most part do not really care about the awards which is why that isn't the focus of the game awards show.

 

[Admin]

The big issue with most trailers
A lot of the trailers featured didn't even show gameplay or they showed very little. Instead the focus was in-game cutscenes which doesn't tell you how good the game actually is.

So what's even the point in watching that nonsense? sure you might get hyped but then in 99 of 100 cases you will be disappointed in the actual game.

There isn't any shortage of visually impressive games in the first place. Instead the actual shortage is with regard to compelling gameplay, that is rare and watching the game awards show isn't going to help you find that.