1. History

2. Process

3. Ceremonies and winners

4. References

5. External links

The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony honoring achievements in the video game industry. The shows are produced and hosted by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley who had worked on its predecessor, the Spike Video Game Awards, for over ten years.^[1] The ceremonies also feature premieres of new games and in-depth looks at previously announced ones.

History

In 1994, Geoff Keighley had been a part of the first televised awards show for video games, Cybermania '94: The Ultimate Gamer Awards. Keighley, as a teenager, had been brought on to help write material for the celebrity hosts such as William Shatner and Leslie Neilson. The show was not considered successful, aimed more for comedy than celebration, but from it, Keighley had been prompted to develop something akin to the Academy Awards for video games later in his career.^[2]

Keighley had subsequently worked on the Spike Video Game Awards (abbreviated VGA), which ran from 2003 to 2013. The show, was broadcast on Spike TV near the end of each calendar year, was designed to honor video games released during that year. Keighley served as the producer and often host for these shows. In 2013, Spike opted to rename the awards from VGA to VGX as to reflect that they wanted to focus more on next-generation games that were being ushered in by the onset of the eighth generation of consoles, as well as bringing comedian Joel McHale to co-host alongside Keighley.^[3] The 2013 show was considered to be disappointing and aimed as a more commercial work rather than a celebration of video game achievements.^[4]

Keighley was disappointed with the change in tone that this show has presented.^[2] He opted to drop out from further involvement in the VGX, allowing Spike to retain ownership of the property; in November 2014, Spike TV announced that they had opted to drop the awards show in its entirety.^[6] Instead, Keighley worked with several entities within the industry, including console hardware manufacturers Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, and several large publishers, to financially back and craft a new awards show, the Game Awards, with Spike's blessing.^[5] Keighley was able to secure space for hosting the live event. Without a broadcaster, Keighley and the entities agreed to stream the live show on the consoles' networks and on Valve Corporation's Steam service, as to be able to reach a much larger audience than Spike TV previously had.^[6] Since then, Keighley has been able to secure multiple streaming services around the globe for the show, which has been a move appreciated by several of the Game Awards' partners since the show's inception.^[9] Keighley has been approached by broadcast networks offering to air the show, but he had refused these offers, allowing them to keep the freedom of how they present and structure the show.^[7]

Keighley considered it important that the Game Awards presentation is aimed to favorably present the interest of gamers and of the industry, and to be welcoming to celebrities and others that have shown interest in video games.^[9] While the Game Awards are principally an awards show, Keighley knew the importance of having additional content, having seen other experiments of video game awards shows that were only dedicated to awards fail due to lack of audience.^[12] Keighley believed that the Game Awards should fall somewhere between the entertainment venues that are used for the Academy Awards, and the standard award presentation used for the Game Developers Choice Awards, and wanted a balance of material.^[8] Through the Spike VGX and into the Game Awards, Keighley has engaged with developers and publishers to bring teaser trailers, sneak peeks, and reveals of upcoming games alongside the awards. He considers the crowning moment of this approach was being able to secure the first gameplay reveal of Breath of the Wild for the 2014 Game Awards.^[9] Keighly encourages developers and publishers to provide any content that might be deemed exciting or that can pique interest, even if these games are at an early stage of development, and then makes the selection of which games and trailers to feature.^[9] Keighley will subsequently work with those developers and publishers about how to best position their trailers to have the most impact; for example, in the 2018 show, he and Nintendo worked on a trailer reveal for a new fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that appeared to start as a teaser for a new Persona game so that it would have the most dramatic impact.^[10][11]

In conjunction with the Awards presentation, several digital storefronts, such as Steam, the Xbox Games Store and the PlayStation Store offer the nominated games on sale leading up to and a few days after the presentation.^[12] The statuette awarded to the selected games was designed by collaboration between Keighley and Weta Workshop. It is meant to represent "the evolution of the video game medium by way of an angel that ascends through digital building blocks".^[13][14]

Process

The Game Awards has an advisory committee which includes representatives from hardware manufacturers Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and AMD, and software publishers Electronic Arts, Activision, Rockstar Games, Ubisoft, Valve, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. This committee selects around thirty influential video game news organizations that will be able to nominate and subsequently vote on the video games in several categories. The advisory committee otherwise does not participate in the nomination or voting process. During the nomination round, each of the news outlets provides a list of games in several categories; games for the esports-related categories are chosen by a specific subset of these outlets. The committee compiles the nominations and selects the most-nominated titles for voting by these same outlets.^[15] Prior to 2017, there were 28 industry experts and representatives that selected the winners, while the awards from 2017 onwards have used over 50 such experts.^[16]

Ceremonies and winners

References

External links

• {{Official website|http://thegameawards.com/}}

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