Really?
You want a video on the Game Awards?
Even though they happened last week?
Okay…
Yes, The Game Awards are rigged.
But not necessarily in the way you might think.
Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley does not like people claiming that the awards are in
any way rigged, or that he has simply chosen his favourite games for nomination.
In an interview with Game Informer in 2021, he said:
“I see ‘The Game Awards is rigged!’ and all these other comments online, and,
you can say it, but there’s no evidence to support that.
… “We send out a ballot... and [over a hundred]
outlets around the world vote for the nominees, and then we just tally them up.”
Indeed, the Game Awards website makes a point of emphasizing that Keighley doesn’t have
any personal say on the nominations – that five nominees are chosen by games journalists
around the world, and that these same journalists vote for the winner, with fans contributing
10% of the final votes.
Keighley claims to do everything he can to stay above the actual awards, stating:
“I’m too close to the industry because I’m working on the world premieres, I’m
working on the sponsorships, I just try and stay separate from that, but because the show
is my brand – I produce it, I host it, inevitably it’s like, ‘oh, Geoff picked this for
game of the year!’
… “People just assume somehow that I’m making
all these selections, and I would select different from the panel in certain categories.”
While every effort is made to keep the nomination and voting process impartial, it doesn’t
work out this way in practice.
Two big factors influence who actually gets nominated for awards: the journalists chosen
to participate in the jury.
In an opinion piece on GamesIndustry.biz, published a week before the Game Awards in
anticipation of the inevitable discourse, veteran awards organiser Christopher Dring
explained how awards ceremonies often have unconscious bias.
He said: “One year I was on a BAFTA panel and it
was a tight decision.
In the end, the game that won did so by a single vote.
Two games in second place were tied.
I voted for the eventual winner.
It was a brilliant horror game and I love that genre.
But I often wonder what might have happened if they'd had a different journalist on the
panel?
One who didn't like horror games.
It feels likely that with a different panel, an entirely different winner would have emerged.”
This is the challenge that faces The Game Awards each year: which journalists deserve
a spot on the jury?
Games journalism is broken down into a variety of niches.
Give too many votes to Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft-exclusive publications and websites,
and it will skew the results.
If the jury proportions are done simply by size of platform, for example, then mobile
would dominate everything.
Thus, to ensure a balance, jurors have to be cherry-picked to represent a wider spread
of different gaming platforms and tastes.
This means some casualties, In his interview with Game Informer, Keighley lamented the
fact that, in 2021, Half-Life: Alyx didn’t have a chance to receive a Game of the Year
nomination, simply because, as a VR PC game, it was not played by a wide enough proportion
of the jury.
The Game Awards’ method for mitigating this is to allow fan votes – especially the Players’
Voice award, which Keighley considers to be very important.
He said: “Sometimes it’s, ‘oh, the critics are
opposed to what the fans think’, and if you look at our Player’s Voice, that’s
why we do that, it’s a hundred percent votes for by fans.”
Indeed, this year’s Game Awards was excellent proof of why simple fan popularity is a dangerous
metric for judging awards.
The 2022 Players’ Voice award led to controversy, as Sonic Frontiers and Genshin Impact fans
became increasingly aggressive on social media, galvanised by their respective communities.
The fact that Sonic Frontiers got as close to a win as it did is evidence of just how
passionate the Sonic fanbase really is.
Even though Keighley and his team insist that they don’t personally choose the nominees
and the winners in the Game Awards, though, they do choose something that shapes the kinds
of games that can win: the categories.
According to Christopher Dring: “Why did you choose that category over this
one?
Why isn't there a category for me?
“The truth is, awards often have another, non-commercial reason to exist.
And sometimes that 'other' reason is actually its main purpose.
“For The Game Awards, its other primary purpose is obvious: it's a marketing vehicle
in which to announce video games.
For the Women In Games Awards, it's about promoting, highlighting and improving the
diversity of the games industry.
For our Best Places To Work Awards, the primary objective is to try and make the games industry
a better place to work.
The actual awards component supports these aims.”
The Game Awards categories often, rightly, receive a lot of scrutiny.
The Most Anticipated Award, an award for a game that nobody has played yet, makes more
sense when the entire award ceremony is viewed as a vehicle for hype and marketing.
Some awards are designed to push the games industry in a certain direction.
For example, the Games for Impact and Innovation in Accessibility awards help to highlight
good examples of inclusivity within gaming.
The categories, though, determine who can win awards.
The Best Family award is inevitably going to see a lot of nominations for Nintendo.
Two separate awards: Best Action and Best Action/Adventure, ensure more nominations
for a specific type of action game.
Lumping together several genres into the Best Sim/Strategy game and Best Sports/Racing game
awards means fewer nominations for this very broad segment of the gaming landscape.
With multiple awards for presentation – best audio design, best art direction, best performance,
best game direction – the games to receive the most nominations will often be games with
larger budgets.
So while Geoff Keighley insists that he doesn’t choose the winners of each Game Awards, by
selecting the categories for awards, and by selecting which journalists are deemed important
enough to qualify for the jury, The Game Awards does end up filtering a year of games through
a very specific lens.
This, though, is inevitable.
As Christopher Dring notes in his article: “The Game Awards, in fact all awards, are
not perfect.
It's not possible.
There are always too many categories, oh and not enough categories.
The judging system is never right.
Judging panels are rarely fair.
And someone is always calling them corrupt on social media.”
That’s as good a moral as any for this story.