The Game Awards 2021 - December 9th

[DJOGamer PT]

That's a dude.

No adam's apple
It really is just an ugly woman
God still makes those

 

[rusty_shackleford]

At least the japs still like pretty women, western female leads however...

Those are the antagonists.

Spoiler

And they're not even the primary ones.

Don't really remember the game having attractive females though.

 

[Ash]

I hate that these people think they have authority to give out game awards. I seriously wonder if Geoff even plays video games at all instead of pursuing money.
Aren't the primary nominations selected from a poll of game journos? We all know they're useless.

You people give them the "authority": https://variety.com/2020/digital/ne...20-viewership-numbers-livestreams-1234864828/

You could just go to sleep and ignore the retarded shillshow, not engage with it at all and maybe watch a Trailer or two the next morning, but at this point "gamers" might actually turn this into "the Oscars for Games" because they can't wait a day to see Drag Gaming Story Hour and that Trailer about the new "Stronk Black Womyn" game: https://thegameawards.com/news/the-game-awards-2020-viewership-increases-84

Not to mention the retards calling for people to "participate and vote" as if they had any influence on the outcome at all.

Me? I would never post a link to their website granting them traffic, for one.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's funny that even some of the console players thought the show sucked ass.

 

[Morgoth]

See? Another reason to wear the mask.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Don't really remember the game having attractive females though.

What! Give me Carmina wife! Give me cute hapa nonsense wife! I am cute heterosexual human male BLEACH wife scholar! I am!

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[Sarathiour]

Ho god, the result are even worse than whatever I predicted.
Fuck this

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-game-awards-is-becoming-the-biggest-single-gaming-event-of-the-year/

The Game Awards is becoming the biggest single gaming event of the year
The Keighleyganza is now arguably the most important date in the industry's calendar, but not for the awards.

The Game Awards is inseparable from its founder, presenter, and all-round marketing machine Geoff Keighley. His willingness to turn any moment into a commercial opportunity has earned him a bad rap from elements of the gaming community. It's also one of the key elements of The Game Awards' gradual transformation into something much bigger than ever seemed possible when it was first announced in 2014.

At that point I mainly knew Keighley from his history with GameSpot (where he delivered access like few others have) and the Spike Video Game Awards, which were a garish and more over-the-top form of what would follow. The Spike Awards had the commercials, it had ugly awards, and it was something of a minor event. Nothing close to what The Game Awards would become, but significant.

What seems most notable about them now is that they only existed because of Keighley. When he left, the network tried one show under a re-brand (VGX) with a new presenter, then dropped it.

2020 vision
The rise of The Game Awards is not just due to Keighley's comfortingly bland commercial sense, however, but the coincidence of the coronavirus pandemic and the absolute chaos it caused in the events sector—which, unlike many other businesses, is entirely dependent on people attending en masse.

The Game Awards was always conceived as an online-first show, and so was barely affected last year, at least for viewers. Whereas events as big as E3 (which Keighley publicly 'broke up' with in 2020), Gamescom, TGS, BlizzCon, and PAX struggled in different ways—and E3 made an absolute hash of it at first—The Game Awards were built for a world where everyone would be watching on screens. Spike was a network television station, but Keighley understood that the future wasn't about traditional methods of distribution but phones, tablets, PC, whatever screen there was.

Keighley has built a personal brand that is absolute catnip for publishers. Here is a known face who can put your game in front of millions of eyeballs and is going to stick to the script perfectly. It's self-perpetuating. With each big reveal Keighley has proven his suitability for another big reveal. 'Keighley will reveal it' is probably the most comforting reassurance an executive at a big publisher can have, because they know it's going to go as planned, and after each trailer he'll say "amazing" or "incredible new IP" before smoothly rolling on to the next. You cannot undervalue this stuff.

A scant decade ago I trawled the floors of shows like E3, Gamescom, and TGS, and competed with other journalists to be 'first' with the news or find something new. These events may return but that search never will: Game announcements are now utterly centralised, and everyone gets the information at the same time. The amounts of money involved mean that the kind of thing that used to go on in the industry—a little sneak-peek at an upcoming project, a background look at some games footage—is absolutely not worth the risk.

But The Game Awards has no risk.

A reveal destination
So we come to this weird question: what exactly is The Game Awards? It is nothing new to point out that the awards are the least important part of it. It rushes through them apologetically between trailers and, frankly, the trophies are the last reason you're watching. That's a bit odd, isn't it: Few people watch The Game Awards because they're interested in the awards.

We watch for the trailers, and this is where the pandemic seems to have really supercharged Keighley's operation. There's a funny parallel with his permanent bromance with Hideo Kojima, who loves Keighley because he'll say what Koj wants. Kojima lucked-out in making a game about social isolation and the environment just before the pandemic hit and everyone went into social isolation. Both benefited from this shift: Kojima because his prescience suddenly had a direct line to reality; Keighley because he had a platform ready to go while all around were flailing, and a board that pushed him. Taking inspiration from the big-ticket efforts that had got 'virtual audiences' right, like the Democratic National Convention and the Emmy Awards, The Game Awards were reconfigured as the ultimate reveal destination.

It is impossible to overstate how important Keighley's image has been to this: When events companies panicked at the pandemic, he was the first presenter they ran to, and of course he did an excellent job and hit all the notes the publishers wanted to see.

Look at the full list of everything announced during The Game Awards last night. There were an astonishing 48 trailers, not all of them for brand new games admittedly, but it shows what this event is going to be now. It has never been clearer that The Game Awards is not really an awards show, and I genuinely don't think Keighley, commercially minded as he is, set out to build this.

Instead there's an odd confluence of circumstances: The pandemic, other events failing to do anything decent virtually, and Keighley's safe hands. These are what has turned The Game Awards from the weird soup of award and trailer it always was, and Spike was to be fair, into a genuine calendar event for the industry, one with more and bigger announcements than Gamescom. There is this tension between celebration and promo, which can be summed up in Elden Ring winning the most anticipated game award this year and last year while also giving the show its big reveal trailers at the exact same time.

Winner take all
As more and more studios have come to see TGA as the best target for their video asset, the show has become too multipurpose, a catch-all for celebrating the medium, advertisement, reveals, and the closest thing to unified awards the industry has. And last night, the show was, for a moment, an awkward context for acknowledging the still-unfurling issue of harassment in the games industry.

Watching Keighley, a man allergic to taking sides, move from an initially 'we are neutral' position to vaguely criticising Activision Blizzard by saying they'd have no involvement. He can't ignore public sentiment, and so the show featured a generic condemnation of harassment without ever saying anything specific. Then moving onto another trailer from Quantic Dream, no less, which has faced its own allegations of harassment.

"We should not and will not tolerate any abuse, harassment or predatory practices by anyone, including our online communities," Keighley said. "Tonight I call on everyone to build a better, safer videogame industry. Speak out online, vote with your time and with your dollars. Empower these world-builders who are creating the future of all entertainment."

It's the statement you expect from a producer who doesn't want to take any position that will threaten valuable industry relationships, putting the responsibility to stop harassment on the people who buy and play games, rather than the companies concerned. That's where the problem lies, not in whether any individual player chooses to buy Call of Duty: Vanguard.

The Game Awards feels like it should be half as long as it is, and cut out the awards and everything else and just serve up the trailers. That's what it has become: The true digital E3, the publishers' route to the consumer. Obviously Keighley alone cannot be credited with all of this, but the abject offerings of the traditional big events—E3, Gamescom, TGS—have given The Game Awards more credence. There is no two ways about this: The Game Awards has began to eat their lunch and drink their milkshake on its way to becoming the biggest single games event of the year.

 

[DeepOcean]

Well maybe the masks are useful afterall...

Yeah, masks made the old bread sack strategy obsolete.

 

[El Presidente]

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-game-awards-is-becoming-the-biggest-single-gaming-event-of-the-year/

The Game Awards is becoming the biggest single gaming event of the year

As an event to entertain in itself and to showcase trailers the Game Awards still has a loooot to improve, but yeah whoever thinks this is decline over E3 has bad memory or has never sat down and watch E3 conferences from start to finish. They were bad, holy Jesus were they bad. Shaking guys walking on stage to talk for 10 minutes, make that 20 if it was a japanese dev cause they'd need translation. Cringe and retarded shit all the time on stage. GA's pace is far better, there's always something different going on, be it a trailer (and let's be fair, it's not the event's fault if they're bad), or the orchestra, or Geoff saying something for just a few seconds and moving on. There's a lot to fine tune, but yeah this is the way to go, fuck E3 conferences, I won't miss them and I've watched most from 2004 to 2018, probably skipped just a handful.

 

[Lizard]

The reason E3 is bad is because they will never top this:


It is too professional and clean now, too self aware of its own embarrassments. Traditional gamers were just a stepping stone to a bigger audience, and now they pretty much have it.
It was fun tuning in once a year to techtv/g4, and watching some of the convention while you ate some snacks/played some games. There was always stupid cringey shit to make fun of, and shitpost about in whatever little gaming group/community you were a part of. Now they all want to be taken seriously. Guess what? These fuckers aren't worth taking seriously. The AAA assembly line garbage isn't worth taking seriously. The artsy fartsy indie "games" from an obvious incestuous clique isn't worth taking seriously. The corporate inclusive bull isn't worth taking seriously. The celebrities aren't worth taking seriously. None of this shit deserves it. Wahhh wahh games are art, blah blah blah take us seriously people who never liked us. These shills and their mentally deranged peers can go fuck themselves. I'm just here for the laughs.

 

[El Presidente]

The reason E3 is bad is because they will never top this:


It is too professional and clean now, too self aware of its own embarrassments. Traditional gamers were just a stepping stone to a bigger audience, and now they pretty much have it.
It was fun tuning in once a year to techtv/g4, and watching some of the convention while you ate some snacks/played some games. There was always stupid cringey shit to make fun of, and shitpost about in whatever little gaming group/community you were a part of. Now they all want to be taken seriously. Guess what? These fuckers aren't worth taking seriously. The artsy fartsy indie "games" from an obvious incestuous clique isn't worth taking seriously. The corporate inclusive bull isn't worth taking seriously. The celebrities aren't worth taking seriously. None of this shit deserves it. Wahhh wahh games are art, blah blah blah take us seriously people who never liked us. These shills and their mentally deranged peers can go fuck themselves. I'm just here for the laughs.

Calm down man you will acquire your Kool Points over time, no need to rush. What you're saying would make sense if that Konami event was silly while still showing lots of cool games, that'd make it pretty soulful, like the unfiltered genuine attempt of the devs to showcase their little fun gems, but nah Ninety Nine Nights was a really shit game and I'm impressed they made a sequel. Dance on stage is retarded, Kinect stuff overall was shit, those were truly dark days. Then you had a Beyblade game and whatever the fuck NeverDead was (just checked, 4.9 user review on metacritic, should be a hidden gem from the glorious PS3 generation right). That is just a big waste of time, all that crap is much worse than the Game Awards 2021 games, at least the Kinect days are buried in the past, hopefully never to return.

 

[Lizard]

Ya the games were shit, but at least the show was entertaining. I don't see how the game awards is any less a waste of my time though. These things are worth watching to me to see all the cringe. If all I wanted was game announcements I would just check out what was announced after the show like a sane person.

 

[Ryzer]

Keighley :Hello we are here at the games awards, the best form of entertainment.

Keighley :Here we are presenting a game and his developer making whatever shit we've seen for the 100th time, tell us whatever gibberish to the consumers:

Developer: Games are really pieces of art so we wanted to make the best game on the market, so I think our game truly deliver in [select one dumb bullshit] and in [select another dumb bullshit nobody gives a fuck].

Keighley: Yeah yeah, *laugh,*chuckling, thank you for coming here tonight, you guys are really wonderful, don't forget to vote for the best video game this year. It is really important [for us and the developer to wank over it].

* Shows a trailer showcasing absolutely nothing except a title*

Keighley: Truly unbelievable, What are you guys planning to do in the future?

Developer: Yeah so our plan at the moment in our studio is to bla bla bla, bla bla bla we have great vision about what we wanted to do and bla bla bla we always knew we wanted to do it...

*Release years later, game broken on delivery for players to fix it.


Rinse and repeat each year.

 

[thelegend]

Halo Infinite won people choice award one day after the release. The people choice award is even worse than the corporate awards.

 

[Gargaune]

Warren Spector considers Ultima VI to be the first immersive sim. The viewpoint isn't necessary as long as the world feels like an actual place through the use of its systems.

God damnit, I buttoned you but I forgot to reply. Right, I can be grateful for Spector's work without necessarily taking his word as gospel, I'm not crazy about him using LAM-climbing as an example of emergent gameplay either, as you might remember. Authors can often misconstrue their own successes, see Invisible War for a very topical example.

Here's the thing:
- if your friend tells you he liked Thief and System Shock, you tell him to try Deus Ex or Dishonored or Prey 2017, you don't jump to Skyrim;
- if your friend tells you he liked Skyrim, you tell him to try Fallout 4 or Gothic or Ultima IX, you don't jump to Deus Ex;
- if your friend tells you he liked Ultima VI, you report him for

-harvesting.

The point is that these games have a common core of characteristics that make them easy to identify relative to one another, easy to group apart from other kinds of games. When you say "Immersive Sim" you immediately think of that first association, that particular Looking Glass school of design which I tried to encapsulate earlier (FPP, emergent gameplay, time-locked etc.) serving a particular vision ("embodiment"), whereas the second example is more effectively characterised by its own "kinda like Skyrim" open-world RPG designation. There is common ground between them, and you can even have games which tick both boxes to an extent (e.g. Kingdom Come: Deliverance), but they're clearly distinct descriptors.

The purpose of a category, genre or subgenre, is to serve critical analysis and consumer identification. To this end, it needs to be comprehensive enough to cover commonality between its instances, but also tight enough to discriminate them in the wider medium. If you roll with the idea that Immersive Sims are games where "the world feels like an actual place through the use of its systems", i.e. a diegetic sandbox, then you can include Deus Ex, Skyrim, Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 3, Neverwinter Nights, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Ultima IX and so on, which indeed makes the term effectively useless. But in practice, the term "Immersive Sim" is validated precisely in describing games "like" Thief or Deus Ex, where design concepts such as the primacy of the First-Person Perspective, among other things, are integral.

Adding to this from the opposite perspective, since Weird West's what's plunged me down this rabbit hole, what's the value in calling it an "isometric immersive sim?" Zero, since the game can be very accurately and comprehensively described as an "isometric sandbox ARPG." The only benefit is in giving Colantonio a "sexy catchphrase" in marketing his latest title, but it comes at the cost of diluting an already fragile term designating that very niche breed of videogame we first saw from LGS.

Having a world offer verisimilitude through the use of its systems is a critical part of the Immersive Sim formula, but it's insufficient - you need to go the extra mile to put the player into it, which is why I keep pushing this Embodiment notion that dates back to Ultima Underworld. Otherwise the term Immersive Sim has little concrete value and we're left with a gap in describing the aforementioned subset of videogames. We have use for a term that collectively describes games like Deus Ex, Dishonored, Arx Fatalis etc. Whether that be "Immersive Sim" or something else, I don't mind, but we've gotten to that point where that's the one in circulation. We don't need one that associates Thief with Skyrim or Ultima VI or Weird West.

 

[Roguey]

The point is that these games have a common core of characteristics that make them easy to identify relative to one another, easy to group apart from other kinds of games. When you say "Immersive Sim" you immediately think of that first association, that particular Looking Glass school of design which I tried to encapsulate earlier (FPP, emergent gameplay, time-locked etc.) serving a particular vision ("embodiment"), whereas the second example is more effectively characterised by its own "kinda like Skyrim" open-world RPG designation. There is common ground between them, and you can even have games which tick both boxes to an extent (e.g. Kingdom Come: Deliverance), but they're clearly distinct descriptors.

The purpose of a category, genre or subgenre, is to serve critical analysis and consumer identification. To this end, it needs to be comprehensive enough to cover commonality between its instances, but also tight enough to discriminate them in the wider medium. If you roll with the idea that Immersive Sims are games where "the world feels like an actual place through the use of its systems", i.e. a diegetic sandbox, then you can include Deus Ex, Skyrim, Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 3, Neverwinter Nights, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Ultima IX and so on, which indeed makes the term effectively useless. But in practice, the term "Immersive Sim" is validated precisely in describing games "like" Thief or Deus Ex, where design concepts such as the primacy of the First-Person Perspective, among other things, are integral.

Adding to this from the opposite perspective, since Weird West's what's plunged me down this rabbit hole, what's the value in calling it an "isometric immersive sim?" Zero, since the game can be very accurately and comprehensively described as an "isometric sandbox ARPG." The only benefit is in giving Colantonio a "sexy catchphrase" in marketing his latest title, but it comes at the cost of diluting an already fragile term designating that very niche breed of videogame we first saw from LGS.

Having a world offer verisimilitude through the use of its systems is a critical part of the Immersive Sim formula, but it's insufficient - you need to go the extra mile to put the player into it, which is why I keep pushing this Embodiment notion that dates back to Ultima Underworld. Otherwise the term Immersive Sim has little concrete value and we're left with a gap in describing the aforementioned subset of videogames. We have use for a term that collectively describes games like Deus Ex, Dishonored, Arx Fatalis etc. Whether that be "Immersive Sim" or something else, I don't mind, but we've gotten to that point where that's the one in circulation. We don't need one that associates Thief with Skyrim or Ultima VI or Weird West.

I don't see the problem, because it's a design philosophy. The Deus Ex designers who had prior experience: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,144/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,5721/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,392621/ Ultima Online, Ultima 7 part 2, Ultima 8. Like Ultima Underworld before it, Deus Ex took the principles of post-Spector Ultima and applied them to the first person, much like how Bloodlines took the principles of Fallout/Arcanum and did the same. I would not say that Bloodlines belongs in its own specific category just because of its perspective.

 

[Gargaune]

I don't see the problem, because it's a design philosophy. The Deus Ex designers who had prior experience: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,144/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,5721/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,392621/ Ultima Online, Ultima 7 part 2, Ultima 8. Like Ultima Underworld before it, Deus Ex took the principles of post-Spector Ultima and applied them to the first person, much like how Bloodlines took the principles of Fallout/Arcanum and did the same. I would not say that Bloodlines belongs in its own specific category just because of its perspective.

If I say both Prey and Dead Space are sci-fi horror ARPGs, that's not very helpful to a gamer who just happens to be unfamiliar with the former. I'd have to detail by also saying "but Prey is first-person, it has emergent gameplay etc.", basically start explaining various parts of that design philosophy. Whereas saying Prey is an Action Adventure-RPG and an Immersive Sim will immediately tap into a general awareness of a style of game that's reasonably well defined in enthusiast consciousness by its milestone titles. Even if said hypothetical gamer doesn't know about System Shock, odds are they've got some idea about Thief, Deus Ex, Dishonored etc., and that general awareness makes it a useful term to have as a category, if not a standalone genre in and of itself.

This does not apply to something like Weird West, where calling it an "isometric immersive sim" is no more helpful than "sandboxy isometric ARPG." It's actually less so, because you'd get more information if I likened it to a real-time Divinity: Original Sin, than if I suggested associations with Thief and the like.

You have in practice a pattern of association and distinction that makes the term valuable as a subgenre exemplified by those particular games where, yes, FPP was also an essential part of the formula and it was so in the pursuit of Embodiment as a core value.

 

[Ash]

I don't see the problem, because it's a design philosophy.

It's a design philosophy yes, in which first person perspective as a rule can be defined. And it has been multiple times in certain dev statements or drafts, yet also has not been in others.

I would not say that Bloodlines belongs in its own specific category just because of its perspective.

If there were many games like bloodlines, then I would. But there is only one.

It's a design philosophy yet also doubles as a sub-genre label. Genres are often (but not always) defined by their game design. There is no standardized naming convention across the industry so it's a clusterfuck all round.

 

[Ryzer]

I don't see the problem, because it's a design philosophy. The Deus Ex designers who had prior experience: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,144/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,5721/ https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,392621/ Ultima Online, Ultima 7 part 2, Ultima 8. Like Ultima Underworld before it, Deus Ex took the principles of post-Spector Ultima and applied them to the first person,

Like Underworld Ascendant.

 

[lycanwarrior]

This is depressing

Are any of those games even RPGs lol? Seems primarily console stuff.

Where's Pathfinder, Solasta, Encased, etc???

The most west that list goes is Poland. Even the Game Awards itself acknowledge anything to the west of that is doomed.

I even dont know why Cyberbug is on this list, I remember CDPR was even embarrassed of calling their cinematic interactive media experience a RPG and changed the official genre of the game for action adventure game so normies wouldnt need to hyperventilate with the possibility of they being triggered by demanding gameplay.

Surprisingly enough, CP2077 was by voted by readers the end-of-the-year Awards on Gameranx and WCCFTECH as the top "RPG" last year.

Really hits home how diluted and practically useless the "RPG" label has become

 

[purupuru]

I hate it when devs try to get too philosophical with genre definitions, in doing so they often miss the forest for the trees.
Yes you can construct a sensible and not completely empty definition that allows "immersive sim" to encompass more than games like Deus Ex, but why would we want that? When I see a new game that markets itself as an "immersive sim" I expect a gameplay experience that's similar to Deus Ex, SS2, Dishonored, etc. And an isometric game is simply not going to deliver that experience.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Man, video game industry is so much filled with man babies, even the scandals are lame, oh shock, Kotick wasnt going to leave his yatch to save miss Danger Hair from nerds farting on her desk or whatever retarded shit they do at Blizzard. Also, dont forget, a breastfeeding woman needed to leave a room and people made jokes during trannie education hour, mah God, I gonna die to such misoginy.

I have to say though, that the scandal is so lame, that I see it winning the Game Awards.

https://twitter.com/betterthemask/s...^1468771324218646530|twgr^|twcon^s3_&ref_url=

male employees stole their lactating colleagues’ breast milk at Blizzard

ActiBlizz is competing with EA, Take 2 and Square-Enix for the worst AAA publisher this year.

 

[Roguey]

I hate it when devs try to get too philosophical with genre definitions, in doing so they often miss the forest for the trees.
Yes you can construct a sensible and not completely empty definition that allows "immersive sim" to encompass more than games like Deus Ex, but why would we want that? When I see a new game that markets itself as an "immersive sim" I expect a gameplay experience that's similar to Deus Ex, SS2, Dishonored, etc. And an isometric game is simply not going to deliver that experience.

Raph wants people to know that his new game follows the same design principles as all his previous games despite being the first to not use a first person presentation.