Geoff Keighley redeemed himself with his tenth anniversary show at The Game Awards. It was an evening full of unforgettable moments, new game trailers and well-deserved awards.
I was at the Peacock Theater for over three hours on Thursday night to witness the whole thing. We stood our ground GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games event on the same day, but I managed to produce 17 stories on the day of gaming’s biggest celebration.
And Keighley made up for criticism from last year when he was taken to task for failing to acknowledge layoffs in the games industry, drumming award winners off the stage after a short time and failing to adequately protect the stage.
This year there was plenty of stage security to stop stage invaders and plenty of time for speakers like Swen Vincke, who presented the Game of the Year award after winning that title last year for Baldur’s Gate III (and cutting short his speech). ). Vincke predicted that the best game of 2025 would be made by executives who “don’t treat developers like numbers on a spreadsheet.”
And this time Keighley recognized the 34,000 redundancies in the industry over the last 2.5 years and presented him with the Game Changer Award for the first time Aamir Satvata single person who made a huge difference by enabling so many developers to work.
Satvat has helped more than 3,000 people find jobs by creating easily accessible job resources that summarize all open positions in the gaming industry. The emotional Satvat explained that you can’t make great games without great people and that his parents taught him that his value lies in how he treats other people. He took these thoughts to heart as he created spreadsheets and more to give orders to developers.
The other great thing about Keighley’s show was that he brought the games with him. Certainly the rumored Half-Life 3 wasn’t there and Rockstar Games didn’t come out with Grand Theft Auto VI. Nintendo has not presented its Switch 2.
But Keighley’s stage was where Balatro’s solo developer won three awards, while Black Myth: Wukong won multiple awards, showcasing China’s development prowess and securing a place for Chinese culture on the global stage. And where Team Asobi showed everyone that a simple 3D platformer, AstroBotcould win game of the year. As a big Senua fan, I was pleased to see Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II win for Best Audio Design and Melina Jürgens for Best Performance (for an unprecedented second time).
Naughty Dog unveiled a new intellectual property, its first new game franchise since the release of The Last of Us 11 years ago in 2013. The title, Intergalactic: The Heretical Prophetwas a sci-fi game starring a bald woman who some weak minds would describe as “woke.”
The graphics were amazingly realistic, but there were strange product placements like the word “Porsche” on the back of a spaceship. With titles like Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter, Uncharted and The Last of Us behind them, Naughty Dog has a reputation for triple-A greatness that needs to be maintained.
But “Intergalactic” wasn’t the best trailer for a new game at the show, perhaps because it spent a little too much time showing the woman shaving her head.
The Witcher 4The trailer showed how it works. It told a moving, vivid and cinematic story in such a short space of time, with the female sorcerer Ciri of Cintra taking center stage instead of the male protagonist Geralt of Rivia. Reminding me that film is an art form in itself, the trailer showed a scene where townspeople sacrificed a young girl to a “god” who was actually just a monster. Ciri tried to save the woman and had an epic battle with the human-headed spider-like monster that was really scary. It didn’t end well. The final comment was so apt: “There are no gods here, only monsters.”
The makers of Elden Ring at From Software were back with it Elden Ring: Nightreigna new co-op game in the dark world of Elden Ring for people like me who can’t finish such games on their own.
I also enjoyed the appearance of celebrities such as Harrison Ford, who appeared alongside voice actor Troy Baker, who starred in the wonderful film Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (which came out too late in the year to win an award win), cracked a joke).
In terms of our Hollywood and games event, it was nice to see so many collaborations between the industries. AGBO, founded by the Russo brothers who made the Avengers films, worked with Neople to develop Nexon’s upcoming The First Berserker: Khazan, which was sufficiently violent for gamers.
And there was Snoop Dogg, singing a song from his new album, which was released that same evening. This is once again an example of how putting your entertainment in front of players, be it from the Fallout TV show or Snoop Dogg’s new work, is a great way to market your product. Unfortunately, Snoop didn’t introduce a new game.
But gaming superstars were also there. And Josef Fares, founder of Hazelight and maker of 2021 Game of the Year It Takes Two, was back with another co-op splitscreen buddy title called Synchronization Shared fiction. He said the team “does shit without screwing things up,” and that development philosophy led to the game, which has players jumping in and out of sci-fi and fantasy worlds to solve puzzles. The part about the farting pigs made me laugh.
Fares famously said: “Screw the Oscars” Back at the Game Awards in 2017. But what’s interesting now, with great connections between industries visible in shows like Fallout (winner of Best Game Adaptation), is that we’re in a golden age of collaboration between Hollywood and playing.
Randy PitchfordCEO of Gearbox Software, unveiled Borderlands 4 for the first time, hopefully rejuvenating the brand after this summer’s disastrous Borderlands movie. It looked great, despite the familiar style graphics that seemed like a comic book come to life.
Mafia: The Old CountryThe creator of Hangar 13 released a trailer that depicted the origins of a “made” man and the rise of the Mafia in Sicily in the early 20th century. It was a compelling scene with interesting characters and brutally choreographed violence. I loved Mafia III’s combination of narrative and action-adventure, and I expect this game to continue that tradition.
And I enjoyed seeing veteran game developer Warren Spector and his studio OtherSide Entertainment release a trailer for it Thick as thieveswhich takes the innovative stealth gameplay of Thief (developed by Spector and his team in the late 1990s and early 2000s) to the next level by pitting four people against each other in multiplayer mode.
Finally, it was liberating to see Wargaming, a company that thrives on live service titles like World of Tanks and World of Warships, emerge with an original intellectual property. Steel Huntera science fiction mech game. It shows that the industry can still realize new game projects without being limited by the innovator’s dilemma.
It was also great to see Netflix show a mobile game, Squid Game Unleashed, on December 17th, coupled with the launch of the second season of Squid Game, the most popular Netflix show of all time, on December 26th.
And Game of Thrones gets similar treatment Game of Thrones: Kingsroad from Netmarble and Warner Bros. Pocket Pair’s Palworldwhich sold 25 million copies in one month, is getting an expansion on December 23rd.
We’re also getting Okami 2 from a new Capcom studio. Original director Hideki Kamiya returns to helm the sequel as head of studio Clovers. Other studios helping with the game include M-Two and Machine Head Works.
It was a wonderful day for the gaming industry, which is still catching its breath after so many studio closures and layoffs over the last 2.5 years. Let’s hope one good day leads to another and a good Game Awards ceremony leads to many others too.
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