Even as the year draws to a close, the video game industry remains in full swing. Games continue to be released, announcements for future launches keep coming, and, of course, there are still awards, galas, and ceremonies to look forward to. The biggest event in this regard is the Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s ceremony where, among other things, awards are presented to the best games of the year. This year’s gala is set to be a bit different from what we’ve seen in previous years.
This year, we won’t hear the tagline “World Premiere” before each announcement at the event. Despite it being a constant feature in all previous The Game Awards, it has become a source of controversy, if not outright mockery, due to the loose way it has been used in recent years.
During the official Q&A session about the event, Keighley himself shared his opinion on this matter. When asked by an attendee about how many new things we would see that could be labeled as “World Premiere,” the host and organizer of the ceremony assured that while the number would be more or less the same as in other years, he wants to move away from that label. Especially because he believes that, given the very different nature of the things they present, they prefer to treat everything as content about games.
In this same Q&A session, he took the opportunity to give his opinion on the controversy sparked by the nomination of the video game Dave the Diver in the Best Independent Game category. A game with a pixel art aesthetic, but developed by Mintrocket, an internal studio of Nexon, a Korean video game company with over 3,200 employees. This is something Keighley responded to by saying that “indie” can mean different things to different people, and that the awards jury is composed of many different individuals, hence it’s normal not to have a consensus on whether a game qualifies as indie or not.
In addition to all this, he has ensured that this year there will be increased security at the event after at the past Game Awards and its previous event, the Summer Game Fest, individuals spontaneously got on stage without being stopped. Whether this will be fulfilled, we will know at the celebration of this event, on December 7th.
