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TGA: The Game Awards Are Not For Audiences, They Are For Industry Representatives

Flutta

Banned
Metroid Dread at #5 🔥
It’s surprising that a game focused so much on just gameplay could actually go that far in 2021 and it’s also depressing that it isn’t #1 when it’s better than everything else on the list.
Ha Ha Smile GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 
"Everyone's subjectively driven no-lights-ons - Except el supreme patronizing doofus me" sponsored by: Strawman & Red Herring Inc.
And yet it's true. A lot of cynical handwringing over something so incredibly meaningless. Even more so creating the narrative that somehow the people picking the games don't have an opinion as valid as "the real fans" do.

Funny thing is that every goty list goes through this as well. If it doesn't match up with an individual's personal list, it's trash. It's the same dull story every year of people pissed that their favorite genre, studio, game, whatever isn't as liked as that person and go on to trash the process. In this case it's the industry itself.

Fine by me, like I said - it's all meaningless. I'm more than happy to feast on schadenfreude of bitter tears and more importantly catch the previews of what's to come.
 

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
Jeff Keely looked at award shows for movies and asked himself "how can I make that terrible circle jerk even worse for video games?" He found a way.
 

Fbh

Member
They aren't too bad IMO. The awards are the same worthless circlejerk as any other awards show except you can occasionally look forward to a cool trailer or reveal which already makes the event more worthwhile than the Oscars.

Also IMO a user voted award would be even more worthless unless the majority of people that play games voted, at which point all the awards would go to Fortnite, COD, FIFA and probably a dozen chinese mobile games.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
This video is a super dumb take, imo. I don't think he really understands what awards are or why people watch them.

First, the Game Award's aren't gaming's Oscars, they're gaming's Golden Globes. Oscars are an industry award, Golden Globes are a press award. There's a big difference.

The DICE Awards are much closer to gaming's Oscars, because the voting body are people who work in the actual game industry and make games. DICE Awards are considered more prestigious within the industry for that reason.

But you know what award show has ZERO prestige? The People's Choice Awards. The idea of this video that it would be better if gamer's voted is fucking stupid. No one cares what the comment section thinks. That's not why anyone watches awards. Obviously it's gate-keeping, it's an AWARDS SHOW, being snobby and flouting "superior taste" is literally the entire point of an awards show. If you want to know what got the highest user score on Metacritic, you can just go to Metacritic, you don't need an awards show for that.

Anyway, I appreciate that in an era where virtually ALL awards shows are declining in relevance, The Game Awards has found a way to grow its audience. You can ague that stuff takes away from the awards themselves, but the fact is no one would be watching otherwise, so there's a lot to be said for the fact that they are putting eyes on the awards at all.
 
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This video is a super dumb take, imo. I don't think he really understands what awards are or why people watch them.

First, the Game Award's aren't gaming's Oscars, they're gaming's Golden Globes. Oscars are an industry award, Golden Globes are a press award. There's a big difference.

The DICE Awards are much closer to gaming's Oscars, because the voting body are people who work in the actual game industry and make games. DICE Awards are considered more prestigious within the industry for that reason.

But you know what award show has ZERO prestige? The People's Choice Awards. The idea of this video that it would be better if gamer's voted is fucking stupid. No one cares what the comment section thinks. That's not why anyone watches awards. Obviously it's gate-keeping, it's an AWARDS SHOW, being snobby and flouting "superior taste" is literally the entire point of an awards show. If you want to know what got the highest user score on Metacritic, you can just go to Metacritic, you don't need an awards show for that.

Anyway, I appreciate that in an era where virtually ALL awards shows are declining in relevance, The Game Awards has found a way to grow its audience. You can ague that stuff takes away from the awards themselves, but the fact is no one would be watching otherwise, so there's a lot to be said for the fact that they are putting eyes on the awards at all.
standing ovation GIF
 

jakinov

Member
The people who make posts about stuff like this are a bunch of whiny babies. Their goal is to try to "discredit" an event where peoeple are given recognition based a bunch of rules and proceses that are pretty well defined and not really a big secret. When you say things like "Many games win, not because they are that good" you've already lost all credibility because it makes you look like you just whining because the games that you subjectrively think are good are not winning. It's like all the people who whine about the oscars and Emmyys because their favorite shit doesn't win. It's just a stupid ceremony that is fun for at least some gamers to watch and for people in the industry to have fun. To say that it's not for audiences while audiences deliberatrtely go to watch it is abusrd. Of course it's for audiences too, that's how they pay for the show.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The Game Awards are a big deal. Over the years, they have become videogaming's Oscars and just like the Oscars they are not aimed at true audiences, but media representatives. It's nothing more than corporate gate-keeping and opinion-making. It's a media ceremony that allows gaming-media to tell the rest of the world which games they liked independent of their true quality and popularity. In other words, The Game Awards are fake and their sole purpose is to create more advertisement drive through corporate networking.

Upper Echelon Gamers had an interesting video on the matter:



1. The winners are picked by media representatives, not the audience

If you take a look at their FAQ, you can see that audience votes only account for 10% of voting process:



This means that your votes are absolutely meaningless and only serve to create more social media buzz. The winners are picked by a jury that is composed of media entities that belong to giant media conglomerates. There are 103 media publications on the voting jury, many of which belong to the same media groups such as VOX media (Polygon, Verge) or ReedPop (Eurogamers, VG247, RPS). In essence, the vast majority of the jury is not independent and their voting process is heavily dependent on advertisement deals that are created as a result of their decisions.

2. The advisory board is populated by the same people who produce the games

Game publishers have a heavy hand in the Game Awards, as such it is not a ceremony by and for the gamers, but by and for the media. EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Rockstar are all part of the advisory board, even Tencent's vice president Steven Ma. The presence of Tencent shows how strong China's influence on our hobby has become, which considering the country's human rights situation is reason for concern.



When Geoff virtue signals Activision's absence for the awards, he fails to mention that Rob Kostich, president of Activision, is part of their advisory board. The Game Awards are just a façade, it's an artificial show disguised as one giant hours long advertisement. With so much money behind, they are certainly not representative of their audiences opinions.

3. TGA heavily favors third person cinematic single player games

Since 2014, all GOTY winners, with the exception of Overwatch, are narrative driven single player games. Racing games (Forza 5), indies and multiplayers games stand no chance at winning due to how the jury and the voting process are designed. Many games win, not because they are that good, but because they are chosen as a statement by the journalists against critical voices among audiences. Some nominees wouldn't even be on the list, had audiences more than 10% of a say in the matter.

4. TGA is corporate gate-keeping

The Game Awards serve as a gate-keeping mechanism for the media. Only they get to present their opinions, only they get to make statements, only they can promote their views and drown out criticism from their audiences.

4. Conclusion

The Game Awards makes the awards secondary to creating marketing hype for upcoming games. The primary purpose is to build hype and to promote, not to recognize the best games. It's a marketing event where ads, commercials, trailers and promotions are blasted in your face. It's not a show by the people for the people and it is high time we put this crap on ignore.

This is an industry event where critics from all around the industry vote for the best game they think deserves GOTY. Keighley went out of his way to give gamers a 10% say which is probably way higher than any one critic in the panel, and you s still complain. Gate keeping. Get the fuck outta here.

Why should I give a fuck about your opinion at an award show? Did you make a game? Did your game win an award? Then why in the fuck should you or any other gamer go out there to promote your views? Your views are only welcome here on message boards and twitter. thats your platform. Not a fucking award show.

And you even got that point wrong because Keighley once again decided to have like two different awards for gamers and gaming youtubers. It's shocking how every complaint of yours is just wrong.

I mean your conclusion is actually kinda on point. It's an ad. A show to promote games and hype the shit out of them. But we all know this and that is precisely why we tune in. No one watches the DICE awards which is where the industry votes for the best game like the Oscars. People watch this because we are adults who know that Keighley HAS to have ads to make a show this big. People watch this because they know Keighley has promised massive reveals on par with E3s. It's a second E3 to us and we love him for it. I have never seen someone so detached from reality where they get every single thing wrong. Your perception of reality is hilariously skewed.

I mean these three lines here just proof how divorced your conclusions are to the actual evidence you presented. You say the winners are NOT picked by the audience then provide proof where 10% of the vote is picked by the audience, and then you ignore your own piece of evidence and say they are meaningless. How can 10% be meaningless? The last U.S election was decided by literally 0.1% of votes in like three different states and 10% is meaningless? Especially when 103 critics only get 1 vote each. We are getting 10% of the vote.

1. The winners are picked by media representatives, not the audience

If you take a look at their FAQ, you can see that audience votes only account for 10% of voting process:

This means that your votes are absolutely meaningless
Then there is this blatantly false statement.

3. TGA heavily favors third person cinematic single player games

Apparently, Overwatch, Breath of the Wild and sekiro are cinematic third person single player games like TLOU2, GOW2 and Dragon Age. Do you even play these games? BoTW has like 30 minutes of cutscenes in a 50 hour game, most of them in flashback. The protagonist is literally a mute protagonist. The story is an after thought. Sekiro is a from software game with like 3 cutscenes. one at the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end. Putting it in the same category as TLOU2 and GOW is asinine.

In fact, I challenge you. I challenge you to create a thread saying Sekiro and BOTW are the same type of game as TLOU2. Please. I want some entertainment this holiday season.

I dont think i have read a worse post presented so beautifully before. You know how to write, and present your argument. You even did some research, but you put your keen and penetrative mind to the task and somehow arrived at the wrong conclusion.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Just as every awards show. They are to pat each other on the back.

We still watch, good or bad, the Gaf thread during conferences or the like, keeps us entertained.
Russell Crowe Gladiator GIF
 
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zaanan

Banned
Wait, is it mandalorian or interstellar thats supposed to be on next level? I really can't tell since both are mostly just ok.
Definitely Mandalorian. The last third of Interstellar is where Nolan doesn’t just jump the shark; he kills it and fucks the bloody hole too.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
This video is a super dumb take, imo. I don't think he really understands what awards are or why people watch them.

First, the Game Award's aren't gaming's Oscars, they're gaming's Golden Globes. Oscars are an industry award, Golden Globes are a press award. There's a big difference.

The DICE Awards are much closer to gaming's Oscars, because the voting body are people who work in the actual game industry and make games. DICE Awards are considered more prestigious within the industry for that reason.

But you know what award show has ZERO prestige? The People's Choice Awards. The idea of this video that it would be better if gamer's voted is fucking stupid. No one cares what the comment section thinks. That's not why anyone watches awards. Obviously it's gate-keeping, it's an AWARDS SHOW, being snobby and flouting "superior taste" is literally the entire point of an awards show. If you want to know what got the highest user score on Metacritic, you can just go to Metacritic, you don't need an awards show for that.

Anyway, I appreciate that in an era where virtually ALL awards shows are declining in relevance, The Game Awards has found a way to grow its audience. You can ague that stuff takes away from the awards themselves, but the fact is no one would be watching otherwise, so there's a lot to be said for the fact that they are putting eyes on the awards at all.
No one but fanboys care about the awards. Everyone else only cares about the trailers for new games.
 

Brofist

Member
The game awards are like the Oscars from years back, when they would basically award only the most pretentious period piece film of the year and disregard all the good movies. Can't pick games that are based around gameplay, oh no we must validate our hobby as some kind of art form to make ourselves feel better about it.
 

Keihart

Member
True, it's hardly a groundbreaking new insight, but considering the rising numbers of TGA's viewership, many people don't seem to be aware.
Otherwise why would they still watch that crap?
They have trailers, world premiers and whatnot, why wouldnt people be watching the show if there is no real E3 anymore?
Not all that different than the other hour long advertisements like PS events, NIntendo Directs and whatnot.
 

Editaur

Member
Like every award show.

When it comes to these awards, the only game Geoff plays is to satisfy the interest of investors and advertisers.

This show will involve some good (maybe great) announcements here and there. The hosts will have segments interacting with company product(s) very naturally and celebrities will continue to convince us with little to no effort that they are gamers just like us.

I look forward to the trailers a minute later on YT and the cringe compilations to follow.
 
I don't give a singular fuck about any of the awards, I'm only here for the reveals.
Most of the people watching are also watching for this reason^.

GOTY award and these awards in general is and will forever be subjective. It’s not possible to make every one happy with these award selections but if the game reveals and trailers are good that at least makes the show worth watching.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
No one but fanboys care about the awards. Everyone else only cares about the trailers for new games.
I think it's true that most people aren't tuning in primarily for the awards, but the fact is people do watch them and talk about them and vote and engage in ways they never did for any previous gaming award, so the hype shit might be a Trojan horse but it works.
 

Fox Mulder

Member
I only watched it once and it had a giant razor man shilling shit. Like neck beards even shave.

I just watch reveal trailers on YouTube.
 
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supernova8

Banned
Bit off-topic but I couldn't watch the video without getting drawn to the fucking reflection of the monitor in his glasses. Are his videos all like that? Hard pass.
 

Hugare

Member
TGA are not for awards either

Just watch it for the announcements like any sane person would do, and dont give a fuck about the awards

Maybe I'm not enthusiast enough about this hobby, but does it really matter much if A or B takes GOTY?

Try not caring this much, OP
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
TGA are not for awards either

Just watch it for the announcements like any sane person would do, and dont give a fuck about the awards

Maybe I'm not enthusiast enough about this hobby, but does it really matter much if A or B takes GOTY?

Try not caring this much, OP
Or better yet, don't even watch it and just go through a list of trailers after the fact and watch what you want.
 

Woopah

Member
The people who win the awards seems to be pretty happy about it. As long as its bringing joy to people in the industry I have zero problems with it.,
 

Three

Member
Who cares what a bunch of journalist snobs say. Choose your own GOTY
If I bought all the games released in a year then I can do that but considering that I don't, how do you expect me to do that?

These awards are about giving recognition to games. It may not be 'the audience' choosing it (which btw I wouldn't care about either because things like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft would win) its the industry professionals recognising each others hard work. That may be niche, that may be singleplayer, that may be big budget, but who the hell cares? If you don't want to accept what those in the industry are giving recognition to then don't watch it or don't give it much though. Simple as that. Why hate on the awards show though?
 
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Just a matter of time till TGA has an equivalent boycott followed by lack of racial /sexual orientation diversity like the Oscar's.

They will profit from it of course.
 
Duh. That's what award shows are. A bunch of industry people patting each other on the back. It's just that the gaming award shows are filled to the brim with cringe and awful entertainment and stupid categories. I watch it every year for the reveals, and regret not just waiting for the highlights every year. A truly awful display
 

PhaseJump

Banned
TGA has the cheesy stench that the try-hard G4 & SpikeTV gaming culture scene tried marketing.

Doritopope having his nervous breakdown over Kojima's terrible games was the peak of it. Not even the Schick Hydrobot could stand against the absurdity of that moment.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Just a matter of time till TGA has an equivalent boycott followed by lack of racial /sexual orientation diversity like the Oscar's.

They will profit from it of course.
lol my favorite diversity joke was at the last Golden Globes where Ricky Gervais refused to do the In-Memoriam segment honoring all the stars who passed away that year because they were all white. "Not On My Watch!" lmao.

I think they are beginning to realize how absurd it is.
 
TGAs are more like the Golden Globes where the awards are bought and paid for.

The D.I.C.E. awards are gaming’s Oscars as the awards are voted on by devs, programmers, etc.
I would compare it more to the VMA’s due to the spectacle but the respect of the award is similar to Golden Globes imo
 

Wildebeest

Member
"Prestigious video game critics"

Fact is, if I see a lot of laurels on the steam store page for a game I immediately think there is something fishy about it, and it is going to be mind-numbingly dull and broken. I've been trained by experience.
 

Termite

Member
I mean, who the fuck expects an industry awards show in any industry to represent the views of the audience? Is this your first introduction to awards shows? If anything, the audience shouldn't be able to vote to make that clear. The audience vote is entirely a way to force you to sign up and hand over your data.

The fact that they have to pepper game reveals and ads in between the awards in proof that people inherently understand this. No one would tune in if it was just the awards. I don't tune in anyway. You couldn't pay me to watch the Oscards, Grammy's, VGA's.

If you had an audience vote, however, you'd have a problem. With movies, books and music everyone has the ability to experience each of these, and none take more than a couple of hours. Games require seperate hardware, and the vast majority of the audience doesn't have it all (high end PC, Xbox, PS, Switch), and if they did they wouldn't have the time to play all the contenders through to completion.

So what you'd end up with is just a meaningless popularity contest as people vote for what they've played, rather than having played them all and voting for which they liked best. This is somewhat true of all audience votes, but the issues I've mentioned make it so that it's basically worthless for games, imo.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
The Game Awards are a big deal. Over the years, they have become videogaming's Oscars and just like the Oscars they are not aimed at true audiences, but media representatives. It's nothing more than corporate gate-keeping and opinion-making. It's a media ceremony that allows gaming-media to tell the rest of the world which games they liked independent of their true quality and popularity. In other words, The Game Awards are fake and their sole purpose is to create more advertisement drive through corporate networking.

Upper Echelon Gamers had an interesting video on the matter:



1. The winners are picked by media representatives, not the audience

If you take a look at their FAQ, you can see that audience votes only account for 10% of voting process:



This means that your votes are absolutely meaningless and only serve to create more social media buzz. The winners are picked by a jury that is composed of media entities that belong to giant media conglomerates. There are 103 media publications on the voting jury, many of which belong to the same media groups such as VOX media (Polygon, Verge) or ReedPop (Eurogamers, VG247, RPS). In essence, the vast majority of the jury is not independent and their voting process is heavily dependent on advertisement deals that are created as a result of their decisions.

2. The advisory board is populated by the same people who produce the games

Game publishers have a heavy hand in the Game Awards, as such it is not a ceremony by and for the gamers, but by and for the media. EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Rockstar are all part of the advisory board, even Tencent's vice president Steven Ma. The presence of Tencent shows how strong China's influence on our hobby has become, which considering the country's human rights situation is reason for concern.



When Geoff virtue signals Activision's absence for the awards, he fails to mention that Rob Kostich, president of Activision, is part of their advisory board. The Game Awards are just a façade, it's an artificial show disguised as one giant hours long advertisement. With so much money behind, they are certainly not representative of their audiences opinions.

3. TGA heavily favors third person cinematic single player games

Since 2014, all GOTY winners, with the exception of Overwatch, are narrative driven single player games. Racing games (Forza 5), indies and multiplayers games stand no chance at winning due to how the jury and the voting process are designed. Many games win, not because they are that good, but because they are chosen as a statement by the journalists against critical voices among audiences. Some nominees wouldn't even be on the list, had audiences more than 10% of a say in the matter.

4. TGA is corporate gate-keeping

The Game Awards serve as a gate-keeping mechanism for the media. Only they get to present their opinions, only they get to make statements, only they can promote their views and drown out criticism from their audiences.

4. Conclusion

The Game Awards makes the awards secondary to creating marketing hype for upcoming games. The primary purpose is to build hype and to promote, not to recognize the best games. It's a marketing event where ads, commercials, trailers and promotions are blasted in your face. It's not a show by the people for the people and it is high time we put this crap on ignore.


This is one of the dumbest takes I've ever seen about an Awards show (of ANY genre of entertainment).
 

AJUMP23

Member
Like the Oscars or the Hollywood walk of fame, the golden globes or any other award show, they are promotional material.
 
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