The 10 Biggest Game Awards Controversies
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VOICE OVER: Ty Richardson
WRITTEN BY: Ty Richardson
The Game Awards is a huge celebration of gaming, but it's seen its fair share of controversies. Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we're taking a look at various moments in Game Awards history that caused more than just commotion. Our list of the biggest Game Wards controversies includes The Meaning of "Indie," The ABK Non-Address, the 2020 Game of the Year, The Fighting Game Fiasco of 2022, and more!
Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re taking a look at various moments in Game Awards history that caused more than just commotion.
The lazy miscategorization of games started becoming noticeable in 2022 with the Best Fighting Game category. “MultiVersus”, “The King of Fighters XV”, and “DNF Duel” were all expected picks, but “Sifu”? Many within the FGC were flustered by this miscategorization including famed streamer Maximilian Dood. The nomination came off as if the jury thought a fighting game was just a game heavily focused on combat. Not sure how anyone would think that when we’ve had fighting games like “Street Fighter”, “Tekken”, “Skullgirls”, “Killer Instinct”...you get the idea. “Sifu” is a great game, but to call it a fighting game was just negligent on the jury’s part. At least “MultiVersus”, a platform fighter that properly represented the fighting game label, won the award.
People have been up in arms over the 2023 Game Awards nominees. We’ll get to some of the other controversies later, but the quieter outrage is focused on the Best RPG category. “Baldur’s Gate III” and “Sea of Stars” are great choices, but “Lies of P” and “Final Fantasy XVI” are leaning way harder into the action category than they are RPG, the latter more so than the former. This was especially hard to accept knowing that other RPGs like “Octopath Traveler II” and “Cassette Beasts” were left out in the cold in favor of “Starfield”. Are we just labeling anything that has stats and doles out XP an RPG these days?
The Game Awards used to be not so marred in controversy after controversy, but the very first year where it was truly alarming was in 2016. The 2016 Game Awards had a menace looming over its shoulder from the moment the show started - the Schick Hydrobot. The mascot of the razor company was constantly butting into the show between every award and commercial break. What made it worse was just how bad the interstitials were in line delivery and overall demeanor. It came off as pandering to many, and the frequent interruptions caused many to stop watching.
The year 2021 was rather tumultuous. Not only were we still in the midst of a globe-wide pandemic, but Activision-Blizzard-King found themselves in a nasty spotlight after the corporation was exposed for mistreating its employees across a multitude of levels. Initially, Keighley said that he was not going to bring up the topic at The Game Awards, which resulted in backlash from various media outlets and developers. Keighley did end up opening the show addressing it, but he did so without clarifying as to what he was referring to and without naming Activision-Blizzard-King specifically. As expected, this got him even more backlash than before.
In 2023, we saw a ton of remakes and remasters pour out of the woodwork. As for The Game Awards, it was a category that was considered at one point before being scrapped. The reason? Keighley stated it was because “are there really five amazing remakes every year?” In a year where we saw “Dead Space”, “Resident Evil 4”, “Advance Wars”, “Super Mario RPG”, and “Like a Dragon: Isshin!”, some folks saw this answer as a poor excuse. Make it happen next year Geoff!
For a time, The Game Awards was a tad hard to sit through for most audiences, and it wasn’t just because of advertising. While bad pacing is partially to blame, there were also folks pointing to the amount of time focused on one particular side of the show. Some would say there was too much focus on trailers while others argued against the meaty selection of awards. Keighley and his team have managed to cut down the shows to reasonable runtimes in recent years. Unfortunately, it has come at the cost of several categories getting shoved to 30-second spots with no time for the developers to give acceptance speeches. The only categories who get that are actors and directors nominated for bigger categories like Game of Year, Best Direction, and Best Performance.
The 2020 Game Awards upset a lot of folks. Like…A LOT of folks. Filmmaker Chistopher Nolan walked onstage and announced the winner of the 2020 Game of the Year award was “The Last of Us: Part II”. Ignoring the “anti-woke” crowd, this had many people enraged because of how many arguably “better” games came out in 2020. “Ghost of Tsushima”, “DOOM: Eternal”, “Final Fantasy VII Remake”, “Hades”, and “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” dominated much of the conversation in 2020 when we weren’t anxiously waiting for updates surrounding COVID-19. And yet, the Game of the Year is voted on by the public. So…who is really to blame in this situation if anyone at all?
While the 2022 Game Awards came and went with very little conflict over who won which shiny trophy, alarms went off when Hidetaka Miyazaki and his cohorts went up to accept their award. One person unrelated to them had managed to sneak onstage and take hold of the microphone. No one had stopped him, no one tried to stop him, and folks quickly realized how horribly the situation could have gone. A similar incident occurred at Summer Games Fest 2023, another showcase Keighley hosts every year. Thankfully, Keighley has gone on record to say that starting with Game Awards 2023, security will be tightened to ensure there are no more stage invaders regardless of their intentions.
This might be the biggest uproar The Game Awards has seen since the Hydrobot festival of 2016. When “Dave the Diver” was nominated for Best Independent Game, folks were quick to point out how it was not an indie game. “Dave the Diver” was developed by Mintrocket, which is a studio formed by Korean billion-dollar tech giant Nacon. Many felt that this was a failure on the voting jury’s part in properly classifying certain terms and criteria. Keighley only fueled the fire when he made his stance on the matter, stating “Independent can mean different things to different people, and it’s sort of a broad term.” …Is it, though?
In recent years, the legitimacy of the Game Awards’ voting jury has been called into question, and it’s becoming more frequent. Every year, the nominations are chosen by a select number of gaming outlets from across the world, the biggest ones being those in the US. Problem is that the credibility and scale of each is…debatable. Many outlets on the voting jury are podcasts and YouTube channels, and many of them frequently guest on each others’ own shows. If The Game Awards is truly about celebrating games, shouldn’t there be more than twenty-five outlets on the jury? Why isn’t Windows Central on the jury? Or Last Stand Media? Or Push Square, Time Extension, Retro Gamer Magazine, Nintendo Life, PowerPyx, or The Washington Post? Why are we not asking content creators that specialize in fighting games, sports games, and online gaming what the nominees should be for their respective categories? We have a diverse selection of jury members for eSports and Accessibility to represent different voices, and they don’t even get screen time! All we’re saying is…make the voting pool a little wider to include all these other credible outlets.
What Game Awards controversy got your goat? Did it make our list? Let us know down in the comments (in a civil manner), and be sure to subscribe to MojoPlays for more great videos everyday.
The Fighting Game Fiasco of 2022
The lazy miscategorization of games started becoming noticeable in 2022 with the Best Fighting Game category. “MultiVersus”, “The King of Fighters XV”, and “DNF Duel” were all expected picks, but “Sifu”? Many within the FGC were flustered by this miscategorization including famed streamer Maximilian Dood. The nomination came off as if the jury thought a fighting game was just a game heavily focused on combat. Not sure how anyone would think that when we’ve had fighting games like “Street Fighter”, “Tekken”, “Skullgirls”, “Killer Instinct”...you get the idea. “Sifu” is a great game, but to call it a fighting game was just negligent on the jury’s part. At least “MultiVersus”, a platform fighter that properly represented the fighting game label, won the award.
An RPG Kerfuffle
People have been up in arms over the 2023 Game Awards nominees. We’ll get to some of the other controversies later, but the quieter outrage is focused on the Best RPG category. “Baldur’s Gate III” and “Sea of Stars” are great choices, but “Lies of P” and “Final Fantasy XVI” are leaning way harder into the action category than they are RPG, the latter more so than the former. This was especially hard to accept knowing that other RPGs like “Octopath Traveler II” and “Cassette Beasts” were left out in the cold in favor of “Starfield”. Are we just labeling anything that has stats and doles out XP an RPG these days?
Hydrobot: Taking it to the Next Level
The Game Awards used to be not so marred in controversy after controversy, but the very first year where it was truly alarming was in 2016. The 2016 Game Awards had a menace looming over its shoulder from the moment the show started - the Schick Hydrobot. The mascot of the razor company was constantly butting into the show between every award and commercial break. What made it worse was just how bad the interstitials were in line delivery and overall demeanor. It came off as pandering to many, and the frequent interruptions caused many to stop watching.
The ABK Non-Address
The year 2021 was rather tumultuous. Not only were we still in the midst of a globe-wide pandemic, but Activision-Blizzard-King found themselves in a nasty spotlight after the corporation was exposed for mistreating its employees across a multitude of levels. Initially, Keighley said that he was not going to bring up the topic at The Game Awards, which resulted in backlash from various media outlets and developers. Keighley did end up opening the show addressing it, but he did so without clarifying as to what he was referring to and without naming Activision-Blizzard-King specifically. As expected, this got him even more backlash than before.
The Exclusion of Remakes & Remasters
In 2023, we saw a ton of remakes and remasters pour out of the woodwork. As for The Game Awards, it was a category that was considered at one point before being scrapped. The reason? Keighley stated it was because “are there really five amazing remakes every year?” In a year where we saw “Dead Space”, “Resident Evil 4”, “Advance Wars”, “Super Mario RPG”, and “Like a Dragon: Isshin!”, some folks saw this answer as a poor excuse. Make it happen next year Geoff!
Geoff Keighley, Keeper of Time
For a time, The Game Awards was a tad hard to sit through for most audiences, and it wasn’t just because of advertising. While bad pacing is partially to blame, there were also folks pointing to the amount of time focused on one particular side of the show. Some would say there was too much focus on trailers while others argued against the meaty selection of awards. Keighley and his team have managed to cut down the shows to reasonable runtimes in recent years. Unfortunately, it has come at the cost of several categories getting shoved to 30-second spots with no time for the developers to give acceptance speeches. The only categories who get that are actors and directors nominated for bigger categories like Game of Year, Best Direction, and Best Performance.
2020 Game of the Year
The 2020 Game Awards upset a lot of folks. Like…A LOT of folks. Filmmaker Chistopher Nolan walked onstage and announced the winner of the 2020 Game of the Year award was “The Last of Us: Part II”. Ignoring the “anti-woke” crowd, this had many people enraged because of how many arguably “better” games came out in 2020. “Ghost of Tsushima”, “DOOM: Eternal”, “Final Fantasy VII Remake”, “Hades”, and “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” dominated much of the conversation in 2020 when we weren’t anxiously waiting for updates surrounding COVID-19. And yet, the Game of the Year is voted on by the public. So…who is really to blame in this situation if anyone at all?
The Absence of Security
While the 2022 Game Awards came and went with very little conflict over who won which shiny trophy, alarms went off when Hidetaka Miyazaki and his cohorts went up to accept their award. One person unrelated to them had managed to sneak onstage and take hold of the microphone. No one had stopped him, no one tried to stop him, and folks quickly realized how horribly the situation could have gone. A similar incident occurred at Summer Games Fest 2023, another showcase Keighley hosts every year. Thankfully, Keighley has gone on record to say that starting with Game Awards 2023, security will be tightened to ensure there are no more stage invaders regardless of their intentions.
The Meaning of "Indie"
This might be the biggest uproar The Game Awards has seen since the Hydrobot festival of 2016. When “Dave the Diver” was nominated for Best Independent Game, folks were quick to point out how it was not an indie game. “Dave the Diver” was developed by Mintrocket, which is a studio formed by Korean billion-dollar tech giant Nacon. Many felt that this was a failure on the voting jury’s part in properly classifying certain terms and criteria. Keighley only fueled the fire when he made his stance on the matter, stating “Independent can mean different things to different people, and it’s sort of a broad term.” …Is it, though?
The Voting Jury
In recent years, the legitimacy of the Game Awards’ voting jury has been called into question, and it’s becoming more frequent. Every year, the nominations are chosen by a select number of gaming outlets from across the world, the biggest ones being those in the US. Problem is that the credibility and scale of each is…debatable. Many outlets on the voting jury are podcasts and YouTube channels, and many of them frequently guest on each others’ own shows. If The Game Awards is truly about celebrating games, shouldn’t there be more than twenty-five outlets on the jury? Why isn’t Windows Central on the jury? Or Last Stand Media? Or Push Square, Time Extension, Retro Gamer Magazine, Nintendo Life, PowerPyx, or The Washington Post? Why are we not asking content creators that specialize in fighting games, sports games, and online gaming what the nominees should be for their respective categories? We have a diverse selection of jury members for eSports and Accessibility to represent different voices, and they don’t even get screen time! All we’re saying is…make the voting pool a little wider to include all these other credible outlets.
What Game Awards controversy got your goat? Did it make our list? Let us know down in the comments (in a civil manner), and be sure to subscribe to MojoPlays for more great videos everyday.
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