The Game Awards 2020

• 1. Introduction

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  The Game Awards 2020 took place on the 10th of December 2020, and its host and producer, Geoff Keighley, kept a plan B that involved his own house. The pandemic had upended every live event, and Keighley did not want to stage an ordinary ceremony. He also did not want to skip the year. His crew prepared several fallbacks in case California saw a significant surge in COVID-19 cases. One of them meant broadcasting straight from his home. What the show became was far bigger than that. It stretched across continents, crowned a record-setting winner, and sparked an argument that had little to do with the games on screen. How do you run a global awards show when nobody can fill the room? Who actually decided the winners? And why did the biggest winner of the night leave some viewers uneasy?

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• 2. Building a Virtual Show

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  Summer Game Fest gave Keighley his proof that an online format could work, and his board then pushed him toward something on par with earlier years. His team studied how other broadcasts had coped. The Democratic National Convention filled virtual screens with its audience. The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards left hosts alone on a stage while winners accepted by video call. Keighley borrowed from both. The Game Awards used three soundstages, in Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo, each holding only a handful of people, mostly crew and presenters. Keighley said this setup let the team keep the extra presentation segments of past shows. It also made him curious about taking future editions to different venues. More than 400 people worked on the production, yet only six of them were full-time employees. The budget stayed under US$10 million, which made it the most expensive Game Awards to date. COVID-19 tests for the crew and remote camera set-ups around the world drove part of that cost. Advertisers and sponsors, plus small earnings from streaming services, kept the show profitable. The chosen theme was strength and comfort. Keighley also wanted unity, because the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S had both launched in November 2020. He pointed to the 2018 show as his model, when Reggie Fils-Aimé of Nintendo, Phil Spencer of Microsoft, and Shawn Layden of Sony shared one stage. Film and television stars, he felt, were an interesting way to show wider appreciation for games. The team hoped to include Henry Cavill, but he was busy working on The Witcher. While shaping the show, Keighley talked over Zoom with hundreds of viewers about their interests, sometimes joined by Valve president Gabe Newell or Epic Games creative director Donald Mustard. The ceremony ran alongside the Game Festival, with playable demos and extra in-game content. It also launched a new Future Class, naming people who represent where games are heading. Blessing Adeoye Jr. of Kinda Funny, Kallie Plagge of GameSpot, and Halley Gross of Naughty Dog were among them, and Gross would soon be back on stage for a very different reason.

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• 3. Choosing the Winners

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  Ballots went out to media outlets on the 29th of October 2020 and were due back on the 6th of November, though outlets could submit updated ballots until the 13th. The jury behind them drew on 96 outlets worldwide. Each outlet had to name three games per category, and those picks produced the nominees, which were announced on the 18th of November. Any game released on or before the 20th of November was eligible. That cutoff would later draw complaints. Final results split 90 percent to the jury and 10 percent to a public vote, which ran through the official website and social platforms until the 9th of December. Two categories worked differently. Most Anticipated Game and Player's Voice were nominated and decided entirely by the public. The first was settled on Twitter and revealed during the broadcast. The second was announced on the 8th of December after several rounds of voting. This year also added a new award for games with notable accessibility options. Around 18.3 million people took part in the public vote, double the turnout of the show before.

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• 4. A Record for Naughty Dog

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  Eleven nominations went to The Last of Us Part II, the most any game had received in the show's history to date. Hades followed with nine, Ghost of Tsushima with eight, Final Fantasy VII Remake with six, and Doom Eternal with five. Among publishers, Sony Interactive Entertainment led with 26 nominations, well ahead of everyone else. The Last of Us Part II turned its lead into seven wins, another record, including Game of the Year. Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross took Best Narrative for the game. Laura Bailey won Best Performance for playing Abby, beating her own co-star Ashley Johnson, who had been nominated for playing Ellie. Four other games won two awards each: Among Us, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Ghost of Tsushima, and Hades. Across its two winning titles, Sony collected nine awards in total. The only other studios to take two were Innersloth, Square Enix, Supergiant Games, and Xbox Game Studios.

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• 5. Reveals and Trailers

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  In April and May of 2020, Keighley feared there would be almost nothing new to announce. The pandemic had disrupted development across the industry. Yet developers still managed to send in announcements and trailers. New games unveiled on the night included Ark II, Perfect Dark, and an untitled Mass Effect game. Others were Crimson Desert, Evil Dead: The Game, Road 96, Loop Hero, and The Callisto Protocol. Glen Schofield stepped up to present the reveal trailer for The Callisto Protocol himself. Updates on existing games covered Among Us, Disco Elysium, Dragon Age 4, and Monster Hunter Rise, among others. Donald Mustard returned to present a set of Fortnite trailers featuring Master Chief, Blood Gulch, and The Walking Dead. Rand Miller introduced the launch trailer for Myst on Oculus Quest. Josef Fares showed the reveal trailer for his game It Takes Two. Chris Ashton and Josh Holmes handled trailers for Back 4 Blood and Scavengers, and Kaskade presented the Rocket League Season 2 trailer. The oddest presenter of all was the Swedish Chef, who introduced a trailer for Overcooked: All You Can Eat.

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• 6. Stars and Orchestras

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  Keanu Reeves presented Best Game Direction, and Christopher Nolan was the one to announce Game of the Year. Brie Larson handed over Best Performance, John David Washington presented Best Narrative, and Gal Gadot introduced the Games for Impact award. Tom Holland introduced Nolan North, who in turn presented Best Multiplayer Game. Ralph Macchio and Yuji Okumoto teamed up for Best Fighting Game. Stephen A. Smith presented Best Esports Athlete, Jacksepticeye announced Content Creator of the Year, and Reggie Fils-Aimé presented the accessibility award. Music was spread across the soundstages. In Tokyo, Lyn Inaizumi performed Last Surprise (Scramble) from Persona 5 Strikers. A virtual set carried OFK, who played Follow/Unfollow for We Are OFK. At Abbey Road Studios in London, the London Philharmonic Orchestra played a Super Mario medley, and later a medley for the Game of the Year nominees. Eddie Vedder sang Future Days for The Last of Us Part II from Seattle, after an introduction from Troy Baker. One planned performance never happened. An orchestral version of the Cyberpunk 2077 score was scrapped when the game was delayed to the very day of the ceremony, which made it ineligible for nomination.

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• 7. A Record Audience

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  More than 83 million streams carried the ceremony, the most in its history to date, and viewership peaked at 8.3 million concurrent viewers. The show was live streamed across more than 45 platforms. In China it aired on more than ten networks, including Bilibili, Douyin, and Huya Live. In India it appeared on several services, among them Disney+ Hotstar, JioTV, and MX Player. Twitch alone counted over 2.63 million concurrent viewers, more than double the year before, and 9,000 creators co-streamed the event. YouTube live viewership climbed 84 percent. Across Facebook Gaming, Twitch, and YouTube combined, live hours viewed rose by over 129 percent. On Twitter the show trended worldwide, conversation grew 31 percent, and use of the hashtag #TheGameAwards jumped 107 percent. Keighley said the steady growth surprised him. He admitted it had left him dreading "that year where it doesn't grow".

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• 8. Critics and Crunch

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  Corey Plante of Inverse argued that the eligibility cutoff left out Demon's Souls and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. He added that Pokémon Sword and Shield was eligible for both 2019 and 2020 and was recognized in neither. Plante also thought Ghost of Tsushima deserved the Best Score and Music nomination more than Doom Eternal. Kat Bailey of USgamer questioned Doom Eternal's Game of the Year nomination, calling the game "messy, unfocused, and, well, just not as good" as its predecessor. Alex Walker of Kotaku Australia agreed and preferred Half-Life: Alyx or Microsoft Flight Simulator. Reaction to the ceremony itself was mixed. Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat praised the celebration of diverse games and the varied announcements. Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times wanted developers given more time to talk about their artistic aims. Martin Robinson of Eurogamer called the show understandably "low-key" but also a "three-hour long advert". Ana Diaz of Inverse objected to winners being announced rapidly during the preshow and between premieres, leaving developers no chance to accept. Diaz also criticized the focus on Hollywood actors over game creators. A deeper worry followed the night's biggest winner. In 2019, some had questioned how heavily Death Stranding featured, given its creator Hideo Kojima's friendship with Keighley. Now similar doubts surrounded The Last of Us Part II. The game had been well received at release, but its story polarized some critics and players, and it had suffered review bombing. Its developer was also known for crunch practices. Keighley said the awards were not rigged, and that neither Naughty Dog nor its staff influenced selection. He cited the game's runner-up finish in the Player's Voice vote as proof of its broad popularity. Ian Walker of Kotaku argued Hades should have taken Best Game Direction, because Supergiant Games has a less demanding work culture. Peter Glagowski of TheGamer felt the wins sent a message excusing crunch. Keighley said building crunch into the criteria would be a slippery slope. He believed it should be a conversation for the wider community.

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