The Game Awards 2022

• 1. Introduction

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  The Game Awards 2022 produced an acceptance speech that ran 7 minutes and 59 seconds, beating the longest Oscar speech on record by two and a half minutes. Christopher Judge, honored for playing Kratos, kept talking long after most winners would have left the stage. The old Oscar mark belonged to Greer Garson, who set it in 1943. The ceremony took place on the 8th of December 2022 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, with Geoff Keighley hosting.

  Judge's marathon raises a larger puzzle about what the night was actually for. Was it a celebration of the year's best games, or a showcase for what was coming next? Who chose the winners, and how much say did ordinary players have? And what happened when a very different speaker reached the microphone, one nobody had scheduled?

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• 2. Building the Broadcast

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  Kimmie Kim joined Geoff Keighley as an executive producer, while Richard Preuss directed and LeRoy Bennett served as creative director. Sydnee Goodman returned to host a 30-minute preshow, now renamed the Opening Act. Keighley, a Canadian games journalist, had a specific problem to solve with the main event.

  He aimed for a running time of roughly 2.5 hours, shorter than earlier editions and more cinematic in feel. Viewer feedback had told him that audiences were growing tired of long shows, so he cut material. He also wrestled with a basic tension. Industry members mostly care about the awards, he noted, while about 75 percent of the wider community would rather see announcements.

  The pandemic had kept the public out of the show since 2019. In 2022, around 1,000 attendees were allowed in, though the total crowd stayed at a couple thousand to avoid inviting fresh restrictions. Kim hoped for more international guests, particularly from Japan, because travel was easier. Public tickets went on sale on the 1st of November, and changing California health guidance could still alter the plans.

  More than 40 online platforms carried the stream, among them Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter and YouTube. Instagram Live joined worldwide for the first time, and a partnership with Tiki reached viewers in India. IMAX added a live community event at 40 locations across the United States and Canada, with tickets on sale from the 16th of November. It featured an exclusive gameplay sequence from the upcoming Dead Space.

  Valve gave away one Steam Deck every minute during the show to eligible Steam viewers in Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. Eligible Twitch viewers could claim Rogue Legacy on the Epic Games Store. They could also unlock a Keighley mask in Among Us, emote skins in Cult of the Lamb, and a Kait Diaz costume in Fall Guys.

  Best Adaptation was the new prize of 2022. It recognizes films, television shows, novels, comic books and podcasts drawn from video games. Keighley judged that adaptations had become common enough to fill a category of nominees. Discord also partnered with the show to present Best Community Support.

  The 50-person Future Class list, which spotlights people who represent the industry's future, appeared for the third time. It was led by director Emily Bouchoc and internal communications manager Jessie Kuse. More than 2,500 nominations arrived in September and October. The list went public on the 5th of December and included BURA co-founder Camila Gormaz and Audrey Leprince, co-founder of The Game Bakers. It also named Dr. JC Lau, president of Global Game Jam.

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• 3. Votes and Voices

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  The nominees were revealed on the 14th of November 2022. A game had to reach the public on or before the 18th of November to qualify. Behind the lists sat a jury drawn from more than 100 media outlets worldwide. General categories drew on 117 outlets, accessibility awards used 18 jury members, and esports used 16 outlets.

  Jury ballots counted for 90 percent of each result, and public votes counted for 10 percent. Online voting ran through the official website and the Discord server until the 7th of December. Keighley said the first 24 hours brought 42 percent more votes than in 2021. After one week, 35 million votes had arrived, more than the entire three-week count of the year before. When the polls closed, more than 55 million votes had been cast, an increase of 138 percent.

  Players' Voice was the exception, because the public both nominated and chose the winner. Three rounds of voting ran from the 28th of November to the 7th of December. The final two rounds turned ugly. Some users suspected Genshin Impact players were voting in hopes of earning in-game currency, wrongly claiming the game had offered some. Genshin players, in turn, accused Sonic Frontiers fans of using bots.

  Journalists found no credible evidence of bots or bribery. Keighley agreed bots were not involved, though he promised his team would look into it. Fandoms attacked one another, and the r/SonicTheHedgehog subreddit restricted posts about the award. PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor saw hostility on both sides continue after the show.

  Keighley joked about the bot accusations when he crowned Genshin Impact the winner. Later he said the fight confirmed his decision to keep fully public voting out of the main categories. Genshin Impact then gave in-game currency to all of its players, voters or not.

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• 4. The Winners

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  God of War Ragnarök arrived with eleven nominations, tying the most in the show's history, and left with six wins. They included Best Narrative, Best Action/Adventure Game, and Best Score and Music for composer Bear McCreary. Elden Ring, with eight nominations, took four awards. Among them were Game of the Year, Best Game Direction and Best Role Playing Game.

  Keighley felt the contest was especially tight between these two flagship games. Horizon Forbidden West and Stray each earned seven nominations, though Stray took home two awards. Final Fantasy XIV also won two. The Game of the Year field was rounded out by A Plague Tale: Requiem and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

  Sony Interactive Entertainment led the publishers with 21 nominations and seven wins. Annapurna Interactive collected 12 nominations and Nintendo collected 11. When it came to wins, Bandai Namco Entertainment and Nintendo each took four.

  Netflix earned three nominations in the new Best Adaptation category and won it. Its nominees were the animated series Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and The Cuphead Show! The category also included the films Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Uncharted.

  The esports field named nominees such as Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok of T1 in League of Legends. Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev of Natus Vincere was nominated for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Josef Fares presented the evening's top prize, Game of the Year, and the Elden Ring team walked up to receive it.

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• 5. Reveals and Absences

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  Keighley estimated that more than 50 games appeared during the show. About 30 to 40 of them were announced titles showing new material. Keegan-Michael Key presented the first clip of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Hideo Kojima introduced the announcement trailer for Death Stranding 2.

  Brand-new titles included Hades II, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, Hellboy Web of Wyrd, Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, and Remnant 2. Crash Bandicoot himself appeared to present the announcement trailer for Crash Team Rumble. Joe Mad presented the one for Wayfinder.

  Other trailers updated games already known. Naoki Yoshida presented the Revenge trailer for Final Fantasy XVI, and Cameron Monaghan introduced Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Aurora presented a virtual concert trailer for Sky: Children of the Light. Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 also made appearances.

  One publisher was conspicuously quiet. Fans and journalists complained that Xbox had no announcements, and Ryan McCaffrey of IGN called the gap "a slap in the face to players". Some guessed a link to the Federal Trade Commission, which had announced that morning it would try to block Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard. Journalists thought the link unlikely.

  Aaron Greenberg, vice president of Xbox Games Marketing, answered the complaints by saying the company had announcements planned for 2023.

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• 6. The Uninvited Speaker

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  Matan Even was sitting in the audience when Elden Ring won Game of the Year, and he followed its developers onto the stage. He waited quietly through the speech by director Hidetaka Miyazaki. Only when music began to play did he step up to the microphone.

  Speaking in a thick Israeli accent, Even said: "I want to thank everybody and say I think I want to nominate this award to my Reformed Orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton. Thank you, everybody." The whole speech lasted 13 seconds.

  The Washington Post saw Keighley wave for security, who escorted Even away. Keighley then closed the show as planned. Minutes later he said Even had been arrested. The Los Angeles Police Department later said no arrest was made. Even had been detained and questioned at the venue, then taken to a local police station.

  News outlets and social media seized on the moment, and a model of Clinton was modded into Elden Ring. Several journalists criticized the stunt, saying it risked the developers' safety and overshadowed their award. The Game Awards digitally removed Even from an image of Miyazaki's speech that it shared on Twitter.

  Later reports identified Even as a 15-year-old who planned the stunt with friends. In 2019 he had publicly voiced support for the Hong Kong protests at NBA games and at BlizzCon. He had also appeared twice on InfoWars, an American far-right talk show. Its host, Owen Shroyer, called him "one of the young stars of the conservative movement". Even spoke without an Israeli accent on those appearances.

  Even also wore Adidas Yeezy shoes at the ceremony, a line by Kanye West, who had recently made several antisemitic public statements. That detail and the InfoWars link led some people to speculate that the interruption promoted antisemitic tropes. In later interviews Even refused to drop the character. He claimed to be Jewish, said he had recently acquired the accent, denied being an InfoWars fan, and disagreed with West's politics. He said his statement "wasn't intended to be a dog whistle for far-right conspiracies".

  Journalists called him a "troll" and a "prankster". Jason Schreier of Bloomberg News, drawing on his understanding of Hebrew, said Even was "almost certainly a Jewish prankster". Giovanni Colantonio of Digital Trends saw a poetic echo of the whole show: "a fan overshadowing the people who we were supposed to be celebrating". The following year's ceremony came with increased security.

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• 7. Music and Guests

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  Al Pacino presented the Best Performance award, and Jessica Henwick introduced a set of other presenters. Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson presented Best Debut Indie Game. Ken and Roberta Williams presented Games for Impact, and a character named Animal presented Best Score and Music. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were among the other celebrity guests.

  Before the show, Alyssa Mercante of Kotaku had pointed to the poor fashion at earlier Game Awards as a sign of the industry's weak representation. Her argument drew responses from Doug Bowser, president of Nintendo of America, and from Microsoft executive Phil Spencer. Mercante and other journalists said it led to better fashion in 2022. Aurora, Fuslie, Hideo Kojima and Valkyrae earned particular praise.

  Hozier performed "Blood Upon the Snow" for God of War Ragnarök alongside Bear McCreary. Halsey sang "Lilith" for Diablo IV. The Game Awards Orchestra then played a Game of the Year medley covering A Plague Tale: Requiem, Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarök, Horizon Forbidden West, Stray and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

  Pedro Eustache, nicknamed "Flute Guy" by the media, drew attention for his enthusiastic flute playing and his ability to swap instruments during that medley. He has played with the orchestra since 2017. He thanked audiences for their response and apologized for not using the shinobue during the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 section.

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• 8. Critics and Crowds

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  William Hughes of The A.V. Club said that nominating Elden Ring for Best Narrative beside the traditional God of War Ragnarök and the untraditional Immortality was "just begging for the whole exercise to fall apart". Jordan Gerblick of GamesRadar+ called Xenoblade Chronicles 3 the dark horse nomination, since Japanese role-playing games had been snubbed before. Stacey Henley of TheGamer argued that Stray's nominations exposed a flaw in the category hierarchy, because its Game of the Year slot implied it would win the lesser prizes too.

  Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times faulted the show for returning to "a vacuum of marketing". Lewis Gordon and Keza MacDonald of The Guardian counted 20 of the 32 winners being crowned between announcements, without acceptance speeches. MacDonald wrote that awards and announcements "sit uneasily together". Dot Esports noted that the esports winners were announced in just 72 seconds during the preshow.

  Others were warmer. Sammy Barker of Push Square praised the pacing, running time and reveals. Dean Takahashi of VentureBeats wrote that the show "had something for everyone", and he named Hades II and Judas as the biggest surprises. Claire Jackson of Kotaku felt Judge "stole" the show, and Takahashi called his speech "a beautiful moment". Caroline Marchal, director of As Dusk Falls, also earned praise for her winning speech.

  An estimated 103 million viewers watched, the most in the show's history and a 20 percent increase on the year before. On Twitch the broadcast peaked at 1.9 million concurrent viewers. YouTube set a show record with a peak of 1.33 million. Steam drew over 9.5 million total viewers, with a peak of 850,000 at one time.

  Social media buzz was heavy as well. The show drew 308,000 mentions on the day, almost 180 percent more than before. Judge's speech earned 12,600 mentions, the stage interruption 10,100, and Elden Ring led the games with 57,300. Hades II followed with 20,600 mentions after God of War Ragnarök's 31,000. Keighley had predicted that 2022 would be the first show to lose viewers after eight years of growth.

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