The Game Awards 2023

• 1. Introduction

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  The Game Awards 2023 allotted winners about thirty seconds each before music cut in. The ceremony took place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California, on the 7th of December 2023. It was the tenth show hosted by Geoff Keighley, the Canadian games journalist who created and produces the Game Awards. A live audience filled the room, and viewers around the world watched online. The night honored the best video games of 2023, but it also made room for trailers, celebrity guests and live music. Who built this show, and how were its winners chosen? Which game took the most trophies? And why did so many journalists, developers and viewers leave angry about what the ceremony chose to say, and what it left out?

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• 2. Building the Night

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  Kimmie Kim joined Keighley as an executive producer for the 2023 edition, while Richard Preuss returned as director and LeRoy Bennett as creative director. Sydnee Goodman came back to host Opening Act, a preshow that ran for 30 minutes.

  More than 30 online platforms carried the broadcast worldwide. They included Facebook, Instagram, Steam, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.

  Public tickets went on sale on the 6th of November and sold out within a week, faster than in any earlier year. Security was tightened after stage interruptions at the December 2022 ceremony and at Gamescom's Opening Night Live in August 2023. Keighley said the show and preshow together aimed for roughly three hours, matching the previous year.

  Fifty people made up the Future Class list, which appeared at the show for the fourth time. Keighley and Emily Bouchac organized it, and it named people from across the industry who best represent its future. The list was announced on the 5th of December. It included Emma Kidwell, a writer on Marvel's Midnight Suns, Alister Lee, experience design lead on The Sims 4, and accessibility consultant Ross Minor. After the ceremony, some of these honorees would have pointed words for Keighley.

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• 3. Choosing the Winners

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  The nominees were announced on the 13th of November, and any game released to the public by the 17th of November was eligible. A jury panel with members from more than 100 media outlets worldwide compiled the lists. Specialized juries handled categories such as accessibility, adaptation and esports.

  Final results blended two sources. The jury counted for 90 percent and public voting for 10 percent. Fans could vote through the official website and a Discord server until the 6th of December.

  The Players' Voice award followed different rules. The public both nominated and voted, and that voting opened on the 27th of November. Keighley said first-day website voting rose 73 percent compared with the previous year.

  Rémy Quoniam of Team Vitality, known as XTQZZZ, asked for his Best Esports Coach nomination to be removed. He had not coached any professional games in 2023.

  From the 14th of November, players could also vote inside Fortnite. The Game Awards worked with Nighttimes and Studio 568 to build a hub world where players chose among ten nominated user-created islands. The winning island was revealed during the ceremony. By Keighley's account, the hub passed one million plays within three days, with more than 875,000 unique players. He judged this a better way to promote the show than billboards and other traditional marketing. Keighley had wanted more in-game events ever since hosting a live show in Fortnite in 2019, and he hoped to let people watch the ceremony itself inside a game someday.

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• 4. The Baldur's Gate Sweep

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  Baldur's Gate 3, from Larian Studios, arrived with nine nominations, more than any other game, and left with six wins. Those included Game of the Year, and Neil Newbon won Best Performance for playing Astarion.

  Alan Wake 2 and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 each collected eight nominations. Alan Wake 2 turned three of its nominations into wins, and Forza Motorsport took two.

  The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom earned six nominations. Cyberpunk 2077, Hi-Fi Rush and Super Mario Bros. Wonder each earned five, and Final Fantasy XVI earned four.

  Nintendo led all publishers with 15 nominations, ahead of Sony Interactive Entertainment with 10. Epic Games and Larian each had nine, while Capcom and Square Enix had eight apiece. On the winning side, Larian's six was followed by three each for Epic Games and Nintendo. Capcom, Square Enix and Xbox Game Studios took two each.

  Film and television also had a place on the ballot. PlayStation Productions received three nominations in Best Adaptation, and Sony Pictures Television received two.

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• 5. Stage and Screen

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  Heilung opened the musical program with "Seidh," tied to Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, and Melina Juergens introduced the group. Loren Allred sang "No Promises to Keep" for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth alongside the Game Awards Orchestra. Old Gods of Asgard performed "Herald of Darkness" from Alan Wake 2, a moment some commentators counted among the night's highlights.

  Pedro Eustache, who became known as "Flute Guy" at the 2022 ceremony, returned to play with the orchestra. The orchestra also performed a medley for the six Game of the Year nominees.

  Matthew McConaughey presented the announcement trailer for Exodus, and Ed Boon presented the award for Best Narrative. Hideo Kojima introduced the trailer for OD, with Jordan Peele appearing alongside him. Anthony Mackie presented Best Ongoing Game, and Simu Liu presented Best Action/Adventure Game after introducing the trailer for Stormgate.

  Keighley said the show avoided the term "world premiere" and treated all announcements equally. New titles included Marvel's Blade, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Visions of Mana, Monster Hunter Wilds and Light No Fire. Sega fans saw untitled Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio games, plus Streets of Rage: Revolution. Updates also arrived for games already out or on the way, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Black Myth: Wukong and Persona 3 Reload.

  Abubakar Salim introduced Tales of Kenzera: Zau, a game he announced in memory of his late father. Commentators counted that among the evening's best moments.

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• 6. Nominations Questioned

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  Cyberpunk 2077 drew attention with four nominations, twice its original tally from 2021, despite its troubled launch. Destiny 2 was nominated for Best Community Support only weeks after layoffs at Bungie hit much of its community team, and many found the timing poor.

  Several journalists felt strong performances had been overlooked. They suggested splitting Best Performance into leading and supporting categories. Stacey Henley of TheGamer found it odd that Pizza Tower was nominated for Best Debut Indie Game but not for Best Independent Game.

  Chained Echoes became a symbol of the eligibility window, since it was released the previous December. Some writers saw a recency bias, noting that half the Game of the Year nominees came out in October. Starfield received a single nomination despite its blockbuster status, though some thought its quality justified that. Hogwarts Legacy received none, and people split on whether its divisiveness or its quality was the reason. Others lamented the omission of Octopath Traveler 2, and some felt Final Fantasy XVI deserved a Game of the Year slot.

  Jade King of TheGamer called Games for Impact "a locker to stuff all the diverse games into." Four of its six nominees received no other nominations, and King felt the category usually favored independent games even though others fit.

  Dave the Diver's nomination for Best Independent Game confused many. Its developer, Mintrocket, is a subsidiary of Nexon, which had said the game was "not necessarily" an indie. Henley wrote that Baldur's Gate 3 was "technically an entirely independent game" but was likely ruled out by Larian's employee count and its use of an existing intellectual property. Keighley replied that "independent can mean different things to different people," and he left the final selections to the jury.

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• 7. Speeches and Star Power

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  Timothée Chalamet presented Game of the Year, and some journalists saw that as proof of the show's priorities, since no game developer got the job. Josh Sawyer, a director at Obsidian Entertainment, called the show "an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it's supposedly honoring." Chris Tapsell of Eurogamer argued that future ceremonies should reflect the industry's own goals rather than seek validation from others.

  Opinions were not uniform. Andy Robinson of Video Games Chronicle sympathized with the production team and considered it among the best shows to date, though he saw problems with runtime and curation. Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat felt the show "lived up to the reputation of being... the Oscars of gaming."

  Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele were each given more than six minutes of stage time, which critics found disrespectful. Liam Nolan of The Escapist calculated that winners' speeches added up to under 11 minutes, against a 30-minute average at the Academy Awards. Music cut off Neil Newbon as he described how players had responded to his work. It also interrupted Swen Vincke, who accepted Game of the Year and was paying tribute to a deceased colleague. Commentators pointed out that several acceptees speak English as a second language. Some winners and other honorees were relegated to the preshow or announced in quick succession with no speeches at all.

  Keighley said he asked his team to relax the rule during the show and acknowledged it would be addressed in future. GameSpot and IGN published speeches from winners who could not give them on stage.

  Christopher Judge, who presented Best Performance, joked that his 2022 acceptance speech was longer than the single-player campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Some Call of Duty developers criticized the joke, and others countered by citing the series' commercial success. Barry Sloane, who plays Captain Price, wrote "all's fair in games and war" and praised Judge's work. Darcy Sandall of Sledgehammer Games found the joke surprising from a peer at an event meant to celebrate the year's achievements, particularly given reports of crunch during the game's development.

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• 8. Audiences and Absences

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  An estimated 118 million viewers watched, the largest audience in the show's history and a 15% increase over the previous year. More than 17,000 creators co-streamed the ceremony, including over 13,680 on Twitch, a 24% increase, and 4,000 on YouTube. Twitch peaked at 1.94 million concurrent viewers, and total watch time there rose 10%. The extension "Twitch Predicts The Game Awards" reached almost four million views, with 330,000 watching at once. On YouTube the show peaked at 1.7 million concurrent viewers, a 35% increase, and the official channel alone held over 900,000, up 53%.

  More than 3,000 industry members signed an open letter before the ceremony, including 79 past Future Class recipients, over half of the 150 members to date. It asked for a statement during the show on the Gaza humanitarian crisis, supporting Palestinian rights and calling for a ceasefire. It also urged the industry to confront the dehumanization of people from South West Asia and North Africa and their portrayal as villains or terrorists in games. Younès Rabii, a 2021 Future Class recipient, wrote the letter after Meg Jayanth withdrew as a presenter at the Golden Joystick Awards in October when she was barred from making a statement about Palestinians.

  The show offered no response, and critics said so. Ana Valens of The Mary Sue bemoaned the silence, and Garrett Martin of Paste called it "cowardly." Alice Bell of Rock Paper Shotgun suggested the show would have spoken only if the stance "was a profitable stance rather than a moral one." The developers of Goodbye Volcano High and Venba, both nominees, said afterward that they had planned to acknowledge the crisis in their acceptance speeches.

  The ceremony also passed over the industry's mass layoffs. Rachel Kaser of VentureBeat found this especially disappointing given the show's focus on film and television professionals. Ash Parrish of The Verge wrote that "Keighley let video game developers down." Chris Kerr of Game Developer faulted Keighley's opening speech for calling for unity without mentioning layoffs. Outside, pro-worker protestors, including members of the Game Workers of Southern California and SAG-AFTRA, picketed for unionization. One sign read "best year for games, worst year for game workers."

  Keighley spoke with Future Class members after the show, and reactions were mixed. Some found him deflective and unprepared, while others found the meeting productive and hopeful. In December, members presented their negative experiences at the show and the lack of resources throughout the year to Keighley and Bouchac. Some felt they were taken seriously and that the program improved as a result.

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