THE Game Awards have long been known as gaming’s version of the Oscars, and there’s less than a month to go before the winners are revealed.
Everyone was already guessing who they might be since the nominations were released earlier this week.
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The Game Awards team has already confirmed all games and trailers.
All that’s left is for the audience to vote, and the show to go on.
Geoff Keighley was the creator of this award show. He is currently making final preparations for the event.
Insiders speculate on the surrounding rumours and have seen many announcements before the show.
Keighley says: “It’s always tough because when you have 50-plus games involved in some way, something’s gonna get out.
“But yeah, [we have a] pretty good history, knock on wood, with the show and we usually keep some surprises.”
Once a game is revealed at the awards, Keighley’s job is over, but the developers jobs are just starting.
He explains: “I was talking to one company, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we announced our game at The Game Awards, we have a spreadsheet of 143 things that we have to do immediately after.’
“You know, updating the website and the social posts and things like that. So it’s just a lot of stuff that has to be coordinated. We’re hopeful we’ll get to surprise people.”
It’s the first time that The Game Awards will be filmed with a live audience in three years, and roughly 1k fans will be in attendance.
Keighley claims that it will be the best “cinematic show”This was the most impressive feat the team has accomplished, using a live orchestra and stage dramatics.
The plan is to tighten things up this year, and have a shorter show than last year’s four-hour event.
However, Keighley claims that this doesn’t mean it’s skimping on the number of World Premieres.
He says: “I don’t have a number for you, but it’s consistent with past years.
“We’ve got some existing games that are announced that will show brand new content, and then we’ve got a lot of new games to reveal as well.
“Lots of speculation online already about what will or won’t be there.
“I’m sure some rumours are probably not right, and they’re only going to intensify in the coming weeks.”
It always feels like Keighley knows all of the industry’s secrets, and he saves them up all for this one night.
The Game Awards have been deemed to be ‘the place’ to announce your game, despite being about honouring game’s released in the last year.
Keighley says: “We’re in an incredible position.
“We have so many games that pitch us on doing things at the show that the tough thing for me, honestly, is we just don’t have enough time to do everything we want to do.
“So I always turn down a lot of games, because we just don’t have the room to do things.
“The good thing this year, I was able to travel around a little bit more this summer and visit studios and take a look at games.
“I’m very, very excited about some of the stuff we’ve got in the show. There’s the big stuff, there’s small stuff – we really try to have a diverse slate of content.”
The trailer for The Matrix Awakens was the big surprise at the 2021 Show. It truly displayed the power of Unreal Engine 5.
According to Keighley, more mind-blowing demos like this will appear in this year’s show.
He explains: “We’ve got some big Unreal Engine 5 games in the show.
“Hopefully, our show excites you about the future of the medium and gets you excited about the future potential of games.
“Sometimes we’ll show games that won’t be out for a few years just to get people excited.
“But the balance now is like, does a game company show a game that’s coming out in three months versus coming out in three years?
“There’s been a sense of people trying to reel that in a little bit and the length between announcement and ship has been shorter, which I think is a positive thing.”
Keighley says he doesn’t see E3 as competition to his Summer Games Fest, but it will be interesting to see which show the majority of the publishers choose to host their reveals with when June comes around.
The Game Awards will be broadcast on December 8th.
For the benefit of Georgina Young and Kirk McKeand, this article was written by GLHF.
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