I have a few ideas for new award categories: - Best microtransaction refund process - Best doorknob reflections - Best overall flower textures - Best NPC eyeball animations - Best steering wheel models - Best Day1 patch download file size - Best deinstallation process
- Best NFT blockchain cryptoscam integration - Best female empowered walking animations - Best third-party account registration page - Best Denuvo performance loss - Best microstuttering - Best loading screen animation spaceship building - Best at nothing
When they nominated and awarded Among US TWO years after its release because it suddenly gained popularity thanks to some content creators, that's when I stopped treating The Game Awards as an awards show.
My biggest gripes with the game awards are: 1. They insist on keeping those esports and content creator caregories with nominees that no one has ever heard of. It's baffling that we haven't seen anything like a Best Mod category. 2. During the show they speed through some categories like "Best RPG" without even reading the list of nominees or handing the trophy. They even unceremoniously announce "Game A also wins Best X" while it is getting another award.
Yeah, #2 is a lack of proper time management. But also suffers from the thing Jeff mentioned that if the team itself isn't accepting the award, or worse if no one came to accept the award, then it actually makes sense. Santa Monica Studio did a good job last year of having someone from each team nominated to accept their award. But if you have the same person accepting it regardless, then it might make more sense to announce them together. Sometimes one could also (partially) spoil another. For instance, last year, they gave Stray both Best Independent and Best Debut Indie, which makes sense to give together in that case. Finally, I think #1 is less of an issue because of #2. In the past, they have sped through the Esports categories, and sometimes the Content Creator, anyway.
Personally, I think the Indie category should still be exclusively for Independent studios (that doesn't have the backing of big studios), as I feel like that category should be more of a space for the 'little guys' to shine on their own so to speak. And we could also just have a different category for smaller scale (which typically filled by the Indies) games.
Call Larian an indie (they are) but don't nominate them indie. The 'real' indies will see this as an encouragement to become the best they can be and the big AAA's will see it as a warning to become game makers again or have their lunch eaten by an indie. And us gamers will win.
Awards should focus more on game elements instead of games as a whole, for example like the already existing "best sound design" or "best art direction". Instead of having "best action game" have "best action gameplay", instead of "best RPG game" have "best RPG integration" etc. that way games don't have to be tied down and defined as a single genre and we instead can celebrate which studios accomplished certain gameplay aspects the best. Also "best ongoing game" would be better as "best evolved game" celebrating which game developed the most in the past year instead of which game as a service is generically "the best".
The pool of voters is comprised entirely of games media, the gaming press. This is not a conversation that the press needs to direct at gamers, it's a conversation the press needs to have with itself. This shouldn't be a TH-cam video, it should be a slack channel with other gaming outlets. I did not nominate Dave the Diver as an indie game. Your peers did that. Your peers nominated Sifu as a fighting game. This is a games media thing, not a gamer thing for gamers to discuss and sort out themselves. We don't have a say in this, it's just you guys.
This is largely true, but the miscategorization is because of the lax nature of The Game Awards nomination process. This is a call to action to potentially change the categories in the first place, but short of that there are other things that can be done by The Game Awards such as describing the categories more clearly. There also could be an agreed upon qualification sheet that is shared which could guide people toward the proper genre so there is less guessing among an outlet. A Slack channel is a bad idea for several reasons. And it's already a bad start when you are expecting that these outlets volunteering to be part of the jury should put in even more work to setup and collaborate with other outlets just for this when it should not be their responsibility. And I don't have access to the jury rules, but I wouldn't be surprised if it mentions being against any kind of collaboration between outlets for the purposes of the awards.
Genre is a funny thing. In other media it's theme, story, vibes, etc. and games have all those things, but you can also have categorise by mechanics, number of players, perspective, etc. Not to mention that both ways of categorising have ill-defined edges and grey areas
I Google "indie music" the top results are Oasis, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, The Smiths, and Radiohead. "Indie" is whatever the vibes were when the term crystallised; music it's twangy guitars, games it's old school graphics.
No you cannot do that. Indie in music is not the same with Indie in game. If you say, all old music are classic music. If i can make my guitar sounds like a Ramones, does it mean my guitar is old? no?
@@XenonArcher it didn't start off as a style though, it was music produced outside of the major record label system. One of the prevalent independent styles became popular and the big record labels started copying it and called it indie. Read that back and replace music with game, and record label with publisher; that's exactly what's happening in games.
@@alyoshamikhaylov7651 the word is going through the same process, indie in games is well on it's way to just being a style. Independent will always mean something, but big corpos have co-opted indie and it doesn't mean what we used to think
@@SamButler22 it isn't though as there's so many different styles of indie games ffs. We can also tell far easier what studios are independent or not. That and it also has a lot to do with the funding of the studio. As mentioned in this video. Baldurs gate 3 is an indie game as larian are an independent dev studio/publisher. Yet they make high quality AAA style games. It does not work the same way as with music because there's far more that the term indie game represents to the consumers
As much as I agree with needing a Best Designer category or whatever I also think it'll just be another team leader taking the trophy home and the rest on the team just getting pats on the back. I can't think of how an award show where an entire team of people wins would really work
Agreed. From the general public’s perspective, we really have no clue who designed what in most games that aren’t made by a tiny team. A “best designer” award would end up just going to whoever the team lead is, which only serves to perpetuate this annoying idea that the leader in a creative project is responsible for all the good that comes out of it. The best bits of design are usually done by the people who’s names you’ll never learn and faces you’d never recognize
The game awards need to not follow the Oscars and Grammys show model. Games have some unique design processes and the teams and designers behind them need more recognition.
Pretty sure the entirety of the fighting game community had a good laugh when last year, Sifu was nominated for Best Fighting Game... like, come on... do people nowadays not know that "beat-em-ups" are their own genre?? Pretty sure it's not a dead genre. Even outside Sifu, Yakuza/Like a Dragon is still keeping the genre alive with most of their entries.
Most people watch the game awards for the game reveals. Most gamers don't really care what wins. We know what has been great this year and will all have a different favourite
Best map/level design (no, only game direction doesn't do, and also it isn't the same) Best mod (literally one of the biggest parts of the industry as a whole that is taken as granted, it should be awarded) Best cosplay (??? idk, but just like mods, it is huge free marketing tool and big part of the community for a lot of games) At least another category for supporting performance Best MMO (multiplayer is downright bad category, BG3 for multiplayer? Super Mario? Like what?)
I think BG3 is in fact an indie game, because we shouldn't look at wether the game is made inside a publisher system or not, but instead at the type of company that is making the game. If your company is publicly traded and major decision makers are investors who have no real involvement in making the game than you are not indie, on the other hand if your company is majority owned by developers and is not publicly traded, than you are indie. Maybe even more accurate definition would be to say that there are also no 3-rd party investors who can influence decision making during creative process of the game too.
The indie discussion is very poor here and factually inaccurate. Technically the only game that is independently published is Sea of Stars out of the nominees. If you remove the esthetic aspect of what makes an indie game not only are you dissolving a sub genre in gaming culture that emerged naturally but you are also rendering the term indie essentially useless. Technically Rockstar Games act as a separate publisher under Take Two. Is GTA 6 an indie? Is Cyberpunk an indie? If you follow that an indie is defined by its publishing model *only* then the term collapses into pointless pedantry that is in no sense useful when describing a type of game.
Rockstar has been created from the get go as a subsidary of Take Two with Take Two owned and acquired assets. All original leading members were Take Two employees. It's hard to be less "indie".
Disagree with A LOT of what's been said here... However, there's so much wrong with this TGA: - Genres NEED to exist: even if they blend occasionally - Genres are important! Just like in books, it helps connecting with and defining the game - Need MORE Genre Categorys for better Competition: Best Action RPG, Best Survival Horror etc... - They needed to add Best Survival Horror Game Category: where it would be stacked with Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 (GOTY) and Dead Space - FINAL FANTASY XVI Needs to be in Best Action Game Category - where it would easily win Best Action! - Lies of P is an excellent Action RPG so it fits - No Supporting Performer Category (Ralph Ineson for Cid) - eSports Awards need to go, period - Baldur's Gate 3 could be in Independent technically
"It's a chance for the industry to put these people front and center", sorry but no. So many awards category are given in a few seconds with a name drop and possibly a visual. The spotlight is definitely not on the actors of the industry. The Game Awards is just an attention span bait sold to publishers to get their trailers viewed. Keighley has never done any efforts to put the people front and center and spend most of his screen time hawking the next trailer. It's a private enterprise and he knows what's making him money.
Who even cares about video game awards? Winning an award does not mean your game was more beloved or that it was more profitable, and only a fool would accept that an award actually meant a game was definitively the best at something. You get the only feedback that matters from sales numbers, reviews, and social media.
in terms of genre's the main thing i dislike is that racing games and sports games are bundled together. why? llike, i get that the F1 games are technically a sports game, but theyre nothing like a fifa (or ea fc now i guess) game or nba etc. split them up. it doesnt make any sense for a football or ufc game to be paired up with games like the crew motorfest for example
8:17 An emphatic no from me. Not that devs & publishers shouldn't get kudos or awarded for not giving up on a game, but CDPR are not the first to do it. They just are the most recent example of doing something very wrong and making it right years later. Dead Space, Jedi Survivor, Forspoken, RE4, Xenoblade Chronicles, HFW, and Starfield all added updates to the game this year and in some cases DLC. All these updates can be seen as the devs not giving up on their games (even Forspoken got an update in November) and didn't release in the messy state CP2077 did. Fall Guys, Among Us, and Dead by Daylight would have been better suited for this category. If we want to make a category called the most improved game or comeback game of the year and describe it as "Awarded to the game that released in a sub par state, but with continual dev support, showcased technical and artistic achievement."
2:00 oh see here I thought you were going to complain about BG3 being in the indie category. ..which leads me to wonder, why ISN'T BG3 in the indie category? It should definitely be. 2:26 yes, you earned my sub for calling that out. (For now anyway)
@@shavedraven so 70% are owned by Sven and his wife, thus they do own the majority of the company, right? Investment money doesn't own majority, right? Like, if you and 3 friend have a 4 parts in 5 parts, and 5th part Microsoft, that you and your friends own the company. You always outvote Microsoft and you always can make decisions regardless of them, they are minority. So you and 3 of your friend are independent, you literally don't depend of 5th stakeholder. And, the definition of independent provided by GA is independent publishing, not ownership or something, which is Larian, they self-publish They only reason they are not in indie is for them not to insta-win in this particular category and let others win, because it would be (AAA) vs (AA at best) and would be unfair competetion.
@@nickrubin7312 Yes I also have a basic understanding of math which is why I did not say majority. When a third of your funding comes from one of the biggest publishers in the industry, that also doesn’t fall under the purview of the spirit of the independent studio as we have romanticized it in this ongoing discourse.
@@nickrubin7312 Larian fanboy here. Indie Larian giving big AAA a good kicking is good for gaming. Heavyweight Larian not being in the indie category is also good for gaming. An aspiring studio needs something to aspire to and right now that's being the next Larian. We all need our heroes but we don't want to fight them.
I don't think there's an issue with Cyberpunk being updated from a subpar to an above par experience. That happened with No Man's Sky as well at some point and that is worthy of rewarding. I think if you're just talking about fixing a broken game, that's another matter. But the major bugs that Cyberpunk suffered from were already fixed before this year.
No Man's Sky got the 'Still Playing Award' at the Golden Joystick Awards on Nov 10. Not as well known an award but it's one where players decide. Totally deserved too.
The thing is that there won't be like 5 different AAA quality horror games, survival games, driving games, fighting games, mmo etc.... coming out every year and they already have so many categories. Indie games category should limits to "self publish/no-big publisher" games, so they can compete fairly. They should make a new category for smaller or non-indie that similar to indie games. Destiny 2 nominated for best community support is absolute BS.
Genres aren't totally meaningless, but some like RPG do need to split into more specific categories. An RTS is an RTS and a Racing Game is a Racing Game, AoE4 is nothing like Forza. But RPG includes Balders Gate, Starfield, Hogwarts. Draws no distinction between an isometric game and a 1st or 3rd person game even though they are totally different experiences. At the very least I would say RPG needs to be split into Isometric, 1st and 3rd person and MMO. As well as recognising Open World vs Linear.
I dont think cyberpunk should be "rewarded" for fixing their literally broken game it was the right thing to do by the millions of customers whom preordered and purchased after they wanted to sve their reputation and make money simple and by that very broad definition every game with patches and updates is an ongoing game multiplayer live service or not
The fact that Hogwarts Legacy didn't get a single nomination is insane. Regardless of how you feel about JK Rowling, the team behind that game didn't deserve to get snubbed.
I think Hogwarts Legacy isn’t nearly as good of a game as some of the other games in the award categories. Not even bringing the controversy into this, but this was a great year for gaming and the others games published this year were just better. Period.
Surely the easy workaround for games like Dave the diver to be excluded from indie is “no internal studios” - I think like any good competition agreement you just need to update the t&c
An indie game is a game that releases without the financial and marketing help from a publisher. That's really that simple. They are independant because no one tell them what to sell, or how to sell it.
And if their game does not sell there is no rich sugar daddy to bail them out. They live and die by the success of their work. That goes a long way at keeping them focused.
Did any of the outlets/folk who whittled the games down to the nominations question the categories/placement? Surely they wondered why certain games are in certain categories?
Based on some of the outlets I watch / listen to, they do question things. But to be clear, the whittling down to the nominations is done within the outlet itself. They submit the games they want to the categories they want. I've even heard of a request by an outlet for The Game Awards to step in and label game eligibility. This is to avoid the obvious issue of miscategorization, which happened last year as well with Sifu being nominated for Best Fighting game. But another potential issue they brought up is vote splitting. For example, there are some outlets that may have submitted Lies of P to Action instead of RPG. Even though it still got nominated, that vote splitting is a consideration that could affect a game's nomination. Adding a separate Action RPG category could also help that, which would additionally separate Baldur's Gate 3 and Sea of Stars from the other 3.
I'm fine with the genre categories. I disagree with where some of the games got categorized, but it's kind of a loose way to group games together that can be used to give a deserving game its shine. (Like with the Oscars, what's a leading role and what's a supporting role? The Academy can't tell you convincingly, but they'll use the categories to split up certain actors so they can both potentially win.) The categories involving publishing status are pretty messed up though. The fudging that goes on there really only serves to let developers with publishers go up against self-published games. Technical awards could be good, but they'd have to be the right categories. Like you can play a game and know whether or not it has good level design; That's a good category. But TGA's already have a Best Direction award and that's just a terrible category for video games. You have no idea what the direction was like unless you were heavily involved in the development process.
I gotta say, the debate about what "indie" is exhausting. It really doesn't matter. To me, it's a smaller dev team. To others, it's someone without a big publisher backing them. In short, who cares? Every website can approach that sort of award their own way and we can move on with our lives. I get the sense that no matter what the TGA show does, people will nitpick it to oblivion.
I definitely consider Dave the Diver to be indie game based on Graphics alone. To me it doesn't matter who made it or the budget they made it on, what matters is the presentation. It either feels like you're playing a Blockbuster movie and therefore AAA or it doesn't and therefore indie
No Mans Sky is best ongoing game! The only reason i watched the VGA's last year was for the chance to win a Steam Deck! Awards show are just another way to boost their social media presence!
i’ve played both BG3 and Hogwarts Legacy and to say those games are night and day is an understatement. One pushes the boundaries of the video gaming industry, has top notch storytelling and character writing and the other feels so much like a paint-by-the-numbers Ubisoft-esque cash grab. Hogwarts Legacy is a hollow game in comparison to BG3 and just because it sold a lot of copies cause of it’s IP doesn’t mean in should be eligible for awards
@atlantisundiscovered to be fair. I will give then credit. This was there first big game that studio has made. Not saying they deserve an award for that though
i think the term „Indie“ should die anyways. we use it to describe a smaller game with less budget but at the end this is nothing we should measure a game on. It’s about the experience and i had a lot better and more rich experience with some of the „indie“ games than with AAA. the term „indie“ hurts the people who make fantastic games, it has a negative connotation
No one wants Games as Service what we want is for games like No Man Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 to be recognized as while the Phantom Liberty is great they have expanded things even if you don't buy the DLC
Baldurs Gate 3 is an amazing game, with amazing community support, and an amazing studio. This game had so much praise, and hype while managing to live up to the expectation. With that being said, I would have liked to see some attention on other games like Hogwarts, Jedi Survivor, and Street Fighter 6. This year is looking to be a sweep by BG3, and I don't know how entertaining an award show will be knowing how favored BG3 is in comparison to everything else. The fact that Mario Wonder is up there for GOTY with R.E 4 blows my mind...they're great games, but how did Mario Wonder beat out Hogwarts??? Maybe that game had too much hate hype behind it they just decided it was easier to leave it off the roster? Idk, these are just my subjective thoughts.
This discussion is mostly opinion based. I didn't really hear many facts, just personal perception. The definition of indie game is debatable, taste is purely subjective and art is in the eye of the beholder. Moral of the story. Don't be pretentious. The game awards is about celebrating gaming as an art form more so than it's about the awards.
We're talking about video games here, so I don't think facts really matters that much, as it is an art form, more about subjective experience. And talking about it is not pretentious, it actually show that people do care about games.
wanna give an award to Cyberpunk? Best Expansion of the Year. Wanna give an award to Lies of P? Best Souls-clone. Also how funny is that the non of the game of the year candidates are multiplayer, Gaas BS. What does that tell you? This was a point I heard on Gameface on Siftd btw.
I never liked his there's a single game of the year. There should be GOTY for each system not overall. It makes no sense comparing a handheld game to a console game for example.
Why not? Some of the best games ever made were designed for handhelds. Nintendo has exclusively made handheld games for the last 6 years and had no issue being recognized.
@@ジェジェガロン I assume you're not Jewish. Tamoor should be expelled from the gaming industry. It's one thing to support a cause, it's another to condemn an entire group of people.
I have a few ideas for new award categories:
- Best microtransaction refund process
- Best doorknob reflections
- Best overall flower textures
- Best NPC eyeball animations
- Best steering wheel models
- Best Day1 patch download file size
- Best deinstallation process
Best lay-offs
Best tax dodge
Best attempt to legitimise Web 3.0
Best switch farming game
Best Snoop Dogg cameo
- Best NFT blockchain cryptoscam integration
- Best female empowered walking animations
- Best third-party account registration page
- Best Denuvo performance loss
- Best microstuttering
- Best loading screen animation spaceship building
- Best at nothing
@@hyperturbotechnomike lol denuvo
@hyperturbotechnomike Best scandal cover up
Best brand integration
Most misleading trailer
Best battle pass
Best Anti consumer practices
Best missing the mark moment
When they nominated and awarded Among US TWO years after its release because it suddenly gained popularity thanks to some content creators, that's when I stopped treating The Game Awards as an awards show.
My biggest gripes with the game awards are:
1. They insist on keeping those esports and content creator caregories with nominees that no one has ever heard of. It's baffling that we haven't seen anything like a Best Mod category.
2. During the show they speed through some categories like "Best RPG" without even reading the list of nominees or handing the trophy. They even unceremoniously announce "Game A also wins Best X" while it is getting another award.
Yeah, #2 is a lack of proper time management. But also suffers from the thing Jeff mentioned that if the team itself isn't accepting the award, or worse if no one came to accept the award, then it actually makes sense. Santa Monica Studio did a good job last year of having someone from each team nominated to accept their award. But if you have the same person accepting it regardless, then it might make more sense to announce them together.
Sometimes one could also (partially) spoil another. For instance, last year, they gave Stray both Best Independent and Best Debut Indie, which makes sense to give together in that case.
Finally, I think #1 is less of an issue because of #2. In the past, they have sped through the Esports categories, and sometimes the Content Creator, anyway.
Nobody cares about mods
@@handsomesquidward151 go back to cod kid
They forgot to mention that Nexon themselves have made a statement saying that Dave the Diver isn't an indie game.
It's not At a AAA price point . So it's. Not at that level. It may as well be indie. Nexon isn't intelligent with decisions
Personally, I think the Indie category should still be exclusively for Independent studios (that doesn't have the backing of big studios), as I feel like that category should be more of a space for the 'little guys' to shine on their own so to speak. And we could also just have a different category for smaller scale (which typically filled by the Indies) games.
A better way to do that is to categorize based on production budget.
Call Larian an indie (they are) but don't nominate them indie. The 'real' indies will see this as an encouragement to become the best they can be and the big AAA's will see it as a warning to become game makers again or have their lunch eaten by an indie.
And us gamers will win.
Awards should focus more on game elements instead of games as a whole, for example like the already existing "best sound design" or "best art direction". Instead of having "best action game" have "best action gameplay", instead of "best RPG game" have "best RPG integration" etc. that way games don't have to be tied down and defined as a single genre and we instead can celebrate which studios accomplished certain gameplay aspects the best. Also "best ongoing game" would be better as "best evolved game" celebrating which game developed the most in the past year instead of which game as a service is generically "the best".
Yes this is perfect!
The pool of voters is comprised entirely of games media, the gaming press. This is not a conversation that the press needs to direct at gamers, it's a conversation the press needs to have with itself. This shouldn't be a TH-cam video, it should be a slack channel with other gaming outlets.
I did not nominate Dave the Diver as an indie game. Your peers did that. Your peers nominated Sifu as a fighting game. This is a games media thing, not a gamer thing for gamers to discuss and sort out themselves. We don't have a say in this, it's just you guys.
Finally someone said it. 100
This is largely true, but the miscategorization is because of the lax nature of The Game Awards nomination process. This is a call to action to potentially change the categories in the first place, but short of that there are other things that can be done by The Game Awards such as describing the categories more clearly. There also could be an agreed upon qualification sheet that is shared which could guide people toward the proper genre so there is less guessing among an outlet.
A Slack channel is a bad idea for several reasons. And it's already a bad start when you are expecting that these outlets volunteering to be part of the jury should put in even more work to setup and collaborate with other outlets just for this when it should not be their responsibility. And I don't have access to the jury rules, but I wouldn't be surprised if it mentions being against any kind of collaboration between outlets for the purposes of the awards.
I really don't care about TGA's, but I feel like people should not take it so to heart because whatever game you like is the winner to you.
I just care about the reveals. That’s it.
@@NMChe56me too
Well mentioned. 👍
Game reveals here I come.
As far as i know exactly the same thing happened with "indie" music
Genre is a funny thing. In other media it's theme, story, vibes, etc. and games have all those things, but you can also have categorise by mechanics, number of players, perspective, etc.
Not to mention that both ways of categorising have ill-defined edges and grey areas
I still can't understand how a game based entirely around a context-customizable soundtrack was not nominated for score.
This seems like the perfect opportunity for GameSpot to take the lead and make the categories of its game awards how it should be.
GRUB AND TAMOOR? TOO POWERFUL
I Google "indie music" the top results are Oasis, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, The Smiths, and Radiohead. "Indie" is whatever the vibes were when the term crystallised; music it's twangy guitars, games it's old school graphics.
they are two different things. indie music is a style, yes. but indie developers are independent developers. same word but two different meanings dude
No you cannot do that. Indie in music is not the same with Indie in game.
If you say, all old music are classic music. If i can make my guitar sounds like a Ramones, does it mean my guitar is old? no?
@@XenonArcher it didn't start off as a style though, it was music produced outside of the major record label system. One of the prevalent independent styles became popular and the big record labels started copying it and called it indie.
Read that back and replace music with game, and record label with publisher; that's exactly what's happening in games.
@@alyoshamikhaylov7651 the word is going through the same process, indie in games is well on it's way to just being a style.
Independent will always mean something, but big corpos have co-opted indie and it doesn't mean what we used to think
@@SamButler22 it isn't though as there's so many different styles of indie games ffs. We can also tell far easier what studios are independent or not. That and it also has a lot to do with the funding of the studio.
As mentioned in this video. Baldurs gate 3 is an indie game as larian are an independent dev studio/publisher. Yet they make high quality AAA style games. It does not work the same way as with music because there's far more that the term indie game represents to the consumers
As much as I agree with needing a Best Designer category or whatever I also think it'll just be another team leader taking the trophy home and the rest on the team just getting pats on the back. I can't think of how an award show where an entire team of people wins would really work
Agreed. From the general public’s perspective, we really have no clue who designed what in most games that aren’t made by a tiny team. A “best designer” award would end up just going to whoever the team lead is, which only serves to perpetuate this annoying idea that the leader in a creative project is responsible for all the good that comes out of it. The best bits of design are usually done by the people who’s names you’ll never learn and faces you’d never recognize
The game awards need to not follow the Oscars and Grammys show model. Games have some unique design processes and the teams and designers behind them need more recognition.
Yeah TGA is just not my thing; its like noticing your neighbor has a dog, thinking “oh I forgot you exist”
Pretty sure the entirety of the fighting game community had a good laugh when last year, Sifu was nominated for Best Fighting Game... like, come on... do people nowadays not know that "beat-em-ups" are their own genre?? Pretty sure it's not a dead genre. Even outside Sifu, Yakuza/Like a Dragon is still keeping the genre alive with most of their entries.
Most people watch the game awards for the game reveals. Most gamers don't really care what wins. We know what has been great this year and will all have a different favourite
This is the same with most academy awards and who votes for them
Hitman absolutely fits the Best Ongoing category already. It just wasn't nominated for whatever reason, and I agree that it is a shame.
Best map/level design (no, only game direction doesn't do, and also it isn't the same)
Best mod (literally one of the biggest parts of the industry as a whole that is taken as granted, it should be awarded)
Best cosplay (??? idk, but just like mods, it is huge free marketing tool and big part of the community for a lot of games)
At least another category for supporting performance
Best MMO (multiplayer is downright bad category, BG3 for multiplayer? Super Mario? Like what?)
Mods are from developers tho
I think BG3 is in fact an indie game, because we shouldn't look at wether the game is made inside a publisher system or not, but instead at the type of company that is making the game. If your company is publicly traded and major decision makers are investors who have no real involvement in making the game than you are not indie, on the other hand if your company is majority owned by developers and is not publicly traded, than you are indie. Maybe even more accurate definition would be to say that there are also no 3-rd party investors who can influence decision making during creative process of the game too.
Great stuff as always, this series is great
The indie discussion is very poor here and factually inaccurate. Technically the only game that is independently published is Sea of Stars out of the nominees.
If you remove the esthetic aspect of what makes an indie game not only are you dissolving a sub genre in gaming culture that emerged naturally but you are also rendering the term indie essentially useless. Technically Rockstar Games act as a separate publisher under Take Two. Is GTA 6 an indie? Is Cyberpunk an indie? If you follow that an indie is defined by its publishing model *only* then the term collapses into pointless pedantry that is in no sense useful when describing a type of game.
Rockstar has been created from the get go as a subsidary of Take Two with Take Two owned and acquired assets. All original leading members were Take Two employees. It's hard to be less "indie".
Disagree with A LOT of what's been said here... However, there's so much wrong with this TGA:
- Genres NEED to exist: even if they blend occasionally - Genres are important! Just like in books, it helps connecting with and defining the game
- Need MORE Genre Categorys for better Competition: Best Action RPG, Best Survival Horror etc...
- They needed to add Best Survival Horror Game Category: where it would be stacked with Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 (GOTY) and Dead Space
- FINAL FANTASY XVI Needs to be in Best Action Game Category - where it would easily win Best Action!
- Lies of P is an excellent Action RPG so it fits
- No Supporting Performer Category (Ralph Ineson for Cid)
- eSports Awards need to go, period
- Baldur's Gate 3 could be in Independent technically
The TGA was never a serious award show. Just a cool one.
"It's a chance for the industry to put these people front and center", sorry but no.
So many awards category are given in a few seconds with a name drop and possibly a visual. The spotlight is definitely not on the actors of the industry.
The Game Awards is just an attention span bait sold to publishers to get their trailers viewed. Keighley has never done any efforts to put the people front and center and spend most of his screen time hawking the next trailer.
It's a private enterprise and he knows what's making him money.
Indie style game vs indie company game.
Who even cares about video game awards? Winning an award does not mean your game was more beloved or that it was more profitable, and only a fool would accept that an award actually meant a game was definitively the best at something. You get the only feedback that matters from sales numbers, reviews, and social media.
in terms of genre's the main thing i dislike is that racing games and sports games are bundled together. why? llike, i get that the F1 games are technically a sports game, but theyre nothing like a fifa (or ea fc now i guess) game or nba etc. split them up. it doesnt make any sense for a football or ufc game to be paired up with games like the crew motorfest for example
“Indie” is an esthetic criteria, now. It’s a style applied to a certain “not AAA” gameplay.
8:17
An emphatic no from me.
Not that devs & publishers shouldn't get kudos or awarded for not giving up on a game, but CDPR are not the first to do it. They just are the most recent example of doing something very wrong and making it right years later.
Dead Space, Jedi Survivor, Forspoken, RE4, Xenoblade Chronicles, HFW, and Starfield all added updates to the game this year and in some cases DLC. All these updates can be seen as the devs not giving up on their games (even Forspoken got an update in November) and didn't release in the messy state CP2077 did. Fall Guys, Among Us, and Dead by Daylight would have been better suited for this category.
If we want to make a category called the most improved game or comeback game of the year and describe it as "Awarded to the game that released in a sub par state, but with continual dev support, showcased technical and artistic achievement."
2:00 oh see here I thought you were going to complain about BG3 being in the indie category.
..which leads me to wonder, why ISN'T BG3 in the indie category? It should definitely be.
2:26 yes, you earned my sub for calling that out. (For now anyway)
Tencent owns a 30% stake in Larian studios so theyre not exactly indie either.
@@shavedraven so 70% are owned by Sven and his wife, thus they do own the majority of the company, right? Investment money doesn't own majority, right?
Like, if you and 3 friend have a 4 parts in 5 parts, and 5th part Microsoft, that you and your friends own the company. You always outvote Microsoft and you always can make decisions regardless of them, they are minority. So you and 3 of your friend are independent, you literally don't depend of 5th stakeholder.
And, the definition of independent provided by GA is independent publishing, not ownership or something, which is Larian, they self-publish
They only reason they are not in indie is for them not to insta-win in this particular category and let others win, because it would be (AAA) vs (AA at best) and would be unfair competetion.
@@nickrubin7312 Yes I also have a basic understanding of math which is why I did not say majority. When a third of your funding comes from one of the biggest publishers in the industry, that also doesn’t fall under the purview of the spirit of the independent studio as we have romanticized it in this ongoing discourse.
@@nickrubin7312 Larian fanboy here. Indie Larian giving big AAA a good kicking is good for gaming. Heavyweight Larian not being in the indie category is also good for gaming. An aspiring studio needs something to aspire to and right now that's being the next Larian. We all need our heroes but we don't want to fight them.
I AGREE, I WANT MY SILKSONG FOR MOST ANTICIPATED
I don't think there's an issue with Cyberpunk being updated from a subpar to an above par experience. That happened with No Man's Sky as well at some point and that is worthy of rewarding. I think if you're just talking about fixing a broken game, that's another matter. But the major bugs that Cyberpunk suffered from were already fixed before this year.
No Man's Sky got the 'Still Playing Award' at the Golden Joystick Awards on Nov 10. Not as well known an award but it's one where players decide. Totally deserved too.
The thing is that there won't be like 5 different AAA quality horror games, survival games, driving games, fighting games, mmo etc.... coming out every year and they already have so many categories.
Indie games category should limits to "self publish/no-big publisher" games, so they can compete fairly. They should make a new category for smaller or non-indie that similar to indie games.
Destiny 2 nominated for best community support is absolute BS.
Genres aren't totally meaningless, but some like RPG do need to split into more specific categories.
An RTS is an RTS and a Racing Game is a Racing Game, AoE4 is nothing like Forza.
But RPG includes Balders Gate, Starfield, Hogwarts. Draws no distinction between an isometric game and a 1st or 3rd person game even though they are totally different experiences.
At the very least I would say RPG needs to be split into Isometric, 1st and 3rd person and MMO. As well as recognising Open World vs Linear.
I dont think cyberpunk should be "rewarded" for fixing their literally broken game it was the right thing to do by the millions of customers whom preordered and purchased after they wanted to sve their reputation and make money simple and by that very broad definition every game with patches and updates is an ongoing game multiplayer live service or not
The fact that Hogwarts Legacy didn't get a single nomination is insane. Regardless of how you feel about JK Rowling, the team behind that game didn't deserve to get snubbed.
I think Hogwarts Legacy isn’t nearly as good of a game as some of the other games in the award categories. Not even bringing the controversy into this, but this was a great year for gaming and the others games published this year were just better. Period.
Surely the easy workaround for games like Dave the diver to be excluded from indie is “no internal studios” - I think like any good competition agreement you just need to update the t&c
4:50 if ff16 is considered an rpg, then lies of p is too
At this point every game is an RPG
An indie game is a game that releases without the financial and marketing help from a publisher. That's really that simple. They are independant because no one tell them what to sell, or how to sell it.
And if their game does not sell there is no rich sugar daddy to bail them out. They live and die by the success of their work. That goes a long way at keeping them focused.
Did any of the outlets/folk who whittled the games down to the nominations question the categories/placement? Surely they wondered why certain games are in certain categories?
Based on some of the outlets I watch / listen to, they do question things. But to be clear, the whittling down to the nominations is done within the outlet itself. They submit the games they want to the categories they want.
I've even heard of a request by an outlet for The Game Awards to step in and label game eligibility. This is to avoid the obvious issue of miscategorization, which happened last year as well with Sifu being nominated for Best Fighting game. But another potential issue they brought up is vote splitting. For example, there are some outlets that may have submitted Lies of P to Action instead of RPG. Even though it still got nominated, that vote splitting is a consideration that could affect a game's nomination. Adding a separate Action RPG category could also help that, which would additionally separate Baldur's Gate 3 and Sea of Stars from the other 3.
Get rid of eSports awards and add best horror, expansion, remake, mod, etc.
Yeah! And puzzle game, platformer etc.
I'm fine with the genre categories. I disagree with where some of the games got categorized, but it's kind of a loose way to group games together that can be used to give a deserving game its shine. (Like with the Oscars, what's a leading role and what's a supporting role? The Academy can't tell you convincingly, but they'll use the categories to split up certain actors so they can both potentially win.) The categories involving publishing status are pretty messed up though. The fudging that goes on there really only serves to let developers with publishers go up against self-published games.
Technical awards could be good, but they'd have to be the right categories. Like you can play a game and know whether or not it has good level design; That's a good category. But TGA's already have a Best Direction award and that's just a terrible category for video games. You have no idea what the direction was like unless you were heavily involved in the development process.
I gotta say, the debate about what "indie" is exhausting. It really doesn't matter. To me, it's a smaller dev team. To others, it's someone without a big publisher backing them. In short, who cares? Every website can approach that sort of award their own way and we can move on with our lives.
I get the sense that no matter what the TGA show does, people will nitpick it to oblivion.
I definitely consider Dave the Diver to be indie game based on Graphics alone. To me it doesn't matter who made it or the budget they made it on, what matters is the presentation. It either feels like you're playing a Blockbuster movie and therefore AAA or it doesn't and therefore indie
@@OversoulGamingDave the diver isn't indie
@@OversoulGaming so if microsoft studios made a game with that graphics, its an indie? huh?
@@OversoulGaming Is Octopath Traveler Indie?
No Mans Sky is best ongoing game!
The only reason i watched the VGA's last year was for the chance to win a Steam Deck!
Awards show are just another way to boost their social media presence!
They got the Golden Joystick Award for this this year. Not as well known but it's a player voted award so it's one that matters.
Is this the same award show where the bill Clinton kid came on?
They need to keep racing and sports games separate because fifa and Mario kart are not similar
Im really surprised & gutted Hogwarts Legacy isnt in any category at all. I had a blast with that & it was one of my favourites of the year
It was a great game, but too short and after a month was basically dead. Now Baldur's Gate 3? Deserves every award it was nominated for.
i’ve played both BG3 and Hogwarts Legacy and to say those games are night and day is an understatement. One pushes the boundaries of the video gaming industry, has top notch storytelling and character writing and the other feels so much like a paint-by-the-numbers Ubisoft-esque cash grab. Hogwarts Legacy is a hollow game in comparison to BG3 and just because it sold a lot of copies cause of it’s IP doesn’t mean in should be eligible for awards
@atlantisundiscovered to be fair. I will give then credit. This was there first big game that studio has made. Not saying they deserve an award for that though
i think the term „Indie“ should die anyways. we use it to describe a smaller game with less budget but at the end this is nothing we should measure a game on. It’s about the experience and i had a lot better and more rich experience with some of the „indie“ games than with AAA. the term „indie“ hurts the people who make fantastic games, it has a negative connotation
Since when has indie been a negative? About 70% of my lost played games this year has been indie.
until someone can explain why Among Us, a game that came out in 2018. Won 2020 game awards…
awards for anything are always broken, if you use that as unity of mesure youre broken too
No one wants Games as Service what we want is for games like No Man Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 to be recognized as while the Phantom Liberty is great they have expanded things even if you don't buy the DLC
Dude, this IS A GEOFF issue!
Don't be afraid to say it!
It's his show. It's 100% his fault and responsibility
“AAA can be indie because of aesthetics”?
& yet again capitalism has commodified poverty
Baldurs Gate 3 is an amazing game, with amazing community support, and an amazing studio. This game had so much praise, and hype while managing to live up to the expectation. With that being said, I would have liked to see some attention on other games like Hogwarts, Jedi Survivor, and Street Fighter 6. This year is looking to be a sweep by BG3, and I don't know how entertaining an award show will be knowing how favored BG3 is in comparison to everything else. The fact that Mario Wonder is up there for GOTY with R.E 4 blows my mind...they're great games, but how did Mario Wonder beat out Hogwarts??? Maybe that game had too much hate hype behind it they just decided it was easier to leave it off the roster? Idk, these are just my subjective thoughts.
This discussion is mostly opinion based. I didn't really hear many facts, just personal perception. The definition of indie game is debatable, taste is purely subjective and art is in the eye of the beholder.
Moral of the story. Don't be pretentious. The game awards is about celebrating gaming as an art form more so than it's about the awards.
We're talking about video games here, so I don't think facts really matters that much, as it is an art form, more about subjective experience. And talking about it is not pretentious, it actually show that people do care about games.
Everything's broken these days.
I just don't care anymore.
Yes! ... how's Remnant 2 nooooo where to be seen?????
It's in Best action game category
Very good video
Amen!
I was a bit shocked not to find Hogwarts Legacy in any of the categories!
It's a game that sold a lot!
Like always, commercial success does not equal great. Or the other way around.
It's not broken but rigged, it's been rigged for a while
It’s been rigged since the beginning 😂
Sifu isn't a fighting game.
No mention of Hogwarts? Interesting
helo tamoor
☕
Exclusive titles should not be in the regular awards but have there own.
Nah
wanna give an award to Cyberpunk? Best Expansion of the Year. Wanna give an award to Lies of P? Best Souls-clone.
Also how funny is that the non of the game of the year candidates are multiplayer, Gaas BS. What does that tell you? This was a point I heard on Gameface on Siftd btw.
I never liked his there's a single game of the year. There should be GOTY for each system not overall. It makes no sense comparing a handheld game to a console game for example.
Why not? Some of the best games ever made were designed for handhelds. Nintendo has exclusively made handheld games for the last 6 years and had no issue being recognized.
Please get rid of Tammor
Well not as broken as being an islamonazi apologist, but yeah it׳s not great.
Who did that in this video? Or in relation to this topic?
@@OversoulGaming Tamoor
What happened, what did he say?
@@ZeroHxC07 Probably because he does support Palestine, but I think calling him islamonazi is just pathetic tbh
@@ジェジェガロン I assume you're not Jewish. Tamoor should be expelled from the gaming industry. It's one thing to support a cause, it's another to condemn an entire group of people.
TGA is just event with trailers accompanied by weird awards