A lot of people did a lot of great work in gaming, for years, but a significant amount of the conversation around The Game Awards was about how The Game Awards were a singularly poor context in which to celebrate that work. I literally turned it off - I couldn't look at it anymore. I can't look at this smug goon mugging with puppets, and I can't tolerate how this goblin merely stands adjacent to incredible work, and some measure of that talent - that light - somehow accrues to him.
They wanted to give people Awards, but the reason it was Important is because they were giving you an Award from them. They are the Award Givers. It's not an elected position, they just filled the void like a noxious fume and now we have to put up with their dumb shit all the time. Things started with these odd, rapid-fire awards, delivered in staccato bursts, that made it feel like there were Awards with a capital a, and then there was also a kid's table. When Neil Newbon, who you might know better as Astarion, came up early in the show for his well-deserved award shit was already goof troop. I heard music out of nowhere and thought I was either having a stroke or that there had been a miscue, because he certainly wasn't hogging the stage. And if he did hog the stage, who better to do it than the Best Performer in the Best Multiplayer Game which is also the Best RPG and Game of the Year? If anybody has earned the right to hog a stage, it's probably him. If these accolades mean anything, he could still be there talking four days later and it would still be his stage. I coulda stared at his cool shirt for at least a day.
The place where time limits don't matter is if it's a star that can be fucked by the Starfucker General. Except! We have our own "stars" in gaming and they're stars because they work and endure in this incredible medium, transforming blank screens and silent headphones into places where art is made and received. They can sanctify any moment with their strange rites. They can create a memory so powerful that it gets filed wrong - gets placed and situated in the real. Let them speak. If you would honor them, then do so in truth: let them speak.
It's a time of gruesome upheaval for those who make these things, but there's no time for that at this. No sir. And the hard times still ain't over. No time for the people who make the games at the Gaming Show, and no time to grieve for the people who make the games either. Plenty of time for this grifter to frolic on stage and do... whatever the fuck that was.
(CW)TB out.
