The Game Awards Show Is Live

So was this as laughably bad as previous incarnations? Were they still taking ad bucks and shoving popular culture in our faces even though we don't give a shit? I have not watched this cringe fest in 4-5 years, but I have watched the post mortems. The Dorito Pope just needs to give up and hand the reigns over to someone who actually is a part of and cares about gamer culture.
 
So was this as laughably bad as previous incarnations? Were they still taking ad bucks and shoving popular culture in our faces even though we don't give a shit? I have not watched this cringe fest in 4-5 years, but I have watched the post mortems. The Dorito Pope just needs to give up and hand the reigns over to someone who actually is a part of and cares about gamer culture.

I didn't see it myself but apparently Tommy Wiseau (the avante garde film director of The Room and other titles which people seem to find either brilliant or insane) came on to advertise his new game (which looks neat, sort of a co-op only Grand Theft Auto or Mafia "buddy crime" story if its the one I'm thinking of I think that's someone else's game...) and was likely drunk off his ass and coked up, rambling on and literally yelling "FUCK THE OSCARS" until he was practically pulled off stage so... that was probably more enjoyable than before in and of itself!

The parts of it I saw (I left it on muted to try and win games in the giveaway on Steam) didn't seem too horrible. Some new announcements, including Bayonetta 3 (and 2 + 1 on the Switch. Really wish they'd come to PC even if fucking Nintendo has to license them), Soul Calibur VI, Death Stranding apparently got another trippy cinematic Norman Reedus video but no gameplay (again, hope it ocmes to PC). I don't think things were quite as overtly corporate - I saw some ads in between the breaks and whatnot but not part of the show; notthing like that god awful disposable razor company "robot" all of the place last year repeated ad nauseum. Of the Awards i saw, I did feel that they overly praised titles like Cuphead; I could see them winning Art Direction, but NOT Best Indie for instance as I feel Hollow Knight had equal/similar art direction and was better in most other ways. Game of the year contenders were not all CAWADOOTY clones thankfully; even Persona 5 was in the running.

I'd have to watch more to make a sure judgement and of course lots of it was advertiser/influncer driven crap to some degree, but it wasn't as bad as I've seen these kinds of game award shows in the past, at least from what I saw.

Oh and the decision to give the industry Icon award to Carol Shaw was great. Shaw certainly deserves it being one of those ultra early pioneer, Atari generation programmers who few know by name, but she designed and programmed titles like River Raid using low level old school programming required of those days. Furthermore, she's one of an earlier generation of female developers who have contributed in huge ways to many of our favorite games as designers, programmers and more, yet don't get the coverage they deserve even today because of a subset of the younger generation with a much louder and specific narrative (though much more questionable contributions to gaming as a whole) are good for controversy etc. I was watching a lot of people get ready for someone far more inflammatory pick which would have turned into a clickbait shitshow for the next few days, but was pleasantly surprised that Shaw was chosen and she had a very nice acceptance speech to boot.
 
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