After a competitive and rather difficult year for thousands involved in the gaming industry, spirits are readily reanimated in time to celebrate the annual Game Awards. The 2023 Game Awards calls for extra celebration, as it marks one decade of honoring achievements within the video game industry. The voting opened on Nov. 14, 2023 and will close on Dec. 6, 2023. The official ceremony will air live at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2023 from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
The Game Awards serves to be the most lucrative ceremonial event to take place within the entire gaming industry. Besides recognizing the year’s most prominent developers, several tune into the show for its highly anticipated game reveals and public prizes. Several streamers are encouraged to co-host the event, which is a massive resource in keeping audience engagement. In 2022, the awards live stream recorded well over 100 million viewers.
Presented at the end of the ceremony, Game of the Year is the most coveted award, given to games judged to have delivered the best possible experience across technical and creative fields. This year’s Game of the Year finalists are in a tight competition for the title, with six nominees tied to battle. The nominees are as follows: Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder and The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom. Two of this year’s finalists (Resident Evil 4 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom) were nominated for Most Anticipated Game in the 2022 Game Awards, with the latter ultimately winning the category. So far, Alan Wake 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 lead the ceremony with eight different nominations each.
Exactly 31 awards will be presented, with each game category narrowed down to five or six nominees. The winner of each category is determined by a blend of votes from the voting jury (90 percent of votes) and the recognized public voting (which serves 10 percent of votes). Although winners aren’t based on a 100 percent public voting domain, the voting jury is made up of international media outlets who are selected for their previous critical video game evaluations. The blended vote then is meant to balance the final decision by using popularity input from players as well as intensive game evaluations from the collective jury.
Partnering with Nighttimes and Studio 568, the Game Awards created an in-hub world in Fortnite, which allows users to vote for their favorite user-created islands among ten nominees. Host and creator of the Game Awards, Geoff Keighley, has been looking to create more in-game events, seeking to allow in-game viewership of the show in the future. Within just three days, the hub world surpassed one million plays. This year, Keighley is also looking to tighten security for the attending show, following some embarrassing stage interruptions during previous ceremonies, where stage invaders got close enough to Keighley to spout some nonsensical things into his microphone. All in all, while the public waits to see the domineering winners of the Game Awards, it’s a good time to reflect on the passionate work and achievements of all game developers in 2023.
