Hello, and welcome to episode number one hundred and forty one of the Chief
Stakes and Controllers Podcast, present of by Fox PHL The Gambler one oh two
point five FM fourteen eighty AMI Heart Radio. Wherever you get your podcast is
where you're listening to this right now. Be it Spotify, Apple Music,
Amazon Podcasts. If you're that guy, I appreciate you just as much as
everybody else. My name is Jason Fonell. I don't know if I said
that already because I have very bad short term memory. But here I am
episode number one hundred and forty one, after a long, long night for
the gaming industry, both in good and bad ways. I am, of
course, of course, talking about the Game Awards twenty twenty three. They
kicked off last night with all of the announcements and award blink and you'll miss
it, awards and all that stuff that we love so much and hate so
much about this this little event of hours, and I'm gonna spend the next
good amount of time talking about it because there is a lot to unpack.
I had planned on doing this right after the show ended last night, right
after the show went kicked off the air, I signed off of twitch shifter
streaming the whole thing for four hours and dancing around to the song you're hearing
right now and all that other stuff. But I thought maybe I would wait.
I'm gonna wait until the next day. I'm gonna sleep on it,
and I'm gonna see how I feel in the morning. And honestly, I'm
glad I did that. I'm glad I took that approach. As the song
wraps up here, I love this song so much. It's just so good.
Old Gods Vassard aka Poets of the Fall, They're just very good.
Anyway, I don't want to get two sidetrack. When I signed off of
my stream last night. You can go watch it. You can go watch
the whole Thing's archived on Twitch. I'm not gonna get rid of it.
I may try and download it for posterity, just so in case they deleted
it for me. But the whole thing's there, and I was I was
happy with what I with what we saw. I was happy with the games
that were announced. I was happy with the things that went on, like
the musical number I talked about. But then when I went back and watched
that outro again, I didn't talk about the awards. Once I focused so
much on what was announced, I basically went into E three mode, right,
I went into post E three press conference mode, where I talked about
the things we learned about that are coming in the future rather than the games
that were being honored on the night, And that, right there is a
microcosm of the entire experience. Now, the next thing you say is,
well, how is that different than any other year at the Game Awards?
And you're right, it always it has always had that issue. What once
was touted as a feature being able to blend the announcements that the industry fans
love with the celebration of the industry as a whole has now gotten blurred to
being more of a detriment. It just needs to find more of a balance.
But no, but where in other years it was like easy to pass
off, it was a little bit easier for lack of better term, ignore
this year. This year it was one hundred thousand percent on display. And
now that I have come into my own after sleeping on it, we're going
to get into that. But first, first things first, I do I
want to start with the games that were announced to get out of the way,
I want to get it out of my system. I know, I
just said that I'm basically going to take the same timeline in this podcast episode
that I took in my brain last night. So we'll talk about some of
the things I'm most excited about. Uh, we're gonna talk about the rest
of the show after this. And I don't think I'm gonna do segments in
this one. I know, I normally, you know, say stick around
or what have you. I think I'm just gonna run straight through, no
commercial breaks today. I don't think this one's getting put on the the Uh,
what's the word I'm looking for the radio, you know, that's what
it's called. I don't think this one's getting radio play this week. This
is just me. I'm gonna go off for forty five minutes. I'm not
gonna put any ads on it, so you'll adds at the beginning, adds
at the end, nothing in between. We're just gonna run through this and
I'm gonna talk about what I'm feeling right now. This this afternoon, one
pm on Friday, December eighth, the day after the Game Awards kicked off.
So let's go through some of the things that I liked to see Brothers,
a tale of two sons getting remade or brought back to modern consoles.
That's really cool. Game came out twenty thirteen. Novel idea of being a
sort of puzzle platform or sort of game where you control two people at the
same time, with one half of the controller being one brother and one half
of the controller being the other. Made by Joseph Farris who also made it.
It takes two and a couple other games. Very very cool game.
Happy to see that get some time back in the spotlight. Pony Island two
Panda Circus only means anything if you played Inscription. If you haven't played Inscription,
you should do so that's a fun game as well. Loudest pop of
the night for me or second loudest pop of the night for me went to
The Rise of the Golden Idol because The Case of the Golden Idol is one
of my favorite games ever. It is a very well done puzzle game,
really makes you think, and it's one that I feel needs to be played
by everyone. It's on most consoles right now, I believe, and at
least don't switch and PC, so if you have a switcher PC you can
play it. There so go check that out. That's really cool and worth
your time. Harmonium the musical was really cool. It's a it's a musical
game but made with the death in mind. So we may be hearing things,
you know, hearing the words that are being said, but the but
like it's all all they're all being signed and everything subtitled. Just a really
novel idea there as well. Finji, who most recently made Tunic, is
back with usual June. That was a cool trailer. Motion twin The Dead
Cell Studio announced their next game, win Blown. That was pretty awesome as
well. The biggest pop of the night probably went to God of War Ragnarok's
Valhalla update, the new free to download roguelike game from Sony Santa Monica.
Inside God of War Ragnarok, players credos go through some go through this this
some sort of like mysterious island with this temple that you just fight monsters over
and over again in the rogue light setting. That should be cool. Uh.
Hell Blade two looked really great. The new game from House House,
who made untitled goose game, Big Walk looked very very strange. Kids love
that trailer, as I thought they would, as did the Moon Studios game.
No rest for the wicked, very stark departure from Ari, but I
am excited for that Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, which is basically just the next
ten Kaiichi game. I'm very excited to see that franchise, that spin off
of dragon Ball come back casting a frank Stone, which is a horror game
collaboration between the Dead by Daylight Studio and the Until Dawn Slashed the Quarry Studio.
Plus the Bandy Namco series. Man of Madonn is one of them.
I can never remember the actual name of the full series. Visions of Mana,
a brand new game in the Mana franchise. Did not see that coming.
Final Fantasy seven rebirth trailer was fantastic. Marvel's Blade probably the biggest announcement
of the night. That Arcane is making a Blade game that's kind of cool
for free d enough free but paid DLC for Final Fantasy sixteen first pack out
Last Night second pack coming in spring twenty twenty four. Monster Hunter Wild's ending
the show also a very cool award sorry, very cool announcement as well.
So yeah, there were some very cool games to get excited about. Some
with twenty twenty four release dates, some with twenty twenty five release dates,
which is a little disheartening. So twenty twenty five already has Monster Hunter and
Grand Theft Auto in it. That's pretty impressive. And you know we're a
year away. Lord knows what's going to be announced in the next couple of
months for that stuff. But yeah, so the announcements are great. I
don't want to take away from the things that were announced, the things that
were presented. The games look fun. I am excited to learn more about
them. For the games that may be a little closer to their release date,
I am excited to play them. But this is an award show about
the past year twenty twenty three, right, so, meaning that they should
be spending time, most of their time devoted to honoring those shows, at
least honoring those games, at least in the way, at least in the
way that like the people, people want the Game Awards to be like the
Oscars, right, they want it to be that. They want it to
be this, you know, celebration of the industry with awards mixed in,
and unfortunately that has never been where the Game Awards has landed. Right,
This is more of a pop culture oriented Award, as exemplified by Anthony Mackie
and Timothy Shallomy for some reason and stuff and people like that coming to present
awards now. Anthony Mackie makes sense. He's in the Swiss to metal game
Twist Metals based on video game, got it? The cast of Fallout,
same thing, makes sense that they're there. Timothy Shallomy to make a whole
lot of sense. I mean, yeah, he used to stream video games.
Great, but why is he here now? And furthermore, he could
not have seemed more disinterested to be there. But that's another neither here nor
there. At least he introduced and presented an award, right, he was
the Game of the Year guy, so he got to bring the orchestra on
stage, he got to give the Game of the Year award to the winner.
Stuff like that. That's neither here nor there. My big issue is
the lack of attention devoted to the winners of these awards. This is a
common critique. It is one that we have talked about with this show for
years, and we talked about it, I believe when it was the Spike
Video Game Awards in the early twenty tens, and then it went away for
a while. And it came back in twenty fourteen in its current form.
And here we stand. So this was the tenth Game Awards. Next year
is the tenth anniversary of the Game Awards, So it's now a decade in
and we're still talking about it being more of a marketing presentation oriented event than
it is a celebration or award show. And that sucks, frankly, because
this is easily the most visible, the most viewed, the award show with
the highest reach in the entire industry. There are others the BAFTAs, the
Golden Joysticks, the Aias or the Dice Awards, which I think are the
same thing. I could be wrong. The Spawnees run by Khalif Adams,
which is a great up and coming award show there as well. These all
exist and they all figure out a way to honor the award winners along with
if there are any announcements or whatever going on and creating that balance here that
seesaw went way too much in the direction of trailers to the point where winners
of Awards this is the worst part. And if you saw it, you
know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying anything new right now, Winners
of these awards were given thirty seconds for speeches if they were one of the
ones selected for speeches, and one moment they did a bunch of rapid fire
awards at once, including some high like major categories. Best Indie for Sea
of Stars, Best RPG for Balder's Gain. I guess just blown through with
no care. What is the point right? Kotaku wrote a great article this
morning. Zaxwison wrote a great headline, It's time for the Game Awards to
just become the Winter e three it wants to be. You want to give
awards, you want to honor people, fine, but just call yourself what
it is. Stop with this. You know, the best form of entertainment,
as somebody pointed out in the game spot slack today, stop with that.
There is no best form entertainment. The best form entertainment is whatever entertains
you. There is no it's somebody. There's a tweet that I wrote that
I read. I wrote tweet that I read that said, events like last
night make it seem like we're a The gaming industry is a very successful little
brother who's trying to measure up to the older brother who was more popular in
high school. And that is so right, it's so right, it's not
even funny. And in some moments I kind of I kind of think it's
cool to have like Anthony Mackie there and and al Pacino last year, and
you know, people like that, But like, are the Muppets necessary?
And I love the Muppets. Muppet this is my time of year. This
is the Muppets time a year for me. Muppett Family Christmas is one of
my favorite Christmas shows of all time? Was Gonzo needed? Did I need
to hear Gonzo thirst about chickens for six minutes or whatever it ended up being,
Bring out some Alan Wake corkboard. Never reference to Alan Wake. I
mean, make the Alan Wake joke. You're making an Alan Wake corkboard.
Make the joke. No, We're just talking about how much he really wants
to do unspeakable things to that chicken or chicken in general. It's very weird.
It's very I feel, I don't know, it's hard to it's hard
to really get into. The more I think about it, the more problems
I have I want to I'm just gonna paint a couple of situations here that
people have talked about that are really really bad and of course, you can
make your own judgments. If you don't agree with me, that's fine.
But if you, you know, just listen to what I'm saying and see
if it at least makes any sense to you. So first, somebody on
Twitter, Haley Elise at Haley Elise on Twitter, because I refuse to call
it what it's called. She went through where they went through. I don't
want to assume they went through and broke down by timing five different categories for
these award shows. Now, this only counts for the Core Game Award show.
It does not include the however many awards and I think a dozen reveals
that happened in the opening act as they call it, from seven thirty to
eight o'clock Eastern time. This is just eight to eleven trailers and advertisements were
given one hour and twenty eight minutes. That is half of the runtime.
Eighty eight out of one hundred and eighty minutes we're spent on trailers and advertisements,
which is fine, but there are other areas that are sorely lacking,
and we'll get to that. Musical numbers at thirteen and a half minutes,
that's fine. They had two, right, maybe three? They had Old
Gods of Asgard. They had the final Fantasy seven rebirth one. I think
it might be it. That's fine, that's perfect for a three hour show.
One or two songs to mix things up. Good Oscars does the same
thing. If you want to keep making that comparison, they do the same
thing for all their best music. Whatever I'm in, that's fine with me.
Presenters of the awards, the people presenting the awards got almost triple the
amount of time as people to give speeches who won them. Twenty six and
a half minutes for award presenters, ten minutes for the speeches of the winners.
That is bogus. That to me is completely backwards. Now, some
of that may have been extended by Anthony Mackie, who was very upset with
the crowd for yelling at him, were very drunk or very both um yelling
at the crowd to stop talking, and how much he loved them. He
kind of padded his time there. Whatever. Christopher Judge I think patted it
on purpose, making fun of call of duty because of his speech last year,
which kept going on and on and on, and they got a get
inside joke whatever, and that started the show that was a great icebreaker to
start the show. Bring out Christopher Judge, make fun of him, play
him off. But also, as I'm just now realizing, it, kind
of set the stage for the entire night because he starts talking and they immediately
turn on the playoff music, which for him is a joke. But then
when they did it to everybody else, when they weren't supposed to the joke,
it wasn't a joke anymore. There is one award in particular, it's
either Accessibility Games for Impact. I have to go look where the accepters of
the award. The two people who accept the award, it's a man and
a woman, and they go up and the man gives his speech and he
says, you know, whatever he wants to say. He says, thank
you. The woman walks up to the mic to get her turn, and
damn they play the playoff music, full bore, full blast boom. They're
playing the off as if they assumed she had nothing to say. As soon
as that happened, I go back to my live stream. I immediately was
like, oh no, that's not good. You let them both speak.
That didn't happen again for the rest of the show, but it happened to
them. I have to find the award specific award that that happened to,
and I will do that while we're talking here. But that was just not
not a good look at all, and I am genuinely curious how that was
able to happen. But then you have the voice actor for Astarion, who
won the best Performance category for Balder's Gate, giving a very moving speech to
Neil Nubahn is his name, giving a very moving speech about how his performance
helped people who were suffering from abuse, and it's just very wonderful, wonderful
thing, and their playing him off. Give him time, let him soak
in that moment. He had what thirty seconds forty seconds before that screen that
has become the lasting image of the game awards, please wrap it up,
was being shown to him, and that was the first award to bookend the
show, the last award Game of the year, also for Balder's Gate.
The head of the studio, in a suit of armor by the way,
Great Touch comes up and starts giving his speech and talking about members of the
team who have died, won as recently as a month ago, and they're
playing him off again. It's the end of the show. There should be
no time limit for the Game of the Year speech. What are you doing?
Why are you doing this? I understand, I mean, I can
sympathize or understand if, in the beginning of the show the lesser not lesser,
but these smaller categories get less time to speak. Fine, that makes
perfect sense to me, but not Game of the Year, right, And
even then, the smaller categories deserve longer than thirty seconds before they're being played
off with a patronizing Uh, please wrap it up? Who picked that?
Please wrap it up? You could write, you could have written anything.
You could have written overtime, you could have written, you know, something
else, like, uh, just just have the zeros there flashing. That
would have been enough. Please wrap it up. What the hell? Man?
Somebody's put on Twitter and this is right. I don't remember exactly who
wrote it. I want to say Javier Cordero was the name I got find
that tweet. I want to make sure I get that appropriation or not appropriation,
that attribution correct as well. That said, if I'm accepting an award
for Game of the Year on a project I spent blood, sweent and tears
on and I'm talking about people on my team who have died while making these
games, and you're playing me off, I'm gonna be pissed. And he's
right, there's no excuse for that. And then and then, which is
where there are weird practices got in their own way. That man, the
head of Balder's Gate three, when he was accepting his award for Game of
the Year, was supposed to announce that the Xbox version shadow dropped. The
Xbox version of Baltersgate three was available on Xbox right then and there for the
first time. They didn't give him the time to do that. Now he
says he forgot. He says he would. You know, he wasn't thinking
he was in the moment. But if he's not played off after thirty seconds
of accepting an award or giving a speech for Game of the Year, maybe
he remembers that particular tidbit, huh. I mean, that just makes sense.
He gave more time on the stage to that dope from games Com who
rushed the stage looking for GTA six, who I hope is still riding in
the gooleg because that, I mean, they had more security last night.
But that's that whole I'm not getting onto that your haste and your lack of
focus on the winners kept you from a pretty big announcement, which is your
bread and butter anyway, right, you spent half the show on trailers and
stuff like that, and as I have been saying, the social media reaction
has been strong, to say the least. Jeff Grubb over there Giant Bomb
says, I don't think we I don't want to say we shouldn't criticize the
game awards. We should. I just think maybe it's more useful to question
the whole importance in the first place. Some guy just decided to hand out
trophies, we don't have to take it as seriously as default. That is
a very good point that he made there. I think that there is something
you could something to be said about how this guy just, you know,
decided he wanted to do this. Now, granted, he did invest a
million dollars of his own money, and he clearly does care about the industry.
He just has to get his priority straight here. It is Javierra Cordero.
That's the name. If I had one Game of the Year and was
dedicating the award to a member of my team who had died during development,
and saw the words please wrap it up. I'd be expletive pissed. I
would too, Pavierra, you are absolutely right about that. Swen Vinki is
his name from Larry and he was the one accepting the award. One great
joke didn't know gave de Game dev Award acceptance. Species were also subjected to
crunch. That was a nice little little dig there. Simoulu, who came
out to present himself a present an award and reveal himself in a game called
Stormgate, got to talk about his broken foot longer than developers won an award
tonight. That was pretty pretty good commentary there. Roger Clark, who was
the voice I believe is the voice of Arthur Morgan, I think I have
the guy right here. He tweeted that the gaming industry has an odd complex
at the moment. They're disregarding their own plate, their own disregarding their own
in a place in place of a film industry that doesn't really care about them.
They're like the more successful little brother here it is still seeking validation from
the big brother who was cool in high school. Yes, that's one hundred
percent true. It's it's a shame, right, It is a shame.
That the awards that we most associate with this industry have become fifty percent marketing
and fifty percent and not even fifty percent celebration. Let's go back, Let's
go back to those times again, shall we? Let me find that tweet
again while I'm right here. One hour and twenty eight minutes for trailers,
thirteen and a half minutes for musical numbers. That's the only one I'm okay
with award presenters twenty six and a half minutes. Winter speech is ten minutes.
I didn't get to the other thing that really makes me upset, and
that is forty two and a half minutes devoted to other I believe Kajima is
in that because he had eight minutes with Jordan Peele and all the other stuff.
I think the warframe stuff is in there because they were talking about the
warframe drop and stuff like that. That right, there is more time that
should be devoted to winter speeches. There is no reason that the speeches of
the people who are winning the awards should have the least amount of time.
What are you doing, Jeff? Now? I did have a thought that
maybe he was overreacting to Bill Clinton kid last year, right he didn't want
that egg on his face again after some kids snuck up on the stage and
talked about Bill Clinton out of nowhere. Yeah, fine, that's fine.
But you had the guardrails for that, You had the extra security guys at
the end of the rows for that. You took care of that. You
don't take care of that. By limiting the time of the people who are
supposed to be giving the speeches, you are punishing the wrong people. And
to be honest, I don't even know where the solution is, right,
I don't know is it. I mean, well, clearly the answer would
be less attention given to the trailers and the ads. But that's why the
people tune in, right, So what do you need? What needs to
happen here is you can have your trailers and your reveals and all that other
good stuff. You can still have that stuff, but you need to spend
just as much time honoring the speeches too. I don't want to hear that
people get bored if speeches are too long, and and people on Twitter or
whatever start saying move it along, move it along. That's because people on
Twitter have no attention span, my boy. They just as long as something
is the least bit boring. They're complaining about it. It's what they do.
If anyone's live tweeting this, they've already told me to move it along
fifteen times in twenty seven minutes. It's just how it works on social media.
Man, you need to be the one to hold up You and your
team need to be the ones to hold up the Hey, we need to
give these people equal time. And it's gotten me wondering what a Game Awards
show would look like without Jeff Keey, somebody else hosting, just his team
organizing everything. I don't know how hands on he is now. He talks
about going to a studio like house House and playing Big Walk or whatever that
game was called from the untitled Goose Game. People. He talks about,
you know, being in the room for all these demos, But is he
booking them or is team booking them? Is he producing the rundown or is
his team producing the rundown? Is this a Vince mcmn situation where a bunch
of people do work and he has the final say. And I hope that's
the extent of the vincetrick Man situation. If that's what it is, I
don't know. Maybe we get somebody on the not on the inside. Maybe
we get some of those answers, we get some of those things told to
us, so we know maybe maybe I don't know. I don't know.
All I know is something's wrong. Something's wrong, And it was very apparent
last night based on the the reactions of people on Twitter about the show and
what they were seeing. There is a problem here. There is a rot
at the core of the Game Awards that has been festering for almost a decade
aid and it's time to figure out how to get rid of it and create
a balance. Does it mean adding an extra hour to your show? Fine,
start at seven six thirty, seven o'clock, six thirty opening act,
seven o'clock start time. If you add an hour and give all of that
time to the winner speeches, nobody says a word, everybody. You have
thirty awards at this show. You gave ten minutes to the winners. If
you make that seventy, that's what. Let's do the quick math here,
real quick. More than a little more than two minutes per speech, that's
fine, And then you can play with it as is. You want to
give Game of the Year more time, then I don't know, the e
Sports Awards whatever, that's fine too, or maybe the Esports Awards are in
the pre show and then you do them and you give them their their their
their laurels, and then we move on. Because it's mostly about the actual
industry, the the core gaming industry, and not so much about esports.
There are ways to do this, I don't I think anyone would complain if
that show starts at seven pm Eastern Time instead of eight pm Eastern time.
But every every single speech, every single winner of an award gets more time
to give a speech. I would have loved to see Sabotage on that stage
last night for Best Indie Game. I would have loved it. Was it
there, No, it wasn't. It got mentioned, it got clapped for,
and then it was moved on to the next one. Sabotage deserved that
time on stage. They deserved it. They didn't get it, and that,
to me is bogus. And I hate to do this because I look
forward to this. I look forward to this from Thanksgiving. I mean,
I'm always kind of on the periphery of it. It's one of my favorite
events of the year and has been for years. I've been talking about going
to this damn thing for five years. You think I would do it eventually.
But I love this show, I love streaming it, I love talking
about it friends. With the absence of E three, that void has been
filled to a point by this and now I'm realizing that that's a problem.
But it's not an unfixable one. There just needs to be more time given
to the people winning the awards as opposed to those who want to announce the
games that may be winning them in the future. It amazes me how much
Alan Wake two is a perfect example of what's going on in this industry,
in this particular industry event. Remember when alan Wake two was announced in twenty
twenty one. Remember how much time they got on stage to talk about the
return of alan Wake on that stage two years ago. Now, when it
came time to win the awards, their creators got what third of that time.
Allen Wait might not be the best example because they also had one of
the musical numbers. I understand that, but it doesn't change the fact that
you spent more time on the game's announcement two years ago than you did on
the awards that it won. At the show that has awards in the title,
and that to me is a problem. We play these games because they're
made by excellent creators, and the most visible award show in the world needs
to give those creators that spotlight. It needs to give the industry that spotlight,
not just the marketing committees, not just the business side, the entire
industry, which brings me to my last point. There have been a lot
of critiques about this show, a lot of them deserved, none of them
more deserved than anybody who had anything to say about the lack of mention of
layoffs there. I mean, there was that wonderful letter that went out by
the Future Class regarding acknowledgment of what's going on in Israel in Palestine. Should
that have happened to Yes, they mentioned Ukraine in twenty twenty one, they
should have mentioned Palestine this year as well. I won one hundred percent agree.
There were people who were going to give speeches on Palestine. They didn't
win that the team one of the people who made Goodbye Volcano, Hyatt co
Op, shared his speech if they had won, and it mentions Palestine.
So now is it p will the tinfoil hats put on you go on to
say that that game didn't because they might mention it. No, you can't
say that because you didn't see a speech before here. You have to clear
anything. I don't know if they have to clear it, but if they
had to clear it, whatever, But that's a whole other That's what I
want to get into. It should have happened, But that is a very
it's a hard topic to talk about it. It's a hard topic to give
the gravitas that it needs. So I would have loved to have hear about
it, heard about it, and the fact that it wasn't there sucks,
But just as importantly, if not because of the industry we're talking about more
importantly, even though it's it's not. I don't want to say one's more
important than the other. I'm just trying to make a point here that one
that definitely should have been said was the layoffs. Both of these things should
have been said. Let me let me make that very clear. But if
we had to choose one, or if I had to, if you came
to me and said, one of these two things is definitely going to be
talked about it this award show, what's it going to be? I would
have chosen the layoffs. It was a huge part of this year, one
of the most successful critically successful years in video games ever, overshadowed by nearly
ten thousand layoffs in studios across the world. That to me is something somebody
would have addressed and should have been addressed. At the beginning of the show,
Nope, not a word. And my favorite part, My favorite part
of this is that multiple times during the show they panned a camera to Leanna
Ruppert. Nothing's wrong with Leanna Ruppert. The Honor Ruppert is great, The
Honor Ruppert was laid off. The Honor Ruppert was laid off by Bungee.
She was affected, and they kept finding her in the audience, and anybody
who saw her would be like, oh, that's Leanna. Oh yeah,
she got laid off. Oh they're gonna mention that. They never did.
I don't know if the camera person knew that that was that situation. I
doubt it, if they were just part of the camera team. But every
time they showed her, all I thought was, maybe this is an opportunity
to mention something about the terrible layoffs, and this is going to remind somebody
to do it. When she's on the screen, No, didn't happen.
The Israel Palestine situation sucks. The layoff situation sucks. Both of those things
are very important topics that could and should have had a platform to be focused
on last night. One of them even stressed by the members of the so
called future class that the Game Awards considers to be the best and brightest of
the younger generation of game developers, and both were ignored. Spineless. It's
cowardice, and it shows a lack of awareness for the world around you,
both internally in your little industry bubble and externally in the world at large.
And it sucks now and then people will tell me why kit we just walk
it. We just have a night to start to break the video games.
We wanted that toune. We didn't get it right. We got ten minutes
of three hours celebrating the actual winners. So spare me that crap. The
awards. The Game Awards need to change. It's that simple. You want
to give three hours of a platform to this industry, you have to do
it by celebrating this industry. You want to celebrate its future as you gave
an hour and a half to last night. Fine, that's fine. Have
your trailers, have your reveals, but you need to also make equal time,
if not maybe more time to the people who have already made their games
and are looking to be honored after winning your awards. It makes me wonder,
like I said earlier, about a show without him, what would that
look like? What would the Game Awards look like if he took a year
off, just decided to do something else, focus on summer games Fest and
games Calm, and let us Game Awards team do that. I truly wonder
what that would look like. Am I saying he's the problem? No,
but he's the final decision maker. What would happen if you made somebody else
the final decision maker? How would that look? It's an interesting idea.
Is it going to happen? No? Not next year, not the tenth
anniversary. Absolutely not after that. No, we'll probably keep doing this as
long as he wants. But I am curious what that would look like?
Just once, just once? I suggest, if you want some extra reading
on this subject, you go to the Verge and read Ash Parish is former
guest of Chief Takes and Controllers. Read her excellent piece on the Verge called
let Me Get the Name of It? For you. I want to make
sure I get it right. Where is it? She posted it right after
the show she was on it. It is called Jeff Jeff Keilly let video
Game Developers Down? Is flat out what it says. She says basically what
kind of She goes into better detail in what I was saying earlier. The
numbers vary. Estimates. Estimates say anywhere between six and seven thousand workers lost
their jobs this year. No studio or no level of studio size or success
has been spared, and those who have been let go are now forced to
contend for an ever dwindling number of open job prospects. And then she goes
on to talk about how this platform should have been used to address that and
it didn't. Excellent writing by Ash Parish highly recommend you go to The Verge
and check that out. Also check out the zax Weissen article from Kataku.
The Game Awards needs to drop the act and just become Winter E three props
to whoever chose the cover image for that one. That is a very very
interesting place to do that. And you know, I just I just wish
the Awards show would be better, Like I'm sitting here right now, as
I'm saying these words, watching a video of the Dublin office of Larry and
Studios at what's this eleven o'clock Eastern, so it's four or five in the
morning for them right watching the Game of the Year announcement. And as soon
as they say Balder's Gate three on that stage, that studio turns into the
World Series Champions locker room. There's champagne spraying everywhere. They're screaming, listen,
listen to this. That's amazing, and listen to them. Go look
for at Kirakira Cosmo on Twitter has this there. She's associate writing for Luster
Phaleron. Listen to that. Joy. Why am I watching this on Twitter
and not on the stage of the Game Awards. Look at them, Listen
to them. Incredible. That's what the Game Awards needs. More of the
cheers of those who won the awards, and not just the cheers from fans
excited to see all the new stuff that the award winners won't get enough time
to talk about when they win the Awards and Game Awards ceremonies of the future.
And that is episode number one forty one of the Chief Stakes and Controllers
podcast, presented by Fox PHL. The Gambler won a two point five FM
fourteen I heart radio. Where you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple Music,
what have you. If you want to discuss this more, I am
at big Man Finelle on all of the socials. Feel free to do that.
This is a tough one. Like I said, I love the Game
Awards, I love watching them, I love being a part of it.
One of these years I will actually go, and maybe I'll drag my wife
with me. But I can love a thing and also say that it needs
fundamental changes at its core. And those changes were never more apparent than they
were last night by the time that show had ended. Hopefully next year for
the tenth anniversary, they do better than the actual tenth edition. As I
always say at the end of the episode, if you're hearing these words,
that means you have reached the end, and I am ever so grateful and
appreciative that you have done so you're educated. I hope you're entertained again.
I am more than willing to discuss further on social media. I might try
and do some more live streaming. Now. You can come into my chat
at Jfans sixty four and talk to me there. Ultimately, i'd love to
hear your opinions on the Game Awards, what you liked, what you didn't,
what you're looking forward to, if there were things last night that were
on your bucket list to be announced and they were love to hear that,
But just remember that that's not the only thing that this is words they're supposed
to be about, and it has now overtaken half the show, which is
pretty alarming. Regardless, I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I hope
you have an even better week right behind it, and we'll be back again
next week with more of the latest and greatest and gaming news here on Chee
Steaks and Controllers. See you later, y'all. F