Watching on the livestream, we noticed a musical interlude would kick in moments after the speaker got started. “The clock’s ticking,” The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann joked when he went on stage to collect the HBO TV show’s Best Adaptation gong. Sam Lake, who was called up twice, barely had a moment to gather his thoughts upon receiving Alan Wake 2’s well-deserved awards.
And it turns out that in the auditorium, there was a large teleprompter encouraging speakers to “please wrap it up” once their speech had hit a certain mark. Obviously, we understand the importance of keeping the event on schedule, but this does feel disrespectful to those going on stage – especially when their speeches generally have to reflect their entire teams.
It’s something that the show is understandably getting ripped for – just take a look at these two scathing Hard Drive headlines:
Perhaps the real kick in the teeth here is that a lot of time was dedicated to the likes of Hideo Kojima, who is an industry icon undoubtedly, but didn’t really have much to show. This hastily assembled meme, which has been shared thousands of times, succinctly sums up the situation:
Keighley has generally been very good at listening to feedback, and will likely admit he made a mistake here. But every year there’s always an underlying sentiment that The Game Awards isn’t sure what it wants to be. Yes, it needs the blockbuster announcements to draw eyeballs, and it requires the commercials to sustain itself – but what’s the point of an awards show when the recipients have no time to talk, and the vast majority of the gongs are footnotes rifled through as quickly as possible?
