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The Game Awards - Megathread
The Game Awards start tonight at 5:30 PM Pacific time (Dec 13, 02:30 UTC). There are a lot of announcements, sales, and events going on associated with it though, so I thought I'd try to collect a bunch of it here, and then we can discuss and post the actual winners in here later as well.
Sales
Announcements/Releases
- Sayonara Wild Hearts released on PC (20% off)
Events
- "The Game Festival" - 13 first-look demos of indie games available on Steam for 48 hours (announcement post)
Edit after the show: Article on CNET that lists all the winners of awards, as well as having embedded copies of most of the trailers/announcements/etc. that were shown
My original lists (incomplete)
Winners
- Best Community Support: Destiny 2
- Best Score & Music: Death Stranding
- Best Fighting Game: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Best Narrative: Disco Elysium
- Best Audio Design: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Best Strategy Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Best Art Direction: Control
- Best Action Game: Devil May Cry 5
- Games for Impact: Gris
- Best Family Game: Luigi's Mansion 3
- Best Sports/Racing Game: Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
- Best Mobile Game: Call of Duty: Mobile
- Best Multiplayer Game: Apex Legends
- Best Ongoing Game: Fortnite
Edit: I'm not going to keep updating the winners, I'm sure there are a ton of lists out there - I'll edit in a link at the end
- Best Esports Coach: Zonic
- Best Esports Event: League of Legends World Championship 2019
- Best Esports Host: Sjokz
- Best Esports Team: G2 Esports
- Best Esports Player: Bugha
- Content Creator of the Year: Shroud
New trailers/announcements
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: X-Men Rise of the Phoenix DLC 2
- Man Eater - Gameplay Trailer
- Humankind - Official "Your Story" Gameplay Trailer
- No More Heroes 3 - The Return
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Cloud Strife Trailer
- Xbox Series X - World Premiere - releasing holiday 2020
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – The Game Awards 2019 – Announce Trailer (in-engine)
- Godfall - Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer
- Bravely Default II – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch
- Warframe Empyrean - Official Cinematic Launch Trailer
- Magic: The Gathering - Theros Beyond Death Official Trailer
- prologue - Reveal Trailer
- Sons of the Forest Trailer
- Ruined King: A League of Legends Story - Official Teaser Trailer
- Cyberpunk 2077 - Behind the Music
- Dungeons & Dragons - Dark Alliance Announcement Trailer
- Weird West - Reveal Trailer
- Magic: Legends - Cinematic Teaser Trailer
- Ghost of Tsushima - Gameplay Trailer
- Gears Tactics World Premiere Trailer
- Naraka: Bladepoint - Official Announcement Trailer
Edit: dear god how long is this show? I'll edit in a link to a good summary later, I'm not going to keep watching.
Italicized links probably need a better source
If you watch through the Steam client or a logged-in browser on their site, they're giving away a bunch of games and some Index VR sets to random viewers throughout the broadcast.
The stream is at the top of the sale page: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/thegameawards
Mixer is likewise giving away stuff for Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4 for watching. http://Mixer.com/TheGameAwards
The stream on steam is having some crazy audio issues for me
Oh okay, so that's not just me. I was just trying to figure out if there was something wrong with my wireless. Hopefully the actual show will be better somehow, but this will be unwatchable if it stays like this.
Edit: There's a YouTube stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxAihuiYxuU
They also seem to have added a second stream on Steam that you have to select and is working better for me.
Oh man, I've been waiting for the RE2 remake to come on sale for a while. Why does this have to happen when I'm poor from buying everyone else Christmas gifts?
Official Microsoft announcement:
Power Your Dreams with Xbox Series X, Available Holiday 2020.
So this isn’t even advertised as a proper generational step? This sounds so similar to Xbox One X I assume it’s intentional (otherwise it would be Wii/Wii U levels confusing).
I got the impression that this was definitely presented as a generation step.
I just think the concept of console generations is becoming less relevant, as the technological improvements become more and more incremental. We have more memory, SSD and better GPUs, but there are no significative jumps in gaming experience.
Given that my GPU is currently out of commission, I'm not able to run the System Shock demo, but if anyone else gives it a go, please share! I'd love to know how it is.
Was kinda disappointed with the show this year, seemed like they had a ton of ads and sponsor spots that they didn't used to have. And the game's themselves didn't really show anything, didn't get any gameplay or demos or the like. Just some pre-rendered cutscenes and "in-engine" footage, both of which mean nothing at all.
Seriously feels like it was a worse show than last years, and keeping with the trend worse than when they started. Also still hate random celebrates showing up to shill for something and try to fit in.
Random data point I would love to see, what is the correlation between Green Day fans and games journalists who show up for this. I feel like it must be absolutely tiny and near nonexistant, but hey I'm not about to do the research to actually know.
My overall impression was that it's gotten too big now, which is leading quickly into the type of issues that happen when you're running an awards show for the same companies that are advertising on your awards show. "Corruption" feels like too strong of a word, but there are a ton of conflicts of interest when you need to make enough money to cover such an extravagant show.
For example, like @babypuncher says, I'm sure there were a decent number of people there and watching that like Green Day, but the question is more: what does having Green Day perform add to a gaming awards show? Is it a significantly better show because Green Day performs than it would have been otherwise?
And then the problem that comes from that is that having a bunch of major bands and celebrities involved costs a lot of money. How much did it cost to have Green Day perform those songs? That's money that has to be made up in advertising and sponsorships, so now maybe to be able to have Green Day there, you have to add another 20 minutes worth of ads to cover it. Now you've added 30 minutes to your show between the songs and the ads to pay for them. Is that a better show?
It just kept going for so long, and so much of it was advertising. I stopped paying much attention after about an hour and a half, and that was only halfway.
What makes you think hardly any games journalists would be Green Day fans? They were hot stuff during high school years for anyone born in the '80s, which I imagine is a popular birth decade for most current games journalists.