The industry’s annual Keighley awards took place last night””the show might also be called The Game Awards, but I like to call them the Keighley’s. Ever since award host, Geoff Keighley, left television behind and hopped over to a streaming only platform, the quality of the show has only been increasing. Last year saw a dramatic decrease in pointless celebrity appearances who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. However, this year had an increased presence of celebrities who, not only respected the medium we all know and love, but respected industry titans who deserve all the lime light they get at these affairs.
The first notable event to happen at this year’s awards was Greg Miller’s acceptance speech for Trending Gamer. Going on stage and thanking developers for all their hard work stating, “we would not be here if it was not for your work. Thank you for making games.” The speech can be found in full in this article. Totalbiscuit, Markiplier, PewDiePie, and some other dude were nominated alongside Greg Miller all shared their warm wishes to Greg and congratulated him for the award that he deserved.
Next, the show took some time away from handing out award-after-award to recognize Saturo Iwata in a touching moment of silence and video tribute. Reggie took the stage to describe what it was like to work with Mr. Iwata professionally. Calling Saturo Iwata, “fearless,” and asking the audience to remember the first time they heard the word “Wii,” he was implying that Mr. Iwata always stuck to his vision. Reggie went down the resume of Mr. Iwata from his work to Hal Labs creating Kirby’s Dream Land to his work on the board of Nintendo. It was a nice farewell to an industry titan who left us far too early.
As you can see, CD Projekct Red swept the floor with the major categories being best studio and (the big one itself) the Game of the Year, with The Witcher 3 winning. Best Action/Adventure game went to Metal Gear Solid 5, but the award presentation was not without some controversy. Many fans took to various social media platforms to question why Keifer Sutherland was accepting the award on behalf of Kojima. Award host, Geoff Keighley, later explained that Hideo Kojima’s former employer, Konami Entertainment, contacted Mr. Kojima via a legal representative preventing him from attending the award show and accepting the award on behalf of Konami. Of course, Konami refused to comment on the situation””mostly because they’re an Orwellian tyrant who treats their employees horribly beyond the standards of most eastern corporate practices.
The Game Awards also stuck to tradition in premiering a plethora of new games to the world. The most surprising, in my opinion, being a Batman’s Telltale Game series. I’m a big fan of the TellTale Games, but they need to take a second to realize how broken their game engine is and fix that first. It won’t happen, but one can certainly dream that a studio would get their act together on real problems like this. Finally, the game we’ve all been praying for decades to get has finally been announced: Psychonauts 2!!!
The Game Awards (Keighley’s) will air again next year, for sure. Until then, we have a whole year of games to play ahead of us before we even consider who’s getting the much-sought-after Keighley Award (Game Award). Forget it! It’s the Keighley’s to me. Always will be.