The Game Awards has faced a slew of criticism about its format as developers were urged off stage. Its creator, director and figurehead Geoff Keighley responded and recognized the widespread frustration the next day on social media.
“By the way - I do agree that the music was played too fast for award winners this year, and I asked our team to relax that rule as the show went on,” he said in a tweet (or “post” on X) on his personal account. “While no one was actually cut off, it’s something to address going forward.” Nothing else has been said about the matter by him nor TGA official social media.
By the way - I do agree that the music was played too fast for award winners this year, and I asked our team to relax that rule as the show went on. While no one was actually cut off, it’s something to address going forward.
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) December 8, 2023
Officially, winners were given 30 seconds to present their speech, though many expanded it to a minute as music swelled over their final words. After the 30 seconds, they were “played off,” which means that the music meant to bridge the speech and the content to follow starts, indicating that the speaker is being politely urged to depart from the stage.
The play-off is a common technique in awards shows where a 45- to 60-second speech is designated. It’s usually ignored in larger categories and by bigger stars (including Michelle Yeoh humorously telling a pianist to not interrupt at the Golden Globes this year).
For later awards, especially Game of the Year, it does seem that the play-off was relaxed quite a bit. Still, the damage was done, especially among other critiques about the awards, or dearth of them, during the broadcast.
A YouTube video not only compiles the speeches, but displays the 30-second timer shown to each winner; the compiled speech length is only just about ten minutes. Another tweet from an in-person attendee shows the infamous “Please Wrap It Up” demand on the teleprompter, too.
Lmao the prompter pic.twitter.com/v1Jg9WwFUY
— The Dave Awards (@DaveOshry) December 8, 2023
Meanwhile, because the actual awards seemed to be so short, several critics have tried to run the numbers. IGN estimated that about 18% of The Game Awards were actually dedicated to speeches. On Bluesky, a games industry veteran gave a more precise estimate: about 41 minutes and 29 seconds was dedicated to awards out of the 3-hour, 34-minute, 38-second runtime, with 14 categories announced over 4 minutes and 33 seconds, clocking in the time closer to 19%. There were only three “by the way, we have these categories too” winners that were able to give a speech, including Nintendo.
Either way, awards were less than a fifth of The Game Awards. Combined with a myriad of long-winded celebrity appearances and non-award speeches, The Game Awards drew a lot of criticism for the lack of focus on the already-released games being celebrated.
The lack of care towards developers felt especially harsh to many during a year that saw thousands of employees laid off across dozens of studios, including but not limited to Bungie, Epic, Playstation’s Visual Arts, Phoenix Labs, Media Molecule, CD Projekt Red, Motorsport Games, Digital Extremes, Amazon, TinyBuild, New World Interactive, Volition, Frontier, Riot, Telltale, Naughty Dog, Roblox, and Roblox China.
The Game Awards is an annual celebration of the video game industry’s elite, abound with speeches and appearances from film industry stars, massive musical performances for unreleased games, and a showcase of trailers for games mostly to be released in no less than six months occupying about 80% of the runtime.
