I think The Game Awards were more important than people realize.

[binary solo]

Yeah, if the awards show would stick to being an awards show with an open and transparent process for determining the winners (something like the Oscars and Emmys for instance) and did not double as a vehicle for publishers to market their new or upcoming games I might consider them to be a somewhat singularly important set of video game awards. The fact that the time the spent promoting Star Wars Battlefront was probably enough to actually televise giving out several more awards shows that the VGAs are not truly dedicated to awards and are as much a marketing exercise as an awards event. After just 2 years the VGAs need yet another rethink and reimaging.

In the movie industry there are lots of awards events all over the world and several in the USA. But only the movie that wins the best picture Oscar is regarded as the "global movie of the year". If the VGAs aspire to be the first, most significant and most prestigious award for GOTY then it has a lot of work to do to establish itself as such.

It doesn't even have the full suite of category awards. Then there are ccomplete bullshit awards that have no place in a true awards event, like "most anticipated game" What the hell is that as an award? All it amounts to is "game most likely to be a major let down because of too much hype." Trending gamer is what exactly? What is even the criteria for being up for consideration? Is it # of Youtube / Twitch subscribers, because I don't know how PewDiePie got nominated otherwise. And aside from popularity contest what was the Best eSports team based on? How do you chose between teams competing in completely different games? I like that eSports are getting recognition, but I'm not sure how that particular award can operate as a purtely fan-based choice being that it is solely a popularity contest,if team of the year just means team with a fanbase that is most motivated to vote then it loses all meaning and significance? If they were the most dominant team with the biggest winning streak and very high win rate and winning the most major competitions during the year then sure, that's a meaningful award.

There's too much wrong with these awards for them to be any more important that the GOY+TYs given out by the major gaming publications / websites.

If they need all that paid marketing stuff like the SWBF booth, then perhaps there just isn't the market for this kind of awards show, and perhaps it should therefore not exist.