Last year we had Alan Wake II announcement, the sequel for one of my favorite games of all time. That was good enough for me.

I don’t get the hate for the award show. It may not give the awards to the games you prefer (like, seriously, get over it) but it is still a celebration of the industry we like and the many different creators and contributors that make it all possible.

It’s just a big party for us all and the creators, and what Keighley has done to help push gaming to the forefront of the entertainment industry and be taken more seriously is commendable.

I feelthe most anticaped games next year Will catch my brother eye on Starfield Since he Loves Western RPG He hates Japanese games I'm like I understand he grew up in the Dude Bro era and Loves Grand Theft Auto and Team Fortress 2 and COD , as for me I'll go with Zelda as my most anticipated I know theres more of my brother gen Z than there are of millenials like us in gaming over all. but yeah What's your guys pick? Also Generation X people love Western RPG and Deep  Story looks at Grim Fandango at Tim Schaffer PC stories in early 90's when I was a 7 year old in 1995 I kinda understood deep stories.

I think a lot of the negativity is that, upon close inspection, you can easily see how TGA is another media-run circle jerk. The nominees are only chosen by gaming media outlets, and when picking the GOTY, only 10% of the public votes count towards it, and they don't even tell you the weight. For all I know, it's "10%" but actually closer to zero percent if there are enough media outlet votes on a particular game and they just pick something for that easy upset and farm the drama for advertiser clicks/money.

Thus, it all just feels like another "sham" celebration because the focus is drawing in advertiser dollars through creating "upsets" and "gotcha, you didn't see THAT coming!" moves to drive traffic. The use of celebrities, at least to me, has always looked more like a desperate move to be "on par" with other entertainment industry award shows. You know, like an attempt to "fit in", so it's always been a weird facet, too.

Well what do you want? Just a mess of gamers trying to come together and arrange an award show? That would be a shitstorm. We cant even agree on what gen some consoles are in. Its just a show to highlight some of the great games that release each year. Dont take it so seriously. If gamers picked the winners, then whatever was the big game that year would win. Smaller games and Indies would have no chance.

Because the celebration itself is sullied by the brazen commercialism coursing through its veins.  It's tough to strip away that sensation with these factors in play:

1. More mindshare spent towards the "50+ games" said to either be announced or showing off new trailers, compared to the diminished time spent on '22 nominees and their qualities.
2. Not allowing the year to finish before awarding your "Game of the Year" in service to signaling holiday shoppers.
3. Aggressively cutting to marketing at any opportunity.

It's tough to disregard that unless fundamental changes are made.  And this coming from a guy who thought it was really cool when It Takes Two netted the gold.  

Yep, even then, those said announcements might pan out not being much to general audience watching this show.

Though, part of the distaste I've got for it personally is it's entertainment value overall.

If anyone recalls last year show, not only was it paced horribly between the diverse, the awards sections that were given next to no screentime or due celebration on stage, underwhelming "World Premiere" announcements, etc ... but most were also kinda floored but how much ads were included in the run time. 

If I remember the show lasted for about more than 2 n' half  but I can tell you it felt agonizingly worse in length.

In trying to chase, the Oscar-esque hollywoodian format of these awards type shows, I think the TGA's lost a lot of it's early amateurish spirit that was just plain more interesting to look at. 

I have never watched these awards. I just hate how they are trying to act like they are the Oscars or the Emmys for video games. You don't get to just call yourself that important.

They don’t call themselves any of that. But they are indeed the most important (by popularity and general people’s awareness) among the industry.

Seem like some of you people just look for things to dislike about everything no matter what.

Why would you pick a purposely polar opposite idea as my implication?  Who said I would just want a "gamer"-run show lol...  I literally already say that most user reviews lack the proper granularity to even be accurate, so I'm keenly aware.

When you say "we", I think you're just referring to the media.  Me and most people in gaming consider the XSX and PS5 as "current" gen, it's only marketing people at corporations that keep calling it "next" gen in an attempt to continue building marketing hype.

Having said that, the problem really is that it was marketed to us as "a celebration of gaming" and like it was really for "us", the "gamers".  As one can see, it's really anything but...  Of course, one might then ask, "well what do YOU suggest?!".

That's actually rather easy: for one, there should be a clearer designation of weight of user votes, and an increase in percentage (maybe 20-25%?).  Additionally, all the "media outlet" personnel that chose the nominees should be also outlined/named/listed.  Furthermore, they should probably set different standards for media outlets they allow to choose nominees, or at least create a sort of representative limitation.  Did four people from IGN pick nominees, and only two people from Eurogamer?  Is it one person elected per media outlet?  These sort of things help adjust media representation, and allow us to look closer at the breadth of the media representation for GOTY.  This also factors into the math of their supposed "10%" user vote: if four people from IGN picked God of War, and there were 10,000 votes out of 200,000, how does that pan out?  See, it's missing too much information to tell me wtf that 10% even does.  Four media personnel out of, what, 100?  The moment you bring in percentages, it no longer becomes a simple count of how many votes.  There's many pieces missing here, and that's likely on purpose because as I said before: they want to draw traffic to drive advertiser-friendly algorithms.  This way, they can look at the numbers and fudge things without us knowing and just pick whatever creates discussion.  And so far, that seems to be why they always put some indie game or other lesser known game in there because it gets people talking like "wtf why is that cat game in there" and to draw in people who love rooting for the underdog.  This also leans into your discussion stating indie/small games would never have a chance: that's not true at all.  Stray being less popular wouldn't count it out from winning, it would simply mean it would need to be an even better game to win it rather than "haha PLOT TWIST" GOTY stuff.

Then you've got the advertiser-heavy method of making the show profitable (or least not a monetary loss), only to spend that on celebrities.  Throwing money at things does not always make it better, and in fact it often dehumanizes it.  The show lacks intimacy, it does NOT feel like a celebration of gaming, it feels like a massive marketing ploy, or as I mentioned above, a media circle-jerk.

Now, when you say I shouldn't take it so seriously, I clearly don't.  The thing is, I would LIKE to.  It's hard to invest my time in an awards show that is just one big fucking commercial lmao