Trophy Hunters

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We are starting to understand why Sony is skipping E3 next year. Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards project is five years old now, and has grown in stature to a point where it rivals the world’s biggest videogame event for new announcements. Prior to this year’s event, the 2019 release calendar was looking a little sparse. Now Keighley has shown his hand, what looked like a troubling transitional year at the fag-end of a generation now appears to be a cracker. In half a decade Keighley has, in effect, built a December version of E3.

A key element to the show’s appeal is that it is platform-agnostic, so largely free of the marketing bluster that characterises a platform holder or big publisher’s E3 conference. And since it is also an awards show, it can be positioned as a celebration of games, past, present and future. This was presumably the thinking behind an opening address delivered by PlayStation’s Shawn Layden, Xbox’s Phil Spencer and Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aimé, all sharing a stage for the first time and taking turns to eulogise the medium and those who define and consume it. It was always going to be awkward, and it certainly was, as three millionaires took turns to say how great it is that people buy games. But you have to admire the intent – and the ability to make it happen.

Despite the name, the awards themselves are something of a sideshow for the majority of those viewing (in the interests of disclosure,