Winter Of Content

A rush of December events ensures one of gaming’s greatest years goes out with a bang.

- Geoff Keighley

While we might have phrased it differently, you have to admit Josef Fares has a point. The director of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons and the forthcoming A Way Out gave December’s The Game Awards what UK viewers of a certain age might describe as its Jarvis Cocker moment – the bit where a guest goes wildly off script and ends up stealing the show. Host, and event organiser, Geoff Keighley’s face was a picture when, during a lighthearted interview about Fares’ EA-published adventure, his guest turned to him and asked, “Can I swear here?” After Keighley gave him the nod, Fares turned to the camera and shouted, “Fuck the Oscars!” And again, and again, and again, his middle finger extending as he somehow became even more animated.

Fares is, by his own admission, “passionate”. But this was something closer to lunacy, and by the end it was all a laughing Keighley could do to get him off the air. By then he’d also issued a halfhearted apology on behalf of EA (“All publishers fuck up sometimes”) which must have gone over well at the publisher’s Redwood Shores HQ. Still, it was hard to disagree with Fares too strongly about an event that goes from strength to strength every year. The Game Awards managed something no other game-awards show has ever managed: it felt prestigious.