The host of the 2023 Game Awards, Geoff Keighley, traversing a side-plot with historically known video game fan, Gonzo the Muppet. Except I lied and he has no connection to video games whatsoever. | Image Credits: The Game Awards

The Game Awards is an annual event that serves to honor the work of various luminaries in the gaming industry and unveil upcoming releases. The ceremony itself appears as extravagant as the Golden Globe Awards (save for the fact it’s streamed live on YouTube) and is arguably the only commencement whose advertisements are now more self-honored than the awards it disseminates.

Among the myriad of nominees, four games claimed the competition’s main stage due to their outstanding popularity this year: Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3), The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The overwhelming hype generated by these games resulted in this year’s ceremony becoming the most streamed in its decade-long history.

The crowd of millions was filled with a degree of anticipation that only increased with each successive award presentation. Evidently, The Game Awards (TGA) were just as anxious as announcers began resorting to near-rap performances of the winners’ names squeezed between ad breaks and celebrity appearances. Regardless, they reserved the announcement of the Game of the Year award — the paramount honor TGA offers and the most climactic portion of the event — for the last four minutes of the 3-hour act.

While overcoming the whiplash of being informed that actor Timothée Chalamet would be presenting the most momentous gaming award of the year, fans were dealt another blow when the letter “B” left his mouth.

The scene that followed completely replaced the craving I had had for the horror genre this year as I learned there was nothing more intimidating than a gaggle of armored, Belgian men slowly approaching a stage while the most ominous  medieval music ever composed reverberated throughout the building.

However, chaos wasn’t isolated to the main stage. There was an outcry to BG3’s winning of the Game of the Year award — fans of Alan Wake 2 were heartbroken that their narrative horror masterpiece had lost, Spider-Man lovers couldn’t believe that their console exclusive was rolled by a “glorified mobile game” available cross-platform weeks after release and Zelda enthusiasts were unsurprisingly just happy to be there.

BG3’s complete domination of the Game Awards, with its nine nominations and six wins, encouraged unfamiliar gamers to investigate the game and answer the vital question, “Does Baldur’s Gate 3 deserve Game of the Year?” I’ve gone to great lengths to answer that question for them:

Yes.

In the past few years, I haven’t come across a single player/campaign-central game that wholly captivated me; the last time I grew an obsession with a game was for Dying Light, though that changed in late 2023 when I was recommended Baldur’s Gate 3.

Between senior year stress and university applications, the world of Faerûn became a haven for me as I could sit down and lose myself in arguably (and trust me, I’m arguing) the most thoroughly written universe in gaming history. Like Dungeons and Dragons, you have no limitations in your behavior, but the game still manages to predict and construct a linear story using your minute decisions as a foundation.

This is the peak of “choice matters” games because every decision could potentially lead to plot-diverging expansions: that book you picked up in some rank shed? Congratulations, you’re cursed permanently. That dialogue you chose offhandedly while speaking to a flesh-eating goblin? Well, your companion didn’t approve of your subtle racism and has walked out of your life permanently. That quest you decided to skip because it looked kinda hard? Sadly, that was the only quest related to some borderline insane NPC that you’ll regret passing enough to start a new 70-hour campaign.

BG3 should be a welcome change to the gaming industry, not because it’s reinventing the wheel, but because it’s going in the opposite direction. BG3 and what it stands for is a step towards reverting games to what they once were: Escapes. Games were once projects formed at the precipice of passion, with characters you could cry over, bosses you could bang your desk in frustration over, and endings you certainly lied awake at night pondering.

Now, in 2023, to play video games is to be a money masochist.

Modern games force you to dedicate hours of your life for competitive development or utilize online purchases and glorified gambling to raise brief dopamine hits, whereas older games celebrate progression, completion and its players. Players are now seen as customers as opposed to admirers, and games are no longer pieces of art but goods to be sold.

Sadly, the Game Awards reflects that sentiment with its inclusion of celebrities who don’t have any footing in the gaming community and its noticeable absence of genuine appreciation for its nominees.

None of the award winners were afforded ample time to express heartfelt sentiments as they were hurriedly cut off by hosts’ insistence to “wrap it up,” so they could make space for Anthony Mackie to gesticulate at the audience and yell about his Peacock series. A majority of the nominees were left with simply a brief mention of their accomplishment, then quickly overshadowed by names like Simu Liu, Matthew McConaughey and the Muppets. The showcasing of these celebrities only served to make TGA unnecessarily more marketable.

However, that’s not to say performers should be completely absent from TGA. The highlights of the show for me were the expositions by the Old Gods of Asgard/Poets of the Fall and Heilung.

Seeing Sam Lake, the creative director of the studio behind Alan Wake 2, smile like he was at his firstborn’s birth whilst ominous, masked men twirled around him whimsically healed something deep within me. Hearing Heilung as an appetizer to the gorgeously cinematic Hellblade II trailer evoked a certain Celtic sensation I dare not attempt to describe.

Despite oscillating between elegance and painful cringeworthiness, there was nothing more fitting than these two exhibitions and it was a welcome respite, but my pleasure was short-lived (like a Game Awards speech). The show quickly moved back into its advertisement section and I felt an overwhelming sense of deprivation once again.

The Game Awards no longer cares for the games it’s nominating — and I find it difficult to care just the same. The 2023 Game Awards was nothing more than a billboard, just a gargantuan advertisement with a celebrity’s celebrities’ faces plastered onto it.