The Game Awards 2017 Winners and Losers
So Thursday night The Game Awards happened. Trophies were handed out and corporate sponsors made lots of money.
Every year Geoff Keighley proves why he’s the most likable guy the big wigs in the game industry could ever hope to know by hosting an awards ceremony celebrating the best and brightest that the industry wants us to buy lootboxes for. Since success and failure is a completely binary as a game is completely binary with zero middle ground that can only be measured by the number of trophies a game developer has, here is my list of the 100% definitive factual winners and losers from The Game Awards.
WINNER: Nintendo
With the amount of free press given to Nintendo last night, you would think that the organizers of the awards show wanted to ask Nintendo out on a date. Taking home awards in six of the thirteen categories they were nominated in (including Breath of the Wild winning game of the year which is totally the only thing that matters) and The Game Awards getting to exclusively break the exclusive news exclusively that Bayonetta 1 and 2 are coming to the Switch and that Bayonetta 3 is coming soon, it’s clear that Nintendo are BACK even though there was never any evidence that they planned on going away BUT THEY’RE BACK! And anyone who disagrees is a hater with no life who needs to shut up!
I really hope The Game Awards get that date with Nintendo, I totally ship Keighley and Miyamoto.
LOSER: Sony and Microsoft
Did you read what I just wrote? NINTENDO’S BACK!! Everyone else might as well just quit video games because clearly Zelda is the pinnacle of video games and nothing else will ever be able to best it. Sony and Microsoft should just stop trying. They should just throw in the towel because Nintendo is simply the best at video games.
WINNER: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
There’s not really a joke here. It’s just a really good game by a team without the backing of a major publisher that still looks, sounds, and plays like it had all the money in the universe thrown at it. There’s nothing really to joke about here.
Wait, it was a PlayStation 4 exclusive?
LOSER: Nintendo
Clearly the kiddie game company still has a lot to catch up on if it’s going to compete with the big boys like Sony. Sony had the balls to release Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a real game with real emotions about real things and stuff. Nintendo just makes Mario and Zelda. Those don’t look realistic, and they’re not even playable in 1440p like Hellblade is on PS4 Pro.
WINNER: Trailers
There were lots of them. Some very straightforward, like upcoming first-person shooter GTFO and upcoming fighter from Namco-Bandai Soul Calibur VI. Some were more bizarre, like the new game from From Software (heavily speculated to be a Bloodborne sequel). And then, well…
LOSER: Anyone Hoping For Any Actual Information About Death Stranding
At least Hideo Kojima hasn’t decided to stop being weird since leaving Konami. So far Death Stranding has had three trailers now and each one has made less sense than the last one. The only thing I, or likely anyone else, can say for 100% certain about the game is that Norman Reedus is definitely in it, co-starring alongside the color grey.
WINNER: eSports Player “Faker”
SSG can’t take this from him at least.
LOSER: The Schick Hydrobot
The breakout star of 2016’s Game Awards was of course corporate mascot extraordinaire the Schick Hydrobot, capable of saving men of all varieties from the evil malice of poorly groomed facial hair.
Unfortunately, our corporate savior was nowhere to be seen at the 2017 Game Awards. But someone else was. Someone quite special.
OVERALL WINNER OF ALL THINGS: Josef Fares
There are no words to describe the beauty and grace of the eloquent speech developer Josef Fares before showing off the trailer for this new game A Way Out. The way he exclaimed “fuck the Oscars” and stammered his way through the rest of his spiel about nothing in particular was breathtaking. Clearly, Fares is a passionate man, as evidenced by the multiple times that he proclaimed as much, and that passion was evidenced when he declared “if the whole world (said my) game is shit, I’ll tell them ‘no.’” His oratorical manifesto was sadly cut short to air the trailer for his game just as he was going off on a tangent about how even if he were to become part of a “triple-A” developer, his game would still be his game or something to that extent — it’s hard to extrapolate just what he was saying because true genius can only be understood by his intellectual peers, which sadly I am not. No matter who took home what trophy, Josef Fares truly won the night.
