Oops! All Awards

Thank you to everyone who voted this year! A new Scion of Light has been observed opening up an additional level to the artifact!

Another year of game awards down, another night of a lot to take in! The evening was filled with fantastic guests, surprise announcements, laughs, premiers, and a whole lot of ads. There was truly so much to digest when it came to releases and sneak peaks, so I’m aiming to make it a bit easier to go through it all by splitting the coverage. This article will cover the live performances during the awards and the winners, with links to the clips of each winner so you can see your favorites win if you aren’t feeling up for sifting through the footage. 

In the thirty minute “Opening Act” Sydnee Goodman warmly greeted everyone with a smile and went straight into announcing some of the awards. Goodman announced the awards for the next half hour.

Best Family Game - Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

Doug Bowser accepted the award on behalf of Nintendo and got a bit of a laugh from the audience as he mentioned Bowser the character-it’s hard to resist when the joke is right in front of you. 

Innovation In Accessibility - Forza Motorsport (Turn 10 Studios/ Xbox Game Studios)

Accepted by Neha Chintala and Katrin Hilman. Hilman left us with an important reflection for the category; “The real winners are the players that have so many great games to play.” 

Announced on screen 

Best Esports Athlete - Faker

Best Esports Coach - Potter

Best Esports Event - 2023 League of Legends World Championship

Best Esports Game - Valorant

Best Esports Team - JD Gaming
 

Content Creator of the Year - Ironmouse

Since Ironmouse is animated, she sent in a video to roll for her acceptance thanks.
 

With that, the pre-show was over and The Game Awards had officially started. Geoff Keighley starts off the evening with a quick intro speech about how immersive and powerful games are as a medium and gives a quick shoutout to Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi in the audience for Zelda’s Breath of the Wild win in 2017, Mark Cerny Playstation's Lead System Architect celebrating 25 years of Cerny Games, the team from Pizza Tower, Melina Jurgens winner of Best Performance in 2017, and Ryozo Tsujimoto and Haru Tsujimoto celebrating 40 years of Capcom and GOTY nomination for Resident Evil. 
 

Best Performance - Neil Newbon for his role of Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3

Christopher Judge (Kratos, and the guy that made an 8 minute speech at the awards last year.) Handed the award off after a few quick quips around his record speech time. Newbon graciously thanked his fellow actors, the voters, the nominees, his family (in Spanish), Swen, Larian, Steven Rooney (the writer of Astarion), PitStop Productions, and agents before he quickly made a powerful statement about players feeling heard and represented by the game when they felt alone and brought them together to have something to push them through. Newbon closed with a line from Astarion, “You’re not alone in this, none of us are.” While the statement was unfortunately rushed by the swell of theme music, the sentiment encapsulates the reason games are so powerful.
 

Best Narrative - Alan Wake (Remedy Entertainment)

The Creative Director of NetherRealm Studios, Ed Boon, handed the award over to Sam Lake, the Creative director of Remedy Entertainment. Boon made sure to thank the whole narrative team, the directors working with actors, actors, and the song makers for Alan Wake. Boon ended with starting that he wanted to “push things further” and “take a risk” and that he would “treasure this always.”

Gonzo from the Muppets made an appearance for some almost mid-show comedy entertainment. 
Gonzo, dressed as Geoff Keighley, pulled out a board featuring Camilla the chicken and talked about his love for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The two then began running around on and off camera as Keighley introduced the nominees for Best Debut Indie.
 

Best Debut Indie - Cocoon (Geometric Interactive)

Lisa Aquilino and Evan Icenbice accepted the award accepted the award for both the team from Geometric and Annapurna Interactive. They thanked the team at Geometric for being a wonderful partner on the game, and said that the team sends their thanks even though they couldn’t make it to the awards. 

Announced on screen.

Best Action Game - Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Best Art Direction - Alan Wake 2

Best AR/VR - Resident Evil Village VR Mode

Best Mobile Game - Honkai: Star Rail
 

Best Audio Design - Hi-Fi Rush

Grammy award winning producer, Zedd, handed the award to Shuichi Kobori and John Johanas. Kobori said his thank you in english before switching to his native language and Johanas translated, thanking family, friends, partners, pets, Bethesda Zenimax, Microsoft, the players, and the team at Tango.

Games for Impact - Tchia 

The creative Director for the category winner last year, “‘As Dust Falls,” Caroline Marchal presented the award to gaming industry veteran Shuhei Yoshida who accepted the award on behalf of Awaceb and Kepler Interactive. Yoshida thanked Acaceb for their trust and talent and Kepler and Sony for believing in the project and the population of New Caledonia, who championed the game all along. 
 

Announced on screen.

Best Score and Music - Final Fantasy XVI (Square Enix)

Best Independent Game - Sea of Stars (Sabotage Studio)

Best Community Support - Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Best Fighting Game - Street Fighter 6 (Capcom)

Most Anticipated Game - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix)
 

Best Ongoing Game - Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projeck Red) 

After playfully engaging the crowd, Anthony Mackie presented Gabriel Amatangelo and Paweł Sasko with the award. Amatangelo shouted out ‘the tenacity and resilience of the team’ and accepted it on half of hundreds of people who have put their hearts and souls into the game. Sasko thanked the amazing players for the support and feedback throughout the journey.

The next live event was a performance of the song "Herald of Darkness" from Alan Wake 2 performed by Poets of the Fall. Ilkka Villi (Alan Wake)  was featured in the middle of a group of dancers acting out some of the lyrics and rhythmically dancing along as Matthew Porretta (voice of Alan Wake) stood off to the side to lend his voice to the performance alongside David Harewood (Mr. Door.) For a nice little surprise at the end, Sam Lake hopped up on stage with exuberance and a big smile to dance with everyone as a finale. 

Best Adaptation - The Last of Us

Some of the live-action cast of Fallout, Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, and Aaron Moten as well as their “extra security” handed off the award to Neil Druckman and Asad Qizilbash. Druckman thanked his partner in crime, Craig Maizen, the fans, HBO, and the community. Qizilbash thanked Sony, and everyone at Playstation including the production team.
 

Best Action Adventure Game - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo)

Simu Liu presented the award to Eiji Aonuma who said his thanks in his native language. He thanked everyone on the development team for putting their all into the game and thanked the players who have made their own personal story within the game. 
 

Announced on screen.

Best RPG - Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Best SIM/Strategy - Pikmin 4 (Nintendo EPD) 

Best Sports/Racing - Forza Motorsport (Turn 10)

Best Multiplayer - Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Player’s Voice Award - Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Best Game Direction - Alan Wake 2 (Remedy Entertainment)

The incredible Vince Zampella introduced the category with a brief but inspiring bit that touched on how great game design is when chaos is harnessed into a cohesive expression. He presented the award to Sam Lake and Kyle Rowley who thanked Epic and the Remedy team. Lake left us with an inspiring quote “When more than a hundred people believe in the same vision and build something out of it, we can make miracles. We can make art, and we can become more than the sum of our parts. Our world today could use a bit more of that.” Rowley reminded us that on December 11th, the New Game Plus mode would be out. 
 

That brings us to the final award! The Game Awards Orchestra played songs from each of the nominated games: Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4, Marvel’s Spider Man 2. The orchestra played beautifully and a very passionate flute player, Pedro Eustache, put his all into the performance.
 

Game of the Year - Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Timothée Chalamet presented the award to Joa Chim, Jason Latino, Bert Van Semmertier, and Swen Vincke. Swen wore his famous suit of armor which subtly clinked around during his speech. He thanks the incredible team who spend their heart and souls on the game through difficult times and the families, friends, and partners that supported them. He dedicated the award to all those who where lost along the way, including their cinematic artist, Jim, who passed away last month. 
 

We’ve made it to the end! Thanks for hanging around for so long if you’ve made it this far. Hopefully this “speed run” of the awards show made it a bit easier to watch the awards you were especially interested in!