An "embarrassing indictment": developers decry last nights The Game Awards ceremony

rockpapershotgun.com:

Last night, Geoff Keighley revealed dozens of trailers for upcoming video games, and interviewed some of his favourite celebrites and best palss from the games industry on stage. He also happened to hand out some awards to game developers. At his awards show. Titled The Game Awards.

Keighley's show has always been a showcase first and a celebration second, but this year the gulf between the show's name and function seemed egregiously wide. Numerous developers had their award speeches unceremoniously interrupted by a glaring autocue reading "Please wrap it up", to make way for the next trailer or ad spot, while the recipients of the awards were often given less airtime than more prominent developers plugging their games, or celebrities wheeled out to present the awards, or even an actual muppet.

Alice has the full rundown on the needless farce of it all, but it isn't just us cynical journalists who could smell something off. Several developers have recoiled at the show's naked corporatism and disrespect for the craft. None more so than Josh Sawyer, director of the brilliant narrative mystery Pentiment. Airing his thoughts on X, Sawyer wrote. "This year’s The Game Awards is an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it’s supposedly honoring."

Sawyer wasn't the only developer who felt this year's ceremony was dismissive of the developers it was allegedly created to celebrate. Replying to Sawyer's tweet, Frontier's senior tech writer Mags Donaldson highlighted a particularly grim example of what Sawyer was talking about. "Neil Newbon being told to wrap it up while talking about how his role has helped sexual assault survivors feel