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[JeremyEtcetera]

At first I wasn't going to make a thread about this, however looking back on it this award show bothered me. No, this isn't necessarily about the winners and congratulations to them. It is more about the nominees and lack thereof. Year by year I keep watching the TGAs, noticing how it changes for the better and for the worse and this year I don't think they did a good job with nominees. Something needs to change, whether it is the panel or whether there is something going on behind scenes that is influencing this event.

-First issue is the repeat of nominees over multiple awards. This isn't too big of an issue as it happens with movie awards as well, however this year I felt like the second half of the award show was centered around these games: Uncharted 4, Doom, Inside, Firewatch, Overwatch. Each one, very predictably, won an award in a category so we can end up with an 'everyone wins' situation. However, who's fault is it that these 5 games ended up taking over the second half of the show? Is it the panel who voted for these games? How many other games did they play this year? Was this a bad year for games that only these 5 games were the go-to votes for all of those categories?

G-phoria(sans 2009) had much more variety in their lists and actually introduced people to games they've never heard of before because they were the best in their genre that the panel actually played agreed more people should have heard of them.

-Second issue is the lack of Japanese games/certain Indie games. Why was a game from 2015 and a game from 2014 on the list of best RPG? Why was the only 2016 Jrpg on there Dark Souls 3, which is admittedly the most western-oriented Jrpg? Where were the indie rpgs? Even worse, the fighting game nominations. Only 4 nominations and one of them is a seasonal update for a game that came out years ago. For some odd reason, all anime influenced fighting games were omitted from the list and yet any of them could have been nominees, especially Nitroplus Blasterz as Austin Walker mentioned. What is even more odd is that the game to win that nomination was a questionable release with extremely bad reviews that left a bad impression on people for most of the year. It looks really suspect.

G-phoria was not shy about this and gave out awards to games such as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball(1 and 2), Katamari Damacy, and Shadow of the Colossus. There's very little chance you'd see awards like those on TGAs.

-Third issue is the omission of certain genres(probably because once again, whatever panel they had probably didn't play enough games in that genre). Stealth genre was shoved into 'Action/Adventure' and once again the racing genre, which had some good releases this year, was shoved into racing/sports. Dragon Quest Builders and Rachet and Clank(single player titles) shoved into the 'Best Family Game' award. Why? No really, why? Once again, there were enough releases in these genres. Who's fault is this that this happened?

G-phoria actually had too many categories and genre awards compared to TGAs. A middle ground would be good.

Now, not all of the award show was bad. The winners and nominees did feel very filtered and safe but I do like that they brought up more fan awards(like fan creation award). I also like that they didn't just show trailers for all AAA properties and gave other games a spotlight. I was afraid they'd reel it back to AAAs only after the No Man's Sky fiasco. I guess my bottom line is that I feel like either their panel needs a shake-up or their panel needs to grow in size. Too much of a predictable show makes it boring, and you can't tell me that those games were the only good games in their categories. That just shows to me that the panel played even less games this year. Worst case scenario is that some of these awards and nominees were paid for by sponsors, but I'm really hoping that is not the case.

G-phoria actually felt loose and unfiltered up until its final 2 years and that's what made it the better award show to me. You could tell that the nominees and awards were passionate picks and not intentionally made to be a safe list including games from a year or more ago.

Tell me what you all think.

 

[Nairume]

-Second issue is the lack of Japanese games/certain Indie games. Why was a game from 2015 and a game from 2014 on the list of best RPG? Why was the only Jrpg on there Dark Souls 3, which is admittedly the most western-oriented Jrpg?

Xenoblade (the other JRPG on the list) was nominated despite being released last year because it came out after the cutoff point last year (it actually got released in the US the day after the show, if I'm not mistaken) and was thus rolled over to this year.

Chances are FF15 will end up on the list next year for the same reason.

 

[JeremyEtcetera]

Xenoblade (the other JRPG on the list) was nominated despite being released last year because it came out after the cutoff point last year and was thus rolled over to this year.

Chances are FF15 will end up on the list next year for the same reason.

This is reasonable and makes sense, however 2 expansions showing up on the list still didn't make sense to me, especially considering the category description.

 

[Earthpainting]

I usually interpret most of the nominations as "games from people who could potentially show up to the show." I'm probably just a bit out of touch with their scene though.

I do agree with the points in the OP though. It is a little boring to see the same few games being overrepresented. It makes the scope of the nominations feel narrow. Like most awards though, it is probably driven by popular votes by judges who simply have not played enough. Name recognition will end up doing more than the quality itself. For instance we had Nolan North winning the best performance of the year award, when I'm not even sure he would be in my top three of best performances in that very game. He is the easiest pick through name recognition though, so even people who don't remember the individual performances too well or didn't play the game at all, are most likely going to cast their vote towards him.

The second point for a representation of indies and Japanese games is probably the root of my first paragraph. Even when the picks are there, they still feel a bit like after-thoughts. In the three years I've seen the awards, I just don't feel a lot of passion towards these types of games. It probably in some ways contributes to the issue from the first point.

The third point feels like a symptom of the other two. Genres are probably grouped together based on what type of games the panel has played, or the level they care about these things. Increasing the size of their panel will probably alleviate a lot of these issues, but I doubt a hipster such as myself will ever be pleased. I practically rate games based on the quality of in-game hugs and the coolness of game birds.

 

[JeremyEtcetera]

Thanks for the feedback earthpainting. I do agree with your following two points: The first point people who could show up were the main ones nominated. That might help explain a few things but I feel that if they used video with subtitles to showcase Zelda, they could have used the same for developers from other countries who couldn't show up. The second point that name recognition stands out holds true. TGAs could easily be a show(if they wanted it to be) to show some games people have never heard of before. I have friends who look at academy awards and the Oscars and they end up finding new great films to watch after seeing movies they never heard of win awards. Not many people watching the game awards will discover titles they might have missed except for a couple categories.