For the past 10 years, The Game Awards has struggled to perfect its secret formula. Geoff Keighley’s annual gala has always tried to blend a traditional awards show like the Oscars with an E3 press conference. That’s historically led to mixed results. Last year’s show was especially a low point for the experiment, as award recipients were rushed off stage as quickly as possible in order to squeeze in a deluge of exhausting gameplay trailers. As I left Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater last year, I feared that it was all downhill from here.

I walked away from this year’s ceremony singing a very different tune. Keighley delivered what might have been the best stage show he’s organized since he became gaming’s go-to event planner. The show delivered non-truncated speeches, dazzling musical performances, and some genuinely show-stopping game reveals. It was an event constructed to prove that The Game Awards will be here for another 10 years, whether you like it or not.

Don’t wrap it up

It was hard to gauge just how successful this year’s ceremony would be heading into it, as the build-up was dotted with pain points. Some were par for the course, like a predictable nominee field that featured puzzling exclusions in categories like Best Mobile Game and Best Sports/Racing Game. Others felt like long-standing problems with the show’s format reaching a boiling point. That could be seen in this year’s Players’ Choice race, the show’s fan-voted category. After a few rounds of elimination-style voting, the final five included three free-to-play gacha titles. That list included Genshin Impact, a game that has a history of incentivizing players to vote by dangling in-game rewards in front of them, something that’s seemingly become standard practice for games like it. It was hard to shake the feeling that the awards part of the show was in some way compromised and that Keighley didn’t see that as much of a concern.

The more troubling sign actually came from what awards weren’t present at all. This year, The Game Awards quietly cut its annual Future Class awards, which previously honored “inspiring individuals who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games.” No formal reason was given for why the category was cut, but its timing raised questions. It came one year after previous Future Class winners urged Keighley to address Israel’s war on Palestine at last year’s ceremony — a request that fell on deaf ears. The cut was also notable considering that 2024 marked a rise in online vitriol and harassment aimed at the idea of diversity in gaming. On a surface read, Future Class’ absence felt like Keighley trying to cut all controversy out of the show to placate even the worst actors in his massive audience.

All of this didn’t leave too much room for optimism heading into Thursday’s broadcast. The Game Awards’ biggest problem has always been its inability to adequately respond to feedback. When criticism over its lack of time given to awards reached a fever pitch in 2022, the following year’s ceremony infamously responded by playing speakers off stage even faster with a “please wrap it up” message that’s since become a meme.

And yet, 2024’s ceremony seemed to indicate that Keighley is listening. The nearly four-hour-long show felt like a course correction, addressing several complaints without shaking up the format too much. That started with the actual awards. Unlike last year, all winners got ample time to talk. The dreaded “wrap it up” sign did not trigger at any point during the show. The ceremony felt more human for it, as emotional speeches from the creators behind both Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth made for touching show highlights.

That feeling was present throughout the show. While previous years have been hyper focused on shocking trailers to generate watercooler moments, Keighley accepted something that ceremonies like the Oscars have long known: a good speech can be a viral moment. You could see that when Larian Studios’ CEO Swen Vincke gave an impassioned speech to present this year’s Game of the Year award. The moment, in which Vincke took the gaming industry to task on a number of topics like mass layoffs, generated one of the night’s loudest ovations. It was the kind of memorable moment that defines awards shows for decades, and something that The Game Awards has always hesitated to deliver.

Several of the show’s best moments followed that pattern. Keighley has long been criticized for failing to use his platform to acknowledge labor issues in the video game industry. This year, he confronted that feedback head on in a segment where he transparently admitted that the show hasn’t been able to figure out the right way to approach it. This year’s solution was a newly established Game Changer award, which was presented to Amir Satvat. He was honored for his efforts to help laid off developers find work via a resource that aggregates open jobs. Satvat received a standing ovation as he accepted the award and delivered the most moving speech in the show’s 10-year history.

These are the legitimizing moments the show has desperately needed more of. The ceremony has long been too hyper-focused on keeping fans entertained, but at its heart, it’s a show built to honor the people who make games, not play them. By actually letting those voices express anger, joy, and optimism directly to their peers, it felt closer to a proper awards show.

Still, there’s more work to do. The show still routinely rattled off the majority of winners in lightning rounds squeezed between long blocks of trailers and advertisements. Awards like Innovation in Accessibility were quickly handed out on the pre-show rather than getting a spotlight on the main stage. Very little of the show’s runtime was dedicated to awards at all, which has always been the show’s biggest problem. That remains frustrating, but this year gave hope that we’re moving in the right direction.

Going big

Despite giving more time to creators, Keighley’s No. 1 priority was still spectacle. The show’s production was more lavish than ever, with confetti, pyrotechnics, and elaborate stage performances. While the show’s over-the-top nature can be eye-rolling, the 2024 ceremony largely got it right. That was thanks in part to tasteful musical interludes that gave the show boost of energy in its dry spells. A choir appeared on stage to lead a performance of a song from the upcoming Civilization VII. Netflix went all out to promote Arcane with an impassioned performance that included an appearance by Twenty One Pilots. And of course, the Game Awards Orchestra stole the show with its annual medley of music from each Game of the Year nominee.

Hollywood celebrities were still part of the mix too, though with mixed results. A shocking appearance from Harrison Ford got the crowd on its feet early on and The Muppets’ Statler and Waldorf got big laughs for their scattered roast segments. Other segments dragged on too long, like an extended comedy segment from Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey that was likely longer than any acceptance speech of the night. And others felt like distractions that were too loosely connected to video games. Snoop Dogg took the stage to play a new song and break out his classic Gin and Juice, but that served almost exclusively as a promo for his new album (Keighley tried his best to loosely connect it to Fortnite after, unconvincingly). While fun, these moments felt increasingly unnecessary considering that most of the biggest reactions of the night came from the crowd cheering for games like Helldivers 2. The games themselves are celebrities for this audience.

That was especially apparent in this year’s selection of trailers, the show’s bread and butter. Much has been said about whether The Game Awards is anything more than a string of commercials. I won’t reheat the debate because you likely know where you stand on it by now. What I will say is that if Keighley is committed to making his show a money-making ad reel above all else, he made his best case ever for that approach this year. This year’s selection was a constant string of surprises, from the pre-show to the final “one more thing.”

The Witcher IV got a thrilling cinematic trailer that got the crowd screaming early. That was followed by a shocking Elden Ring multiplayer spinoff. For most of the show, the hits kept coming, as little about the lineup leaked in advance. We saw revivals of classic franchises like Onimusha and Okami. Naughty Dog, Ryu Ga Gotoku, and Hazelight revealed entirely new IPs that were cheered for as if they were major sequels. Even ongoing games like Helldivers 2 and Tekken 8 put in the extra effort to make their new updates feel grand.

The ratio of exciting announcements meant to delight the audience versus ones that just had enough money to pay their way into the show felt much better than it did in 2023. Every year I’ve attended the show, there’s always inevitably a moment I’ve dubbed “trash time” where I catch up on social media for a while inside the Peacock Theater as long trailers for gacha game updates play in a marathon. That trash time was significantly shorter this year, with the show only hitting a slump in its third hour. There’s still room to curate, but the bulk of the reveals did feel like they were pulled together and spaced out with viewers in mind.

I’ve long been critical of The Game Awards and I still am to a great extent. There is a real disconnect between watching developers advocate for a more stable industry where art is valued in the same breath as a potentially AI-ridden trailer for a game that was able to pay its way onto the broadcast. This is still a show that sells ad space to the highest bidder at the expense of the developers it’s there to honor.

But over the years, I’ve come to accept what the Game Awards is actually trying to do more and more. As I’ve written before, it’s not the Oscars of video games, as so often advertised; it’s the MTV Movie Awards. It’s a playful show built to honor a year of great games, set up what’s coming next, and create watercooler moments. It’s a social event more than an awards show, occupying the same space as an E3 press conference. That’s not easy to pull off in a three-hour show. The Game Awards format falls apart any time there’s dead space (not the good kind) that’s only getting applause from ad executives up in the Peacock theater’s box seats.

Judging by the engaged crowd, almost every segment of this year’s show felt like it was for somebody. Flawed as the construction of the show will always be, this year’s production is the best possible version of it we’ve seen yet.