Geoff Keighley, host of many major industry gaming events including the upcoming The Game Awards, has taken to Twitch for a live Q&A where a number of questions around this year’s event were answered and the host revealed some interesting insights into what fans can expect from the 2023 show.
One question from a viewer asked how many World Premieres we’ll see this year, to which Keighley revealed the number itself will likely be around the same as usual, but also hinted at the World Premiere branding being done. “I don’t know, I haven’t counted, honestly. I think around the same, but I don’t know… also, what is a world premiere?”
“Actually, you’ll see this year, we often put up those cards, ‘World premiere, World premiere.’ We’re kind of moving away from that, just because everything’s kind of – is it a first look? Is it an announcement? Etc. So we just treat it all as great game content.”
“We’ll definitely have announcements of games coming in the future,” the host confirmed while revealing that this year’s show will have a lot of new and “unexpected” games from new teams and IP, and pointing out that this year’s Game of the Year finalists are all from established properties, stressing that he hopes to see that trend change in the coming years.
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Elsewhere, Keighley addressed one of the bigger points of contention – the inclusion of MintRocket’s Dave the Diver in the Best Indie Game category, which caused a stir given the game’s publisher is NEXON, a multi-billion dollar company.
“Independent can mean different things to different people, and it’s sort of a broad term,” the host suggested.
“You could argue, does independent mean the budget of the game, does independent mean where the source of financing was, does it mean the team size? Is it the independent spirit of the game, meaning a smaller game that’s sort of different?
“That game [Dave the Diver] is made by a group named MintRocket, it’s a smaller game from a smaller group but it’s part of NEXON. They’re employees of NEXON which is a very large publisher. So I think it’s a fair debate and discussion. Is that game truly independent, or is it not?”
“And you can kind of argue it either way. It’s independent in spirit, and it’s a small game. I don’t know what the budget is but it’s probably a relatively small budget game, but it is from a larger entity, whereas there are other games on that list that are from much smaller studios. But even something like Dredge is published by Team17, so is that independent or not, because you have a publisher?
“It’s a really complicated thing to figure out and come up with strict rules around it, so we let people use their best judgement, and you can agree or disagree with the choices, but the fact that Dave the Diver was on that list meant that out of all the independent games that the jury looked at – or what they thought were independent games – that was one of the top five that they looked at this year.”
Big Geoff also let fans know that stage security at this year’s The Game Awards will be tighter, following last year’s unfortunate stage invader who interrupted FromSoftware’s Game of the Year win for Elden Ring with a bizarre rant about Bill Clinton.
The TGA Q&A with Geoff Keighley is still available to watch in full in the VOD right here, if you’re interested.
The Game Awards is streaming on Friday, December 8th. You can find out more including when and where to watch it in Australia right here.
