American video game awards
The Game Awards 2022 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2022. The event was hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of The Game Awards, and was held to an invited audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 8, 2022. The preshow ceremony was hosted by Sydnee Goodman. The event was live streamed across more than 40 digital platforms, alongside an additional IMAX experience. It featured musical performances from Halsey, Hozier, and Bear McCreary, and presentations from celebrity guests, including Reggie Fils-Aimé, Al Pacino, Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, and Ken and Roberta Williams. The show introduced a new Best Adaptation award for media adapted from video games.
"God of War Ragnarök" led the show with eleven nominations and six awards, winning Best Narrative and Best Action/Adventure Game, as well as Best Performance for Christopher Judge's performance as Kratos and Best Score and Music for composer McCreary. "Elden Ring" won Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, and Best Role Playing Game. Several games were announced during the show, including "Crash Team Rumble", "Death Stranding 2", and "Hades II". The event received media attention after an individual sneaked on stage and made a short speech towards the event's end. The show was viewed by over 103 million streams, the most in its history to date. Reviews for the ceremony were mixed, with praise for announcements and speeches but criticism directed at the focus on marketing over awards and lack of indie game representation.
Background.
As with previous iterations of The Game Awards, the 2022 show was hosted and produced by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley. He returned as an executive producer alongside Kimmie Kim, and Richard Preuss and LeRoy Bennett returned as director and creative director, respectively. Sydnee Goodman returned as host of the 30-minute preshow, rebranded as the Opening Act. The presentation took place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 8, 2022, and was live streamed across more than 40 online platforms and social media services, including Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as introducing Instagram Live worldwide and partnering with Tiki in India. For the first time since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show opened its attendance to the public, allowing around 1,000 attendants, though overall attendance was limited to a couple thousand to avoid further restrictions. Kim expected more international guests, particularly from Japan, due to the ease of travel restrictions. Public tickets became available for purchase on November 1, though the show remained subject to change pending health and safety guidelines changes due to COVID-19 in California.
Keighley wanted the show to be more cinematic, opting for a shorter duration than previous years—around 2.5 hours—in response to viewer feedback; he felt viewers encountered fatigue with previous shows and worked to streamline by cutting some content. Keighley struggled with the balance between awards and announcements, noting that industry members largely value the former whereas about 75 percent of the community prefer the latter. The show partnered with IMAX to create "The Game Awards: The IMAX Experience", a live community event allowing participation worldwide and featuring an exclusive gameplay sequence of the upcoming game "Dead Space"; it was broadcast in 40 locations in the United States and Canada, where tickets became available on November 16. During the show, Valve gave away one Steam Deck each minute to eligible viewers on Steam in Canada, the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States. Eligible Twitch viewers received rewards allowing them to redeem "Rogue Legacy" on the Epic Games Store, and in-game items such as a Keighley mask in "Among Us", Twitch emote skins in "Cult of the Lamb", and Kait Diaz costume in "Fall Guys".
The Game Awards 2022 was the third show to feature Future Class, a list of 50 individuals from across the video game industry who best represent its future; the initiative was led by its director Emily Bouchoc and internal communications manager Jessie Kuse. More than 2,500 Future Class nominations were accepted in September and October and the list was announced on December 5, featuring individuals like BURA co-founder Camila Gormaz, The Game Bakers co-founder Audrey Leprince, and Global Game Jam president Dr. JC Lau. The 2022 show added an award for Best Adaptation, recognizing media adapted from video games, including films, television shows, novels, comic books, and podcasts. Keighley felt the popularization of adaptations led to them passing the minimum threshold of nominees and it was time to honor them. The Game Awards partnered with Discord to present Best Community Support and introduce voting and guest events in the show's Discord server.
Announcements.
Keighley estimated the show involved over 50 games, about 30 to 40 of which are announced games showing new content. The first clip of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" was revealed during the show. Announcements on released and upcoming games were made for:
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New games announced included:
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Several fans and journalists expressed frustration by the lack of Xbox announcements during the event; "IGN"'s Ryan McCaffrey called it "a slap in the face to players". Some theorized the company's absence may be due to the Federal Trade Commission announcing it would attempt to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the morning of the show, though journalists noted it was likely unrelated. Aaron Greenberg, vice president of Xbox Games Marketing, responded to the complaints by stating the company had announcements planned for 2023.
Stage interruption.
After "Elden Ring" was announced as the Game of the Year winner, a male individual followed the developers on stage and waited while they gave their speech. As music began to play after director Hidetaka Miyazaki's speech, the individual approached the microphone and said "I want to thank everybody and say I think I want to nominate ["sic"] this award to my Reformed Orthodox ["sic"] rabbi Bill Clinton ["sic"]" in a thick Israeli accent. During the 13-second speech, "The Washington Post" observed Keighley waving for security; security escorted the individual off stage and Keighley ended the show as planned. Minutes later, Keighley said the individual had been arrested; the Los Angeles Police Department later said no arrest was made but the individual had been detained and questioned at the venue by on-site police and security before being transported to a local police station. The event received immediate attention by news outlets and on social media; a model of Clinton was modded into "Elden Ring". Several journalists criticized the ambush and noted it presented potential danger to the "Elden Ring" developers and overshadowed their award. The Game Awards digitally removed the individual when sharing an image of Miyazaki's speech on Twitter.
Subsequent reports identified the individual as a 15-year-old who had premeditated the stunt with his friends. Reports emerged that he had a history of publicly expressing support for the Hong Kong protests at NBA matches and BlizzCon in 2019 and had appeared twice on "InfoWars", an American far-right talk show, whose host Owen Shroyer described him as "one of the young stars of the conservative movement". He spoke without an accent during these appearances. The individual's "InfoWars" appearance and choice of shoewear at The Game Awards—Adidas Yeezy by Kanye West, who had recently made multiple antisemitic public statements—led to speculation that his interruption was promoting antisemitic tropes. In subsequent interviews, he refused to break character but claimed to be Jewish, said to have recently attained an Israeli accent, denied being a fan of "InfoWars", and disagreed with West's political views. He claimed his statement "wasn't intended to be a dog whistle for far-right conspiracies". Journalists described him as a "troll", "prankster", and "shitposter"; "Bloomberg News"'s Jason Schreier said the individual was "almost certainly a Jewish prankster" based on his understanding of Hebrew. "Digital Trends"'s Giovanni Colantonio found the moment a poetic representation of the show itself: "a fan overshadowing the people who we were supposed to be celebrating". The incident led to increased security the following year.
Winners and nominees.
Nominees were announced on November 14, 2022. Any game released for public consumption on or before November 18, 2022, was eligible for consideration. The nominees were compiled by a jury panel composed of members from over 100 media outlets globally, including specialized juries for accessibility, adaptation, and esports awards: 117 media outlets for general nominees, 18 jury members for accessibility, and 16 outlets for esports. Winners were determined between the jury (90 percent) and public voting (10 percent); the latter was held via the official website and Discord server until December 7. According to Keighley, public voting within the first 24 hours increased 42 percent compared to The Game Awards 2021; within the first week, 35 million votes had been submitted, more than double in the same period the previous year and exceeding 2021's total three-week count. When the polls closed, more than 55 million votes had been submitted, an increase of 138 percent over 2021. Keighley felt the competition was particularly rife between the two "flagship games", "Elden Ring" and "God of War Ragnarök". Christopher Judge's Best Performance acceptance speech ran for 7 minutes and 59 seconds, exceeding the longest Oscar speech (set in 1943 by Greer Garson) by two-and-a-half minutes.
The exception to the jury-voted awards is Players' Voice, fully nominated and voted-on by the public; the winner was determined after three rounds of voting, which ran from November 28 to December 7. The final two rounds of Players' Voice voting led to accusations of bribery and bots, as some users suspected "Genshin Impact" players were voting in hopes of receiving in-game currency and erroneously suggested the game had offered some to players who voted for it, while some "Genshin Impact" players accused "Sonic Frontiers" fans of using bots to vote. Several journalists reported a lack of credible evidence of bots or bribery, and Keighley felt bots were uninvolved but said his team would investigate. Discourse surrounding the voting became adversarial, with fandoms attacking each other and the subreddit r/SonicTheHedgehog restricting posts about the award. Some users reported the website only allowed them to vote for either "Genshin Impact" or "Sonic Frontiers". Keighley jokingly referenced bot accusations when crowning "Genshin Impact" the winner during the show. "PC Gamer"'s Mollie Taylor noticed adversarial discourse remained on both sides after the event. "Genshin Impact" distributed in-game currency to all players after its win. Keighley said the discourse reaffirmed the show's decision to avoid fully-public voting for main categories.
Awards.
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).
Games with multiple nominations and awards.
Multiple nominations.
"God of War Ragnarök" led the show with eleven nominations, tied for the most in the show's history. It was followed by "Elden Ring" with eight, and "Horizon Forbidden West" and "Stray" with seven. Sony Interactive Entertainment led the publishers with 21 nominations, followed by Annapurna Interactive with 12, and Nintendo with 11. In addition to video game publishers, Netflix received three nominations for its television productions in Best Adaptation.
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Multiple awards.
"God of War Ragnarök" led the show with six wins, followed by "Elden Ring" with four, and "Final Fantasy XIV" and "Stray" with two each. Sony Interactive won a total of seven awards, followed by Bandai Namco Entertainment and Nintendo with four each.
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Presenters and performers.
Presenters.
The following individuals, listed in order of appearance, presented awards or introduced trailers. All other awards were presented by Keighley or Goodman.
Performers.
The following individuals or groups performed musical numbers.
Ratings and reception.
Nominees.
Several journalists and viewers were surprised to see "Xenoblade Chronicles 3" nominated for several awards—particularly Game of the Year—due to previous snubs of the Japanese role-playing game genre; "GamesRadar+"'s Jordan Gerblick called it the show's dark horse nomination. "Elden Ring"'s Best Narrative nomination received mixed responses, with some praising the subtle storytelling and others noting the game lacked a good or proper narrative; "The A.V. Club"'s William Hughes felt nominating "Elden Ring" alongside the traditional storytelling of "God of War Ragnarök" and untraditional "Immortality" was "just begging for the whole exercise to fall apart". Several journalists considered "Sifu"'s Best Fighting Game nomination inappropriate as it is an action game. "4Players"'s Jonas Hoeger criticized Best Mobile Game nominees "Diablo Immortal", "Genshin Impact", and "Tower of Fantasy" due to their manipulative microtransactions systems, and Best Multiplayer Game nominee "Overwatch 2" for its