It’s game awards season, and you know what that means. Piss. Lots of it. Splashed across the communal uranyl that is social media. There’s an inescapable downpour of the stuff during award season as every person takes to their preferred platform to complain about how their favourite game was snubbed. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
Just another day on Twitter, right?
In all seriousness, as fun as it is to dunk on The Game Awards, seeing this annual pissing contest made me realize how grateful I am. People who actually work in the industry have to play an endless stream of big budget games. There’s an expectation both from your peers, and from your audience that you know what you’re talking about. Therefore, you play all of the newest releases, formulate an opinion on them, and share that opinion. It’s a requirement – one that is enforced from within the industry, and by the wider gaming public.
And look – I get it. I get a bunch of stupid ass questions any time I tell people I work with computers. It’s no where near as obnoxious as the gaming public – they’re on a whole other level of idiocy. However, it does get a bit tiring being asked to fix someone’s printer, or laptop. Doubly so when your area of expertise is software development, not general computing.
That’s why I’m so grateful: no one expects shit from me when it comes to blogging. The only major release of the year that I’ve played was Elden Ring. Hell, I finished playing through Breath of the Wild for the first time in early January. I was almost 5 years late to that party. No one cared. Not a soul. I could have gone my entire life without ever playing it, and it wouldn’t have mattered. There’s something immensely freeing about that.
So I do not, and will continue to not play most AAA games. I’ll continue to play a bunch of indie games that most people haven’t even heard of, And put far too much time into Guilty Gear Strive. And then I’ll write about it here. No one will stop me because no one cares enough to do so. I can continue to have, and voice my opinions, and observations unimpeded by the unwashed masses.
That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say. It’s just nice to be able to exist.
Thank you for reading, and stay safe out there.
Frostilyte Writes 
I just don’t like the people give a big fuss over the event instead of letting people have their fun. It’s not like those people complaining are paying for tickets anyway.
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I feel like a lot of people use the internet as a platform to be heard. Most of the time that manifests as shouting into the void. I mean…hell that’s basically all my blog is some of the time lol
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This is the only thing I’ve read about the Game Awards and it was amazing! Thanks for perfectly presenting why I think they are complete BS 😆
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You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed the doodles. XD
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Complaining about the Game Awards seems to me like complaining about the Grammys, as neither of them have any value to me. Hailing big-budget games, and ignoring entire genres and types of games — why should I complain that they ignored the games I like? These are glorified advertisements as far as I can tell, and the Oscars aren’t far away from that either. Maybe I’m just being too cynical, but the upside to that is it’s a lot easier just not to expect them to recognize a lot of great, worthy work and not to be surprised or to care when they don’t.
I also get what you mean about writing about games — I can really appreciate the fact that I can go on and on about weird JRPGs and visual novels that don’t have a ton of mass appeal instead of being prodded to play the new Call of Duty or whatever. There doesn’t seem to be much future in writing about games for money anyway, even if I wanted to — which I absolutely don’t.
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That point about the ads really rings true. I watched this year because I had Steam open hoping to win a Steamdeck (so I could sell it to my brother-in-law lmao), and like…they gave the awards out (mostly) in blocks of 6 at a time. This happened in 5 minute segments between 3-4 trailers for new games, or ads for existing ones that were receiving new content updates. The awards were barely part of the show. It honestly felt more like an E3 press conference then anything else.
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