While watching the live stream, we noticed that there was a musical interlude that would start moments after the speaker started. “The clock is ticking,” The Last of Us creator Neil Druckman joked as he took the stage to accept the award for best adaptation of an HBO TV show. Sam Lake, who has been called up twice, only had a moment to collect his thoughts as he received his well-deserved Alan Wake 2 awards.
It turned out that in the hall, there was a large teleprompter encouraging the speakers to “Please finish it” once their speech reached a certain mark. Obviously we understand the importance of keeping the event on schedule, but this seems disrespectful to those taking the stage – especially when their speeches should generally reflect their entire teams.
It’s something that would understandably be exploited on the show – just look at these two acerbic characters hard disk Titles:
Perhaps the real surprise here is that so much time was devoted to the likes of Hideo Kojima, an undoubted industry icon, but he didn’t have much to offer. This hastily put together meme, which has been shared thousands of times, sums up the situation succinctly:
Kelly has generally been very good at listening to feedback, and will likely admit he made a mistake here. But every year, there’s always an underlying feeling that The Game Awards isn’t sure what it wants to be. Yes, it needs blockbuster ads to catch attention, and it requires commercials to sustain themselves — but what good is an awards show when the recipients don’t have time to speak, and the vast majority of gongs are footnotes to be skimmed through as quickly as possible?
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