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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 takes home an absurd 9 wins at The Game Awards, more than Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023
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That's pretty much where I'm at too. Though the "Indie Award" has always had similar problems before, such as the **Dave the Diver** debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like **Blue Prince** in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.It's roughly the same for BG3, technically an independent indie studio but also one of the most massive production teams on any game. IMO indie studios aren't studios without a publisher anymore, if anything a lot of studios with publishers are more indie than many studios without. Reminds me of decades ago and people calling Blizzard an indie studio before the Activision merger.
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> If a game does the best in multiple categories should it be skipped over just to highlight another game? It's all subjective. If you make Balatro and I make BG3, there's no objective way to evaluate "Best Game" between the two. You've got to make some subjective judgement (or just put your hand out and collect bribes). Giving one of them a full stack of awards doesn't signal quality, it signals bias. > If an indie studio’s first game wins best indie game how can it not also be the best debut indie game E33 wasn't the studio's first game. So it shouldn't be winning the "award for debut games" on the ground alone. But yes, if you're winning the "indie game" (which E33's budget shouldn't have qualified it for anyway) spotlight another game under "debut" even if you're predisposed to favor turn based RPGs over platformers or puzzle games or simulators. In fact, especially then. > This isn’t just recognizing the game, it’s recognizing the actors. It's recognizing the budget more often than not.> It's all subjective. If you make Balatro and I make BG3, there's no objective way to evaluate "Best Game" between the two. You've got to make some subjective judgement (or just put your hand out and collect bribes). > > Giving one of them a full stack of awards doesn't signal quality, it signals bias. It signals quality from the perspective of a poorly selected jury. I have massive issues with how the game awards runs itself, but the solution isn't to artificially restrict what a game can win. Bias from a jury's selection is inherent in all awards, e33 winning 9 awards isn't evidence of unfair bias or bribes, its evidence of 1) e33 genuinely doing an amazing job in a lot of different areas and 2) the jury being made up of professional journalists who all run in the same circles. Neither Sandfall or Kepler have the sort of connections you'd need to beat out Sony or Nintendo if all 3 were using shady tactics. > E33 wasn't the studio's first game. So it shouldn't be winning the "award for debut games" on the ground alone. What other game has sandfall interactive made? > But yes, if you're winning the "indie game" (which E33's budget shouldn't have qualified it for anyway) spotlight another game under "debut" even if you're predisposed to favor turn based RPGs over platformers or puzzle games or simulators. In fact, especially then. I think we're just gonna have to disagree here, I don't think the point of rewards should be to spotlight a bunch of different games, that's what the nominations are for. > It's recognizing the budget more often than not. Yeah, that's fair, but it's not exclusively budget.
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> It's all subjective. If you make Balatro and I make BG3, there's no objective way to evaluate "Best Game" between the two. You've got to make some subjective judgement (or just put your hand out and collect bribes). > > Giving one of them a full stack of awards doesn't signal quality, it signals bias. It signals quality from the perspective of a poorly selected jury. I have massive issues with how the game awards runs itself, but the solution isn't to artificially restrict what a game can win. Bias from a jury's selection is inherent in all awards, e33 winning 9 awards isn't evidence of unfair bias or bribes, its evidence of 1) e33 genuinely doing an amazing job in a lot of different areas and 2) the jury being made up of professional journalists who all run in the same circles. Neither Sandfall or Kepler have the sort of connections you'd need to beat out Sony or Nintendo if all 3 were using shady tactics. > E33 wasn't the studio's first game. So it shouldn't be winning the "award for debut games" on the ground alone. What other game has sandfall interactive made? > But yes, if you're winning the "indie game" (which E33's budget shouldn't have qualified it for anyway) spotlight another game under "debut" even if you're predisposed to favor turn based RPGs over platformers or puzzle games or simulators. In fact, especially then. I think we're just gonna have to disagree here, I don't think the point of rewards should be to spotlight a bunch of different games, that's what the nominations are for. > It's recognizing the budget more often than not. Yeah, that's fair, but it's not exclusively budget.> I have massive issues with how the game awards runs itself, but the solution isn’t to artificially restrict what a game can win. It's an awards show. Everything about it is artificial
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Indie title should have honestly gone to Silksong, and the Making a Difference award probably had worthier games.Silk Song had x33 beat by almost triple the max player count. the fact that it didn't get the inde title and they gave it to X33 is criminal. Silk Song beat it on both price and player count and arguably story.
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Are you trying to say that any game that gets funding of any kind is automatically not worthy of winning? I'm perfectly fine with people making money in exchange for an excellent product, and Expedition 33 is a fucking masterpiece.I won't say E33 didn't deserve to win an award, it definitely did. But I will absolutely say with certainty it did not deserve to be nominated in so many categories and proceed to win basically every category. Having an award show give awards to only one nominee feels bad for everyone except the show runners, that one nominee, and their fans. Lots of games deserved to be there that simply weren't, and lots of nominees deserved to win but didn't simply because E33 won this year's popularity contest. For example, Best Performance should not have been allowed to have 50% of the nominees be from the same game (E33, in this case).
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I'm not saying E33 didn't deserve to win anything, but I don't believe it deserved to dominate like that. No single game should be allowed to do this, ever. I mean, of the 6 nominees for Best Performance, 3 of them (50%) were from E33. That shouldn't be allowed, IMO. Pick the single best performance from one game, then you can have more variety to pick from. Also, the winner of Best Indie Game should automatically be disqualified from also winning Best Indie Debut game. In my opinion: KCD2 snubbed for Best RPG, Silksong snubbed for best Action Adventure, and Half-Life 3 snubbed for Most Anticipated Game (is it disqualified -- no professionals allowed?).
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I'm not saying E33 didn't deserve to win anything, but I don't believe it deserved to dominate like that. No single game should be allowed to do this, ever. I mean, of the 6 nominees for Best Performance, 3 of them (50%) were from E33. That shouldn't be allowed, IMO. Pick the single best performance from one game, then you can have more variety to pick from. Also, the winner of Best Indie Game should automatically be disqualified from also winning Best Indie Debut game. In my opinion: KCD2 snubbed for Best RPG, Silksong snubbed for best Action Adventure, and Half-Life 3 snubbed for Most Anticipated Game (is it disqualified -- no professionals allowed?).I have the most issue with the performance win, that the nominations are for the English voice acting and this is not even an English game. The original acting is French, I played it with French voice + English subtitle. To me the English voice acting is just part of the localization. This is such an English-centric award and snub for non-English performances. If anything the motion capture actors are more "worthy".
