> 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

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.

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).

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".

The French are really something else! Their ability to convey emotion is peerless in the planet.

Why do they look like stereotypes?

Because it was a joke.

Why shouldnt the best actor be for the best performance regardless of which game it appears in?

I'll see you Best RPG and raise you a Best Independent and Best Debut Indie. They have a publisher that funded them with hedge fund money and outsourced aspects of the production to entirely different companies. I'm not making a comment on the quality of the game, but *how* is that indie?

Cool, just curious.

Original language is always better in my opinion. Filtering it into English has to leave out or change something. I think for other people though they see the English voice actors as more professional or higher paid or more famous, whatever it is.

I love when they block all the roads with tractors and spray manure into government buildings to protest the government being shitty at governing.  It conveys the emotions I feel so much better than I ever could (I don't own large quantities of manure, not the means to propel them at high speeds).

Pure civilizacional gold!

I get where you're coming from, but awards shows shouldn't be participation trophies. The panels should give the awards for each category to the games they think were the best in that category. And games aren't made by a single person. If they decided that E33 shouldn't win Best Music because it also won Best Art Direction, that's unfair to the composers and musicians who worked on E33.

I don't see the point of limiting the nominees to just one-per-game, for best performance. There's still only one winner, and if that game legitimately had that many fantastic performances, more power to 'em. I'll second the idea of keeping Best Indie and Best Debut Indie separate. I'll go further and say E33 just isn't an Indie game, it's pretty solidly AA.

To me, it’s an indicator that the rest of the industry bankrupted its talent and innovation. There’s been some great indie games, but nothing overwhelmingly amazing, certainly not in the AAA space.

There's stupid people on both sides of the political spectrum.

That's impressive, to be honest. Expedition 33 even had complete normies talking about it.