> executives who never played a single game in their lives... Makes me think of Gaben who is a Dota2 nerd.

> Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. This is why I don’t care anymore about what other people think and check the communities of games. I just hope the game, I like the most wins. If it happens, great! If it does not, sad but that’s okay. That’s life. I went over to Reddit so I could keep track if the game awards because I didn't have time to actually watch it. Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. As someone that has enjoyed all of these games, the salt is absolutely bonkers. Most of the ones complaining are basically saying "I never played it but I heard they did [blank] so they don't deserve [blank] award." > I just don't get why they need to shit on other people and the games they like just because their game didn't win. Because it is the internet and nowadays people only think about themselves. “I like this game, I want and need this game to win”. The internet allows people to be sort of anonymous and that brings the worst out of people (because more often than not, there’s no consequences of the actions when it is written anonymously).

E33 was the surprise of the year for me. It came from nowhere.

So a successfully crowdfunding campaign could make a game not indie anymore? "Indie" means "independent", which means there is no publisher or investor that could influence creative decisions in the service of profits. (As CDPR is publicly traded and does answer to investors, Cyberpunk would not qualify.) If you want a low budget award, call it low budget award and define a threshold for said budget.

>But it's been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it, Haha, us old farts have been arguing about what constitutes an RPG at least since the days of the first Diablo.

The category is misnamed. It should be best single A game from an independent studio. *Technically* Sandfall is an independant studio. A very well privately funded independant studio founded by industry veterans supported by a great publisher. But no-one is arguing that other games published by Kepler Interactive aren't independant. And with 30-ish full-time employees Sandfall's scale is that of an SME, not an Ubisoft/EA/Sony. The award doesn't feel right because this middleweight AA category was completely abdandoned the previous decade (which legacy studios are now paying a heavy price for), and "indie" came to mean "single A" because if the material conditions of being an independant company. At the same time though technological advancements enabled small teams to take on larger and larger projects. "Indie" does not mean what it used to, and Clair Obscur is trailblazing this AA renewal. Award shows simply need to adapt and start restricting entry based on team size or something.

That's one area where you can see it is indie despite the large development cost. They were published by Kepler Interactive and for some markets Bandai Namco. Neither of which have Ubisoft or EA's marketing budget which normally makes up something like half of the development budget of a game. They did have *some* marketing. I know a lot of French streamers were paid to play the game on launch. But yeah not "in your face for 6 months in front of every YouTube video and inside every happy meal box" like a new assassin's creed or something.

Gamers make me embarrassed to enjoy video games

I think a lot of it was just getting sick of E33 discussion. I remember when Hundred Line released this year some time after E33 and on Steam forums (which, to be fair, is as bad as most gaming forums), while people were, er, "discussing" the game, plenty of valid complaints were topped off with "just play E33 instead, it's cheaper and much better" Like, I don't even disagree, HL was disappointing, but why are you bringing it up, it's apples and oranges. It was also the first I heard of E33 personally so it wasn't a good first impression, even if the devs are sweet and actually gave a shout out to HL.

>and TGA don't set any because they don't take their jobs seriously Jesus fucking Christ people, we are talking about video games. Get a grip.

I agree it's a wonderful game and it deserves recognition, but I also agree it's not as good as BG3. The thing is, that doesn't detract from any of it's awards this year because it was only competing with the games that came out in 2025, not the ones that came out in 2023. Had BG3 and Clair Obscura come out at the same time, I think the split in awards would have been very different.

What a benign comment to respond so strongly to lmao

The problem with the Internet is that it amplifies minority negative voices. Hundreds of thousands of people played that game and 100 pieces of shit get on reddit and be assholes and it gives all of their players bases a bad name. It's the same across anything. On the Internet a loud minority is going to piss in everyone's lemonade because they are trash humans. What makes it worse is algorithm based social media prioritize rage bait since it creates engagement. It's breaking all of our brains.

Imagine the average gamer. Imagine the average reddit user. Now combine them.

KCD got absolutely shafted. Not getting best RPG sucks but the leads not even being *nominated* for best performance is just straight up bullshit.

The only award I think it didn't deserve was Best RPG. But, on the other hand, it should have gotten Best Sound Design over BF6; so it still would have gotten 9 awards. Truly a masterpiece of a game. To those haters saying "But not even BG3 got that many awards!" it's not a fair comparison. BG3 is a slightly better game IMO, but Expedition 33 is a work of art on top of being an amazing game and appeals to a much wider audience. Which isn't to say games like BG3 aren't beautiful, but I think anyone would agree that E33 is on a whole other level.

That one is dumb. I love E33 so much but you can tell this had a budget behind it. They need a “small team” game award or something like that or enforce requirements on indie categories.

If we could just keep this trend of having the game awards completely snuff the big studios, that'd be great.

Baguette supremacy.

"We've picked one game and we're giving every award to that game because it's the best game at everything and have you played the game yet? You should it's so good it's just the best at everything." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_Interactive > Kepler Interactive was founded in September 2021 at the initiative of former Ubisoft employee and French entrepreneur Alexis Garavayan, who had previously co-founded the video game investment fund Kowloon Nights. Self-described as a "super developer" publishing group, Kepler was born out of an alliance between seven independent studios to “pool their resources and knowledge”: Hedge Fund ass publisher. Come on, guys. The Gaming Awards have always just been sponsored content and you're getting hoodwinked because you don't recognize the sponsor this time around.