The Controversial 2022 Game Awards Ceremony

The game awards: a yearly event. Initially started as the Spike video game awards, the game awards serve to honor the games industry and show previews of previously announced games and/or new ones.  After E3 got canceled this year —E3 being a very major game event to show off new games— a hole was left for the game awards to fill, or at least try to. 

“They’ll probably have more to announce than usual since E3 didn’t happen.” Said Jillian Walden. Rhianna Burroughs noted, “The game awards haven’t been as good since they stopped announcing new [Super] Smash [Bros] characters at it, it was great when Joker [persona 5] got announced for the game. Everyone was excited” 

News related to new games and such was of course still presented to us throughout 2022. But it’s important to remember that although regular advertisements exist, the best way for video games to get all eyes on them are events such as the game awards. So to have so few events, many people were left looking for something to quench their thirst.  

One of the most major things within the community leading up to the awards was fittingly enough, the player’s voice vote. This one category is different from the rest, being the only one determined solely by the players, aka people who voted on the website. 

Nominated for this award were the games Genshin Impact, Sonic Frontiers, Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarök, and Stray. Voting soon devolved into madness as people noticed Genshin winning. Although it is unclear whether people were voting for Genshin because they wanted to, or for the purpose of getting in-game free items (Primo-gems, a rare currency in the game). As soon as people noticed Genshin was winning, they also noticed that Sonic Frontiers was close to beating it, so people started to try to rally together to vote for Sonic. Although no seriously dangerous situations arose from these people fighting to win the vote, it did lead to both games’ respective communities to clash heads. People started to try to dig up dirt, showing off some Sonic fans being racist on old forum posts, although this didn’t really amount to anything. 

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the game awards, they’re just being petty for no reason” commented Jillian Walden. 

It was later found out that some Genshin fans had used Chinese code to try and bot the vote, making Genshin win unfairly. Certain Genshin fans had tried to call out others for implicit racism, despite many only stating that the code itself originated in China. When it came to finally announcing the award itself it was noted that they had removed all the bot votes, although it is unclear if they actually did so. In the end, the award went to Genshin, leading to many Sonic fans going to social media to complain about this win, claiming that “Sonic was robbed.”

For those interested in the winners of the show, here’s a list of them:

GAME OF THE YEAR WINNER:

•  Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco) 

BEST GAME DIRECTION WINNER: 

• Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST NARRATIVE WINNER:

• God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ART DIRECTION WINNER:

• Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST SCORE AND MUSIC WINNER:

• Bear McCreary, God of War Ragnarök

BEST AUDIO DESIGN WINNER:

• God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST PERFORMANCE WINNER:

• Christopher Judge, God of War Ragnarök

GAMES FOR IMPACT WINNER:

• As Dusk Falls (Interior Night/Xbox Game Studios)

BEST ONGOING GAME WINNER:

• FINAL FANTASY XIV (Square Enix)

BEST INDIE WINNER:

• Stray (BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna)

BEST DEBUT INDIE WINNER:

• Stray (BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna)

BEST COMMUNITY SUPPORT WINNER:

• FINAL FANTASY XIV (Square Enix)

BEST MOBILE WINNER:

• MARVEL SNAP (Second Dinner Studios/Nuverse)

BEST VR/AR WINNER:

• Moss: Book II (Polyarc)

BEST ACTION WINNER:

• Bayonetta 3 (Platinum Games/Nintendo) 

BEST ACTION/ADVENTURE WINNER:

• God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ROLE PLAYING WINNER:

• Elden Ring (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco)

BEST FIGHTING WINNER:

• MultiVersus (Player First Games/WB Games)

BEST FAMILY WINNER:

• Kirby and the Forgotten Land (HAL Laboratory / Nintendo)

BEST SIM/STRATEGY WINNER:

• Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Ubisoft Milan/Paris/Ubisoft)

BEST SPORTS/RACING WINNER:

• Gran Turismo 7 (Polyphony Digital/SIE)

BEST MULTIPLAYER WINNER:

• Splatoon 3 (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

MOST ANTICIPATED WINNER:

• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)

CONTENT CREATOR OF THE YEAR WINNER:

• Ludwig

BEST ADAPTATION WINNER:

• Arcane: League of Legends (Fortiche/Riot Games/Netflix)

INNOVATION IN ACCESSIBILITY WINNER:

• God of War Ragnarök (Sony Santa Monica/SIE)

BEST ESPORTS GAME WINNER:

• VALORANT (Riot Games)

BEST ESPORTS ATHLETE WINNER:

• Jacob “Yay” Whiteaker (Cloud9, Valorant)

BEST ESPORTS TEAM WINNER:

• LOUD (Valorant)

BEST ESPORTS COACH WINNER:

• Matheus “bzkA” Tarasconi (LOUD, VALORANT)

BEST ESPORTS EVENT WINNER:

• 2022 League of Legends World Championship