What are the first words that come to mind when The Game Awards are mentioned? Well, aside from Doritos and Mountain Dew. “World Premiere,” right? For years, Geoff Keighley’s awards show has somewhat pretentiously referred to any new trailer shown during the show as a World Premiere, with the title card popping up constantly throughout the proceedings. Most people kind of roll their eyes at it, but what would The Game Awards be without the constant World Premiere talk? Well, it seems we’re about to find out.
In a recent Twitch Q&A, Geoff Keighley indicated the era of the World Premiere may be done…
“Actually, you’ll see this year, we often put up those cards, ‘World Premiere, World Premiere’… we’re kind of moving away from that, just because everything’s kind of, ‘Is it a first look? Is it an announcement?’ etc. So we just treat it all as great game content.”
The constant harping on World Premieres was kinda lame, so I’m not going to particularly miss it. That said, I can’t help but wonder if part of the motivation here is to make it easier to slip more ads into the program. It’s all just great game content, right? And with the actual new trailers and gameplay no longer identified as such, it will all blend together more.
Another, shall we say, memorable aspect of recent Geoff-Keighley-produced shows has been uninvited folks invading the stage. Last year’s Game Awards saw somebody butt into FromSoftware’s Elden Ring GOTY acceptance speech to thank their rabbi Bill Clinton, and during this year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, somebody rushed the stage to shout something about GTA VI. Both incidents were more amusing than concerning, but obviously, it would have been a very different story if somebody with bad intentions had managed to get up there. Thankfully, according to Keighley, security is being beefed up.
“We don’t want to talk about that stuff too publicly, just because it’s security. We definitely have plans and we’re trying to do all we can to keep me safe, but also everyone watching the show, the audience, people participating in the show and everything. It’s certainly something we’re thinking about.”
The Game Awards 2023 will be livestreamed on December 7. You can check out the full list of Game Awards nominations here.
