Johnathan St. Johnathan, or John-John, as he likes to be called, was disappointed because he feels he was lied to by The Game Awards and Geoff Keighley.

“They didn’t announce a sequel to ANY of my favorite games, and I saw a post on 4Chan that said they would,” said John-John as he adjusted his trilby on his head.

Indeed, there were literally 100’s, if not 1000’s, of announcements that weren’t made at The Game Awards, including sequels to games, DLC characters and even new IP’s you’ve never even heard of. But we couldn’t figure out why a company would purposely withhold information from the public. So, we asked an expert. We asked John-John.

“Well, technically none of the games that I was expecting were actually said to be at The Game Awards, nor have they been said to even be in development. But the game industry wants to horde all its secrets because they’re greedy, and not announcing games means we keep watching things like E3 and The Game Awards. By dangling the games we want in front of our faces like a carrot, they can shove games we don’t want down our throats.”

According to John-John he didn’t care about any of the announcements at The Game Awards, so that means no one cared about them.

On an unrelated note, Microsoft announced the new Xbox at The Game Awards.

“But I don’t care about the Xbox,” continued John-John as he adjusted his glasses on his face and caught the light in the lenses at just the right angle, causing them to glow like that smart character from an anime. “I care about the things I like, the things I saw promised to me on 4Chan and news outlets like wegothiscovered.com.”

When we asked about sources, John-John simply had this to say, “They don’t have sources because it’s inside information. Like my boy Bradlen, whose uncle works for Nintendo, told me that Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is the new Smash Bros DLC character, which by the way, conveniently wasn’t announced at The Game Awards.”

We then asked John-John what game he was most hoping would be announced at The Game Awards.

“Bayonetta 3 because she’s really f**kin’ hot.”

Below is a list of the 2016 Game Award winners. Odd Tale Studios would like to congratulate them all on their achievement.

• Industry Icon: Hideo Kojima
• Best Performance: Nolan North as Nathan Drake, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
• Best Narrative: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog/SIE)
• Best Art Direction: Inside (Playdead)
• Best Music/Sound Design: Doom (id Software/Bethesda)
• Games for Impact: That Dragon, Cancer (Numinous Games)
• Best Independent Game: Inside (Playdead)
• Best Mobile/Handheld Game: Pokemon Go (Niantic)
• Best VR Game: Rez Infinite (Enhance Games)
• Best Action Game: Doom (id Software/Bethesda)
• Best Action/Adventure Game: Dishonored 2 (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
• Best RPG: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Blood and Wine (CD Projekt RED)
• Best Fighting Game: Street Fighter V (Capcom)
• Best Strategy Game: Civilization VI (Firaxis Games/2K)
• Best Family Game: Pokemon Go (Niantic)
• Best Sports/Racing Game: Forza Horizon 3 (Playground Games/Microsoft Studios)
• Most Anticipated Game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)
• Best eSports Team: Cloud9
• Best eSports Player: Marcelo “coldzera” David
• Trending Gamer: Boogie2988
• Best eSports Game: Overwatch (Blizzard)
• Best Multiplayer Game: Overwatch (Blizzard)
• Best Game Direction: Blizzard (for Overwatch)
• Game of the Year: Overwatch (Blizzard)

The Game Awards 2016 hosted by Geoff Keighley is an annual awards show that honors video games in all aspects, which was evident this year more than any other year since this show was launched.  In a year of many exciting games and in light of the many controversies, especially the Voice Actors strike, this year highlighted the good video games can do for the community and how we as a community need to move forward.

Awards of Interest:

Here we will list some of the more interesting awards that were given during the night’s festivities.

The first award of interest is the Industry Icon award going to Hideo Kojima.  This was a continuation of Geoff Keighley admiration of Hideo Kojima from last year and his disdain for how Konami treated Kojima in his last weeks working with the AAA video game publisher and canceling the much-awaited new Silent Hill game, which was to be directed by Kojima.  Hideo Kojima has been known for his extensive work on the perplexing yet entertaining Metal Gear franchise, helping create such iconic characters as Liquid Ocelot, Psycho Mantis and of course the protagonists, Solid Snake and Big Boss.  Additionally, he was praised on his work with P.T., which was to be a playable trailer leading up to his Silent Hill game.  Other than his obvious contributions to the industry, Kojima was also given this award due to his perseverance during hardship, rebuilding his brand under Kojima Productions, and for the highly-anticipated Death Standing game.

The second award of interest ended up being the Games for Impact award, which went to That Dragon Cancer.  That Dragon Cancer is a game about “a journey of hope in the shadow of death,” An immersive narrative video game that retells Joel Green’s 4-year fight against cancer through about two hours of poetic, imaginative gameplay that explores faith, hope, and love.  Well deserving of the award in and of itself, what made this an award of even more of interest was Ryan Green, designer of the game and father to his departed son Joel, who gave an extraordinary speech on empathy and the role that video games can, and do, play in it.  As such, I believe that this speech should be written in its totality.

Often in video games, we get to choose how we’re seen. Our avatars and our tweets and the work that we do are all meant to portray the story that we want to tell the world about why our lives matter. But sometimes a story is written onto us, or it’s told because of us, or in spite of us.  And it reveals our weaknesses, our failures, our hopes, and our fears.  You let us tell the story of my son Joel and, in the end, it was not the story we wanted to tell. But you chose to love us through our grief by being willing to stop, and to listen, and to not turn away. To let my son Joel’s life change you, because you chose to see him and experience how we loved him. And I have hope that we are all willing to see each other, not just for who we want to be, but who we are and who we’re meant to be. This act of love and grace can change the world. Thank you.

The third award of interest was the Trending Gamer award, which went to YouTuber, Boogie 2988.  The reason this was of interest was his acceptance speech in which he describes the impact of gaming on his life.  Boogie 2988 is severely overweight and on a journey to weight loss, but due to psychological strain from childhood abuse, this has been difficult for him.  With the help of his wife, he has renewed his will to live and through games, he is able to escape in times of emotional strain to explore and be a hero outside of the reality that he is heavily constrained in.

The last award of interest was the Best Performance award, which was awarded, unsurprisingly, to Nolan North for his performance as Nathan Drake in Uncharted 4.  What was surprising was the topic of his acceptance speech, which started out as a typical speech and developed into a message:

 

I’m hearing a lot of talk lately about how ‘performance matter,’ and it does.  The performance of every designer, every programmer, every artist, every hard working, talented person at that office.  Not only at Naughty Dog, but all developers… Their performance matters more than mine, that’s important to understand.  In this day and age with all of the talk going back and forth, because without their performance, my performance wouldn’t only not matter, it wouldn’t exist.

This seems to be a clear message directed at the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio (SAG-AFTRA), as he appropriated their hashtag, “Performance Matter.”  Most likely, he was commenting on SAG-AFTRA’s strike against major video game publishers in an attempt to garner more wages and benefits for voice actors.  This in itself is not negative, on the contrary, it is a good thing for increased rights and benefits for voice actors; however, SAG-AFTRA itself is highly exclusive in charging exorbitant rates to become a member and exerts heavy control over its member, while also communicating very little with their members during this strike.  More importantly, other than admonishing SAG-AFTRA, Nolan North brought up an underappreciated group that suffers just as much as voice actors, yet are the most important part of making a game, the development team.  Instead of just berating those who look to better them-and-their-own, Nolan North preached inclusivism, an important lesson and well said on his part.

World Premiers and Trailers:

There were several dozen trailers for games both out and upcoming, but here we’ll list some of the ones that stood out.

The first major reveal was a new trailer for Death Stranding, which revealed a man, that was possibly Guillermo Del Toro, and an enemy commander, played by Mads Mikkelsen, commanding skeletal soldiers while connected to them through cybernetic tentacles… it’s a trailer you have to see to believe.

Telltale revealed they will be making a Guardians of the Galaxy game, but there were no further details.  They also had a trailer depicting the new Walking Dead season, which shows the tragic history of the second protagonist this time around, Javier.

The exhilarating FPS in which the laws of physics can be shattered, Lawbreakers, showed a trailer to endorse their beta, which you can sign up for at http://lawbreakers.nexon.net/en/game

Prey, an upcoming narrative-driven FPS from Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks, has announced that it is shooting to be released for Spring 2017 and provided a video which seemed to be actual gameplay.

 

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild presented gameplay footage where players showed off the fighting mechanics, weapon durability, and item collecting as well as fighting a mini-boss.  Nothing that is particularly new; however, if you’re a Zelda fan, then it’s worth checking out.

Halo Wars 2 showed a cinematic trailer of no consequence, but it did announce that if you buy the digital ultimate edition of the games, then you will get special preview access to the new definitive edition of Halo Wars 1 remastered.

The last big world premier was actual gameplay from Mass Effect: Andromeda.  The main character lands on a planet and starts driving around in the MAKO before getting into a fight with enemy soldiers.  The main character seemed to be showing off the vanguard class, using biotic abilities and a shotgun, to take down their foes.  It ends with a fight with large monsters, thus showing off some of the new fauna in the game.  As a Mass Effect fan, it looks like more of the same mechanically, but it seems to flow very well, so I’m looking forward to it.

That’s it for the Game Awards 2016, feel free to comment if anything in particular excited you this year.