Show Creator Wants the Game Awards to Be 'A Prototype' for 'A New Era of Programming'

Earlier this month, more than 45.2 million live streams featured real-time action from The Game Awards. This figure shows a 73 per cent increase for the annual award show and the worldwide continuous growth of video games. Livestream's viewership is calculated differently than TV ratings, with the number of streams opening anywhere on the Internet in the past, whether there is an active viewer at the other end or ringing in a pop-up module on the background tab Have been It is collected from a global rather than national audience.

According to Nielsen, you cannot compare The Game Awards to an event like The Academy Awards, which attracted 29.6 million viewers this year. Regardless, the 6-year-old video game award show continues to climb in popularity, as a medium to celebrate the show, and in the process supplies many innovative and entertaining stunts.

Producer Geoff Keiley did not mention the Oscars at all when considering viewer numbers. Instead, he calls the figure "exciting but a bit challenging".

"It's fascinating to watch, and I really wouldn't have anticipated that kind of lift again," Keighley said, showing how the show has grown since the start of 2014.

The Game Awards is an independently run show that airs live and free on dozens of digital video platforms including YouTube, Twitch and Twitter. Last year, the show had 26.2 million live streams.

"We've seen growth in China, which I think was partly because we had League of Legends announcements, and we opened up [the stream] in India."

While the show was well-received, some fans were disappointed at the calibre of the new announcements. When Microsoft unveiled its next Xbox console, fans already knew it was on the way, it was just a matter of when it would be revealed. Kylie ranked herself high with the previous show, where she introduced surprise items in 2014 like a new Zelda trailer for Nintendo.

One issue may be the prevalence of rumours about projects and games that were never in discussion for the show. For example, there were widespread rumours that a new Batman game would be announced from Rocksteady Studios. Keighley said that was never on the table.

Kegley said other games and announcements were planned, but scheduling conflicts arose.

"With the nature of the announcements, we can only present the content that has been given to us," Kegley said. "It's always difficult! I'm also a gamer, and I want to see what everyone wants to see on the show. But sometimes these producers hit their deadlines, and sometimes they don't. Our show changes dramatically in the last three. Four weeks. "

Kohli's proudest moment at this year's show was the presence of Muppets Benson and Beaker. Beaker also starred in Skeet inside the Untitled Goose Game, which was a hit by Studio House House.

Kegley, a childhood fan of two puppets, came up with the concept two months ago. He calls House House and asks about including the Muppets in his game.

This is all part of Kehli's vision to pursue video game storytelling in other media forms. A prime example of this on the show was his live skit with Mirage, a character in the battle royal game Apex Legends. Kehli spoke with the game character at first glance on a screen that appeared to be a timed rehearsal for the character's recording. As it turns out, the character was being performed live elsewhere.

Response Entertainment starred with only one trailer at the awards, but marketing creative director Drew Stauffer asked himself, "Big idea?" He toyed with the idea of ​​making a conference call but wanted it to go live. That’s when Respawn called The Mill, VFX and the creative technology studio that worked to promote Apex Legends.

"With that challenge, what we found interesting were basically three techniques that we've done before, all of them moving together at the same time," said Mill's director David Lawson. "We've done real-time rendering, motion capture and live events, and not all at once."

Kehli, Respawn and The Mill were wondering if they should show the audience that it was a lively conversation but preferred to maintain the magic trick-like illusion. It was only later revealed as a live conversation.

"The arson audience is like the way it lives, and sees the inflections, and it's solely on the CG characters that this shell breaks," Robertson said. "When you narrate a story in a trailer, you use all these traditional techniques. But when it goes live, like when a character takes a stumbling block, all of these subtle-behaviours can raise humans."

Mill has been searching for a way to tell stories through brand mascots over the years. Its partnership with Apex Legends at the awards has opened doors for other uses.

"We realized that we suddenly had this ability to create a bunch of material with Mirage," Stauffer said.