Awards shows are a big deal, and any given year is chock full of these spectacles. While we have numerous shows dedicated to movies, music, and television, journalist Geoff Keighley has been trying to get one off the ground for video games for quite some time. His latest attempt, The Game Awards 2015, is a continuation of the project he launched last year and will be presented live from Los Angeles, California next month.
Like previous forays, Keighley and his contemporaries in the official jury have put together a number of award categories, including one dedicated to fighting games, which is great! Unfortunately, it’s a little…confusing is probably the best way to put it.
The first two are no-brainers: Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- and Mortal Kombat X have both had stellar years on the competitive circuit that culminated in appearances at Evo 2015. Every major tournament that selects them for their official lineup (and you’d be hard pressed to find one that hasn’t) sees great numbers in each, with pot bonuses provided by developers and publishers alike.
After that, things get messy. Rise of Incarnates, the arena fighter developed by Bandai Namco Entertainment, fell flat on release and is on schedule to be shut down on December 15. Rising Thunder, while promising, just barely entered alpha testing earlier this year, making its nomination akin to critiquing a meal that’s still in the oven.
But even that small bit of attention is better than our community’s representation in the handful of eSports categories the show will feature. Only one, eSports Team of the Year, tangentially applies to fighting games its Evil Geniuses nomination, but the others (eSports Game of the Year, eSports Player of the Year) are bereft of anything related to our competitive scene.
While the nominations weren’t as much of an issue at last year’s event, these inclusivity problems are definitely a carry-over, and it’s easy to see why. Of the eight people The Game Awards 2015 selected as part of their eSports Advisory Panel, none have anything to do with fighting games. Where are the MarkMans, the Seth Killians, the James Chens? Our community has no shortage of prolific figures, many of whom have given the better parts of their lives to promote the scene, so why aren’t their names on that list? It’s disheartening, to say the least.
The Game Awards 2015 is scheduled for December 3, and I very much look forward to seeing who wins the fighting game category. I only hope we’re heard out and see improvements in future events.
