The Game Awards 2018
The Game Awards 2018 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2018. It was produced and hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of The Game Awards, and was held to an invited audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 6, 2018. The event was live streamed across more than 45 digital platforms. The show featured musical performances from Harry Gregson-Williams, Daniel Lanois, Lena Raine, and Hans Zimmer, and presentations from celebrity guests including Jonah Hill, the Russo brothers, Brendon Urie, and Christoph Waltz. The show opened with a group speech by Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aimé, PlayStation's Shawn Layden, and Xbox's Phil Spencer, representing the unity of the industry. Keighley began planning for the show immediately after the previous ceremony, and spent months traveling to studios around the world to secure announcements and trailers.
God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 received eight nominations each, the most in Game Awards history at the time. At the show, Red Dead Redemption 2 tied for the highest-awarded game in the show's history with four wins, and God of War was awarded Game of the Year. Several new games were revealed, including Far Cry New Dawn, Hades, and The Outer Worlds. In association with the event, sales were held on most digital storefronts for nominees and former winners. The 2018 was viewed by over 26.2 million streams, the most in its history to date, with four million concurrent viewers at its peak. It received a generally positive reception from media publications, with praise directed at the opening speech and announcements but some criticism for the focus on reveals over awards.
Background
As with previous iterations of The Game Awards, the show was hosted and produced by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley. He returned as an executive producer alongside Kimmie Kim, and Richard Preuss and LeRoy Bennett returned as director and creative director, respectively. Keighley began working on The Game Awards 2018 immediately after the previous ceremony by conducting a postmortem and booking the Microsoft Theater. He shifted into full work in July 2018 following E3. He spent months traveling to studios around the world to secure announcements and trailers, and meeting with developers to discuss how to reveal their games; he spent July and August meeting with distribution partners in China and visiting ten game studios in Japan, followed by some time in Europe. He visited Rockstar Games's New York headquarters in September to discuss how to represent Red Dead Redemption 2 at the show.The core team working on the show throughout the year consists of four or five people. The budget for 2018, determined in July, was several million dollars; Keighley personally funded the show while raising money from publishers and sponsors. Concepts were being considered by August, including the involvement of Hans Zimmer, who was originally involved in the previous show but dropped out due to other commitments. Keighley began to book presenters in October, having secured developers such as Josef Fares and Jeff Kaplan by mid-month; he spoke to Peter Jackson about a collaboration but it fell through. For the 2018 ceremony, the production team focused on stage lighting for immersion. Once the team approved Bennett's designs in September, they turned to the budgeting phase, where ideas were often cut. In late October, eleven members of the production team moved into a four-building office complex in Santa Monica, transitioning from virtual meetings; hundreds of people ultimately contributed to the production by December.
Keighley estimated he worked on the show for around 18 hours each day from August to November, and 19 hours for the final month. Kim felt she had a yin and yang dynamic with Keighley. She worried he would spend too much time concerned about minute details; Keighley agreed, noting he enjoyed the work and does not regret it but wanted to employ more people in future to shift his focus. Kim aimed for the show to be around 80 or 90 percent completed before Thanksgiving in November, when the team took a week off. To maintain secrecy, a security crew supervised rehearsals. Keighley kept secrets from his team and senior production members only learned of some announcements in the days before the show; trailers were only listed under code names with expected durations. Keighley wrote most of his own scripts, while Gabe Uhr and Kyle Bosman wrote for the presenters. During rehearsals, Keighley remained close to the Microsoft Theater by staying at the Ritz Carlton hotel across the street.
The show was held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 6, 2018. It was live streamed globally across more than 45 digital services. Tencent's Stephen Ma joined the awards as an advisor; the ceremony was live on more than 15 platforms in China. The ceremony began with a group speech by Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aimé, PlayStation's Shawn Layden, and Xbox's Phil Spencer. Keighley had wanted to gather the three leaders since the show's inception in 2014 as he felt it was a metaphor for bringing the industry together. While all three leaders personally agreed to the speech, it took several months of negotiations before confirmation; Keighley felt it had "fallen apart" in the days before the show but "magically it came back together" in time. The Game Awards Orchestra opened the show with its new theme song, an original composition by its conductor Lorne Balfe, who had worked with Keighley on the Spike Video Game Awards. He wrote the piece to represent Keighley's work and the general gaming community. Balfe suggested Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams perform alongside Celeste composer Lena Raine and Anthem composer Sarah Schachner to illustrate the industries of film, television, and video games combined. Schachner worried how Anthems score would translate to an orchestral performance but, after arranging a shortened version of the game's theme, found "it started falling into place". For the Game of the Year medley, Balfe was forced to wait until the nominees were determined in mid-November; immediately after the announcement, the production team began contacting studios for the game soundtracks.
Announcements
During the event, sales on some nominated and previously-winning games were held on the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, Steam, and Xbox Games Store. Announcements on recently released and upcoming games were made for:- Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
- Anthem
- Dauntless
- Dead by Daylight
- Devil May Cry 5
- Fortnite
- Forza Horizon 4
- Magic: The Gathering Arena
- PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
- Psychonauts 2
- Rage 2
- Rocket League
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- The Stanley Parable
- Among Trees
- Atlas
- Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
- Dragon Age 4
- Far Cry New Dawn
- Hades
- Journey to the Savage Planet
- The Last Campfire
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
- Mortal Kombat 11
- The Outer Worlds
- The Pathless
- Sayonara Wild Hearts
- Scavengers
- Stranger Things 3: The Game
- Survived By
Winners and nominees
The nominees for The Game Awards 2018 were announced on November 13, 2018; the announcement received more traffic than anticipated, with five times more visitors than usual, crashing the website for several hours. Any game released on or before November 16, 2018 was eligible for consideration. The nominees were compiled by a jury panel with members from 69 media outlets globally. Winners were determined between the jury and public votes ; the latter was held via the official website and on social media platforms and technologies such as Amazon Alexa, Bilibili, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Google Assistant, and Twitter. Votes held on the official website and shared on social media were given an additional 10 percent weighting in the fan vote calculation. More than 10.5 million votes were registered, a 50 percent increase over the previous year.The Trending Gamer award from previous shows was effectively split into two: Content Creator of the Year for those creating new and innovative video game content, such as live streamers and video creators; and the Global Gaming Citizens program, to recognize honorees improving their communities through video games. Additional esports awards were added for the 2018 show. Submissions for Best Student Game were open in September and October. They were judged by a panel of industry members including Jenova Chen, Todd Howard, Hideo Kojima, and Vince Zampella.
Awards
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger.Video games
| |
| Best Narrative | Best Art Direction |
| Best Score/Music | Best Audio Design |
| Best Performance | Games for Impact |
| Best Ongoing Game | Best Independent Game |
| Best Mobile Game | Best VR/AR Game |
| Best Action Game | Best Action/Adventure Game |
| Best Role Playing Game | Best Fighting Game |
| Best Family Game | Best Strategy Game |
| Best Sports/Racing Game | Best Multiplayer Game |
| Best Student Game | Best Debut Indie Game |