Games for Impact is back for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Game Awards in 2023, and like every other year, it’s acting as a locker to stuff all the diverse ga𒈔mes into. Filled with LGBTQ+ characters? Impact! Got a focus on a particular disability or social issue? Impac𝕴t! Are you designed to explore unique cultures or make the player cry a bunch? Impact! It doesn’t feel like the category has matured much in the years since it was introduced.
I understand that Geoff Keighley wants to highlight games that champion diversity or seek to tell stories that might otherwise be overlooked by the mainstream, but it also🧔 suggests these games aren’t worthy of belonging in other, arguably more prestigious categories. Can you be fruity or culturally significant and still earn recognition outside said parameters, or will titles of this ilk forever be doomed to a lack of critical appreciation?
Last year’s nominees for the category included I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, As Dusk Falls, Citizen Sleeper, Hindsight, A Memoir Blue, and Ending - Extinction Is Forever, only one of which (As Dusk Falls) was nominated in any other categor🐎y.
Many of these games were worthy of mention in other, far more crowd-pleasing categories, but very few are given the privilege. Much like last year, only one of the six Games For Impact (Venba) gets any nomination anywhere else. This year some of my favourite titles of the year like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Goodbye Volcano High and168澳洲幸运5开奖网: A Space For The Unbound are up for Impact due to their queer characters and mature themes, but I could see them highlighted in Indie, Performance, even Game of the Year if the jury wasn’t so geared towards shining a light on the big hitters. Only one Gam✤es for Impact nominee, Celeste, has ever been up for GOTY.
This isn’t a problem unique to The Game Awards either, it points towards a lack of diversity in the wider industry and individuals at media outlets, developers, and publishers with the means to even highlight games like this and what they represent. In highlighting steps forward in inclusivity but confining them to a singl🐻e category, it inadvertently feels like we’re limiting ourselves.
Some media outlets will inevitably view an ‘impactful game&r༒squo; as one that champions diversity and culture, experiences eager to tell stories the mainꦕstream is afraid of breaching or that possibly don’t belong. But why shouldn’t they broaden those horizons to allow more games?
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2 features several queer characters as part of its main cast, while it also pushed forward accessibility in the console space for disabled players of all kinds, which then came to encompass all of Sony’s first party offerings. That’s impactful, but because it wasn’t a cute indie about being fruity and/or sad, it wasn’t nominated. Its absence underlined that Games For Impact is not for games that win awards elsewhere, an🌸d that makes it a strange category to consider.
How The Game Awards frames being impactful and how we as an industry have started to view these creative endeavours is much too narrow. There’s an irony in how much video games want to put diversity onto a pedestal and emphasise 💖how far we’ve come, only to chuck all of these steps forward into a single category once a year, since there is no way we’re letting them muddy the waters. I appreciate the sentiment, but every passing year I almost wish they either wouldn’t bother, or let us shine across all categories.
Maybe there is a fear that someone might be offended, or we aren’t ready to make mistakes when it comes to speaking up for queer or marginalised groups on a stage this big. That if a bigger game was nominated (consider the numerous social issues explored by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3, for example), it would cost something else a place on the podium. But if we want to make an impact, and highli🌌ght games that do, we need to be prepared to encounter mistakes instead of repeating the same tired routine each and every year. What it means for a game to be impactful changes as the medium evolves, and if The Game Awards wants 🌟to do any of us justice, it needs to understand that.
