Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: A Blizzard Hovers Over the Game Awards
The name “The Game Awards” is one of the most ironic around, likely intentionally so. The show, hosted by Geoff Keighley, provides awards for a number of games in a bunch of genres, as voted on by critics and fans. But it’s clear the real focus is on the new game reveals. The show primarily featured reveals for indie titles as it was starting out in its current form, with previews for upcoming AAA games scattered throughout. But as the show has garnered larger audiences over the years, and as publishers have had fewer venues in which to reveal their games thanks to COVID-19, an increasing number of games featured have been big-budget AAA games. It’s a true successor to the Spike TV Video Game Awards.
Nothing revealed the show’s corporate allegiances more than an incident that started at the beginning of the weekend. Keighley told The Washington Post for an article posted on Friday that the show was still figuring out how to “navigate” the Activision Blizzard scandal, in which all the sexual harassment allegations that have piled up over the years have been revealed thanks to a lawsuit from the state of California. Keighley continued by saying that he “supported people coming forward with their stories but also didn’t want to diminish developers’ opportunities to spotlight their games.” He noted that TGAs had to “think very carefully about how to proceed here.”
This was a neutral stance in a situation where one doesn’t exist. You are either for harassment within a big publisher or you are not. To even need to consider “navigating” through cut-and-dry and horrifying stories is unfathomable, but it was clear why Keighley and the staff took this stance. There’s, for one, the point I made above about the company wanting to feature reveals from their corporate partners, though it was tough to fathom just how many there could be related to Activision thanks to every non-Blizzard subsidiary within the company working on Call of Duty now. The second one’s more obvious: Activision president Rob Kostich is literally on the advisory board. You could almost see Keighley sweating about this question, one he’d previously never been asked to address.
(Another noticeable name and face on that list is Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, guaranteeing that Ubisoft’s continued sexual harassment issues will also go unmentioned on the show — to no surprise by now.)
Again, there is no room for impartiality here. This scandal threatened to derail the carefully coordinated hype cycle for show leading up to this Thursday. Keighley, seeing the writing on the wall, took to Twitter to clarify the show’s position by noting how “there is no place for abuse, harassment or predatory practices in any company or any community.” He clarified that outside the games nominated for awards, Activision will have no part in the show. This was a good stance to take, but it’s wild that it took this for Keighley and the organizers to do so. It was way too large of a story to go unacknowledged.
Hell, more news broke related to Activision Blizzard as this was happening. The company promised that quality assurance workers who recently completed work on Call of Duty: Vanguard would receive pay raises thanks to an adjusted pay cycle. Instead, many of them were told one-by-one that they’ll be out of jobs on January 28th. The only small saving grace here is that the company didn’t let them go before Christmas, but I cannot emphasize “small” enough. This has crushed the morale among the team, and it will increase the workload for those spared by the layoffs since the upcoming Vanguard content will still need testing. If the new content arrives in a glitchier and unpolished state, you’ll know why. The damage-controlling statement from the company saying that, um actually, most of the temp workers have been converted to full time positions will not help here. This didn’t stop the developers from walking out in protest today.
It’s for this reason and the many examples before it that Keighley’s statement about Activision Blizzard’s workplace abuse and overall terrible practices is not enough. Keighley should make a statement condemning this company’s behavior during the show, with at least the same enthusiasm he showed while raking Konami over the coals for preventing Hideo Kojima from attending the show in 2015. If he doesn’t even come close to attempting this, it will say a lot about his priorities.
There, now you’ll have a fun reason to tune in for The Game Awards on Thursday evening, just to see if that happens. From here, you can expect Keighley to keep a low profile until the show starts, carefully hyping the show from social media accounts and the official website. It’s unlikely that he’ll do any further interviews with the press between now and the show’s beginning in a few days, but I’m perfectly willing to be proven wrong.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
