E3 Will Host An Awards Ceremony To Celebrate The Event’s Most ‘Anticipated Games’

You know what’s fun? Awards. Everyone loves awards. They are, by and large, a chance to be really positive about something and celebrate achievements. They can also lead to some interesting debates about if the correct awards were given out or if a different nominee should have won them. In video games, they’re also an opportunity to show trailers of upcoming titles, thus creating further excitement. But what if the entire awards show was about upcoming titles though?

That concept is what the Entertainment Software Association is going to test out at this year’s upcoming digital-only E3. In a press release, the ESA announced it planned to host an awards show to celebrate some of the most anticipated upcoming games at the event. The ones choosing the awards will be editors from outlets such as Gamespot and IGN.

This is an interesting idea from the ESA to potentially try and garner more interest from E3. The truth of the event is that interest in it has been waning from the developer side for quite a few years now. Large developers like Sony and EA are choosing to not have a physical presence there, with EA, in particular, hosting their own event around E3 time, because they feel they can better showcase themselves on their own. In the digital age, it’s a hard sell to developers to buy floor space so they can show off their games, or hold a major press conference when it can easily be done through a series of trailers– similar to the way Nintendo handles their Directs.

However, there’s always been a certain charm to being the most anticipated game of E3. When games release they’ll frequently feature box art medals stating how many “E3 Awards” they have won and the excitement around a game can lead to it getting top marketing from publishers. For example, a large part of why No Man’s Sky became such a highly marketed game for Sony was because of the excitement around it following its E3 trailer.

This awards show could be a great opportunity to showcase those moments and convince developers to continue using E3 as a platform to springboard themselves to a more noticeable point. However, anyone that does this will come at a potential cost. With excitement comes fan interest and with fan interest comes expectations. It can be hard to meet those expectations sometimes, especially when E3 trailers are typically nowhere close to the finished game. Devs come to these events and usually show off games that are nowhere close to completion. This means they could change a lot before release, but it also means that a lot of the time the code that’s in these trailers is dummy code, existing only for the event itself. It’s a heavy ask to tell a game developer to devote a month of work on their game to create a product that is going to accomplish nothing more than marketing.

All that said, an awards show is an interesting idea to create more excitement around E3. Celebrating games is never a bad thing and at the end of the day that’s what this is, an opportunity to celebrate some fun looking video games.