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Tonight, London’s Southbank Centre will host the twentieth version of the BAFTA Games Awards. For 20 years, one of the most prestigious awards from the world of movie and TV has held a devoted ceremony to recognise excellence in video video games and there aren’t any indicators of the organisation dropping any of its curiosity or enthusiasm for the medium.
The business is sort of unrecognisable in comparison with when the first video games BAFTAs have been held. In 2004, the PlayStation 2 was nonetheless king, Xbox was a plucky newcomer to the house, retail was nonetheless the dominant channel for getting video games, and cellular titles had arguably nonetheless peaked with the years-old Snake.
Over time, we’ve seen the rise of on-line multiplayer gaming, the smartphone revolution, the adoption of digital actuality, the growth of the indie scene… the checklist goes on. And BAFTA’s head of video games Luke Hebblethwaite says the organisation has executed its greatest to evolve the awards accordingly.
“For those who look again at BAFTA’s very first ceremony 20 years in the past, it mirrored a unique, barely extra harmless time, we would say,” he tells GamesIndustry.biz. “It felt a bit extra like a company convention occasion, whereas today our awards stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the movie and TV awards. They’re crimson carpet occasions, they’re excessive status, they usually’re extensively lined by the media.
“Movie was seen as a lesser artwork and theatre, TV as lesser than movie, and BAFTA was a pivotal organisation that helped change that. That may be our function in video games too”
“The present itself has advanced rather a lot – if we stored the identical classes that we had 20 years in the past, these would look very outdated. We now not have genre-based awards, we don’t have platform or device-based awards. 257 video games have been entered for the BAFTA video games awards this 12 months and they’re throughout each system kind, throughout every kind of genres and video games, and they can compete equally on equal footing with one another today.
“BAFTA’s awards replicate the craft of making video games, and we see these video games that excel in what they’re doing get recognised by our voting members and our juries to put them amongst the greatest in our business.”
There isn’t precisely a scarcity of online game awards ceremonies – nearly each business convention has its personal awards hooked up – however what makes the BAFTAs stand out is the status it brings from a historical past of recognising excellence in different leisure sectors. Hebblethwaite emphasises that BAFTA itself is “an arts charity that exists to champion the artistic and cultural significance” of leisure, and video games are a key medium inside that mission.
“Coming from the heritage of movie and TV that we’ve got constructed up over these 75 years, BAFTA’s title carries quite a bit of weight with it that comes from that cultural significance,” he continues. “We’re in a position to convey that message of the significance of video games to a wider medium.”
“The truth that video games are seen as a cultural medium and never simply an financial entity is crucial for a way the business grows”
Hebblethwaite means that BAFTA’s video games awards – in addition to the wider work it does on this house, similar to the Breakthrough Brits, Younger Sport Designers competitors, and masterclasses – all assist to “degree the enjoying subject of understanding,” opening up the world of video video games to folks, academics, policymakers and extra. And that understanding is significant to the future of the business.
“The truth that video games are seen as a cultural medium and never simply an financial entity is crucial for a way the business grows,” he says. “If you concentrate on the ever-expanding must develop the marketplace for video games, our addressable market, the folks which are enjoying video games, BAFTA is bringing video games to new audiences.
“Our media reduce by means of is implausible. We’re stay on the ten o’clock information and the six o’clock information on the crimson carpet for the video games awards. And so we’re in a position to convey that message to people who find themselves receptive to listening to about BAFTA from our work in movie and TV. That opens extra doorways and continues to develop who’s taken with video games and enjoying them.”
That media cut-through is one other ingredient of BAFTA’s recreation awards that has advanced. Hebblethwaite factors to the incontrovertible fact that the announcement of this 12 months’s host, comic Phil Wang, made the entrance web page of the BBC Information web site – “a brand new achievement for us,” the BAFTA video games head provides. Equally, BAFTA was ready to attract consideration to the longlist of nominees by releasing this sooner than regular, round Christmas, highlighting the 60 greatest video video games of the 12 months. Even a current BAFTA ballot made headlines, with followers voting Lara Croft as the most iconic online game character of all time.
Hebblethwaite additionally cites a current survey BAFTA carried out with Ofcom, which exhibits that 37% of 18 to 34-year-olds in the UK both watched or heard about the 2023 video games awards. Throughout the common inhabitants, this got here in at 25%. And of people who don’t watch the ceremony, round half later discover out about the outcomes, both actively searching for them or coming throughout them when studying the information.
Regardless of how the consciousness of the BAFTA Games Awards has grown in the final 20 years, there may be nonetheless a disparity that’s price addressing. The movie and TV editions of the awards are televised yearly, whereas the video games awards are solely broadcast by way of a livestream (you’ll be able to tune in your self via the BAFTA YouTube channel). Hebblethwaite argues that that is partly as a result of the gaming viewers is extra more likely to watch one thing on-line, and in addition that there’s a higher want to succeed in a world viewership – one thing extra simply completed by way of a livestream than terrestrial channels – than the movie and TV awards.
“The Games Awards is an internationally going through awards,” he explains. “Games are inherently a world product or a world media. The video games represented at are worldwide. We solely have one British recreation award, whereas the BAFTA TV Awards focus very closely on British TV, and they also’re are televised there.
“The movie awards match inside the schedule of how movie awards work round the world, and that’s an advanced path to the Oscars and so forth. With the video games awards, we’re making an attempt to place that in direction of the place video games followers are and they’re natively on-line. So we direct in direction of on-line platforms as a result of that’s the place we meet a barely youthful demographic who usually tend to watch what we’re doing. However we’ve got ambitions to proceed to develop that viewers.”
The printed of the awards could also be dealt with otherwise, however Hebblethwaite tells us BAFTA is more and more decided to deal with the expertise behind the video games with the identical reverence and respect because it does for movie and TV icons. He factors to a current BAFTA masterclass with Yoshinori Kitase, director of Closing Fantasy 7; after the masterclass, BAFTA did a quantity of extra issues behind the scenes with the veteran director, together with video interviews, a press briefing, and a photoshoot.
“It’s the identical type of expertise that we had with Margot Robbie just some days earlier than, or we’d have with Ridley Scott If he got here to city,” Hebblethwaite explains. “It’s actually vital that video games folks get that very same degree of expertise. And inside BAFTA that’s undoubtedly one of the issues over the final two years we’ve actually advocated for and have executed much more to assist our neighborhood.”
Nonetheless, extra so than movie and TV, video video games are very a lot a staff effort. Actually in the AAA house, no single particular person might be credited with the high quality of a recreation – it takes a whole lot, maybe 1000’s of folks working collectively to place collectively some of the largest titles on the market. It’s a stark distinction to different leisure mediums, the place every launch has a ‘face’ to it, be it the director or lead actor.
Hebblethwaite recognises this, and even observes that firms replicate this throughout the BAFTA nomination course of – when requested for named people, most will credit score the staff or studio.
“We additionally don’t cope with superstar in the identical method in the video games world as we do in movie and TV,” he provides. “We do have well-known folks in the event you take a look at sure auteurs inside the business. Or voice actors – I believe they’re most likely some of the nearer issues we’ve got to that. And it’s nice that we’ve got these issues, everybody likes a human face they will get behind and following somebody’s story, and that may carry quite a bit to our business. Nevertheless it’s completely about that recognition of teamwork.”
This extends into BAFTA’s wider work in the video games house. The business or student-facing occasions it holds typically function consultants from a variety of disciplines from throughout the game-making course of, and Hebblethwaite is eager to construct additional on this.
“It doesn’t matter what it’s you do, you deserve your time on BAFTA’s stage and in our work”
“It’s simply as vital that we’ve got technical artists on stage as we do artistic administrators,” he says. “It’s simply as vital we’ve got neighborhood managers on stage, as we do voice actors. The work that these folks do is pivotal to how video games get made and the success of these video games in methods which are so attention-grabbing to debate and to find out about and to share that information and perception. It doesn’t matter what it’s you do, you deserve your time on BAFTA’s stage and in our work.”
Whereas the mainstream consciousness and acceptance of video video games has grown dramatically in the final 20 years, the business nonetheless has obstacles to beat. BAFTA could intention to offer video video games the identical remedy it does to TV and movie, however the wider inhabitants doesn’t essentially regard them equally.
“You and I do know that shouldn’t be the case, however we all know there’s that hurdle that also exists,” Hebblethwaite acknowledges. “There was as soon as a time we might have stated the identical about TV and movie. Movie was seen as a lesser artwork and theatre, and TV was seen as a lesser artwork than movie, and BAFTA was one of these pivotal organisations round the world that helped change that, and that may be our function in video games as nicely.
“I very a lot imagine that that’s one thing we will do and one of the missions we’ve got forward of us. It’ll work in a barely completely different method for video games than it did for movie and TV and so forth, however that’s actually the future for BAFTA and for video games.”
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