The Game Awards are one of the more “interesting” periods of the gaming year, as something almost always goes wrong with it, and there is typically heaps of controversy that the gaming community can’t help but talk about. While this year’s show wasn’t as controversial as last year’s, there were still plenty of “issues” to go around both within gamer circles and the game development community itself. For example, the team behind Black Myth Wukong seems to have an issue with not getting the prestigious “Game of the Year” award at the show. It got multiple other awards, but not the “big one.”
The game’s director, Feng Ji, made a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media site, about the “snub” and stated the following:
“In the end, it won the Best Action and Player’s Voice, especially the Player’s Voice, which is gratifying. But I must admit that there are disappointments and regrets… The games nominated this year are all excellent, but I really don’t understand the selection criteria for this year’s Game of the Year. I came here for nothing! From yesterday to now, I have also seen strong dissatisfaction, unwillingness, and unhappiness in the comments of many players – most of them expressed in a humorous and deconstructive way, which is hilarious.”
There is some debate amongst people who claim that this might have been made “in jest,” especially the line about “coming here for nothing,” as there was something to go there for; you just didn’t get all the awards you wanted. It should be noted that both the awards that the game got were one of the “drive-by” award reveals, in which the team didn’t get to talk about the victory. That honestly remains one of the biggest criticisms of the award show itself.
Feng Ji did make note that his disappointment wasn’t one of arrogance but of confidence in the game he helped make:
“I can fully understand this unwillingness to sympathize with this unhappiness because I know that behind these emotions, it is not pain and malice, but self-esteem and self-confidence.”
One of the ironies of this is that when Black Myth Wukong was nominated for GOTY, many actually weren’t happy with that, as it didn’t meet the “past criteria” of what it meant to be a GOTY title via its critical rating. Many saw it as getting into the selection because of game sales, which caused many issues for various reasons. Still, it didn’t win, so perhaps it all balanced out.
