As The Game Awards closes in on its third production, gaming stalwart/entrepreneur/personality and show founder Geoff Keighley spoke with Cynopsis eSports & Gaming about his plans for the 2016 edition, adding new touchpoints to the event, which was created in partnership with the CEOs of Activision, EA, Konami, Nintendo, PlayStation, Rockstar Games, Xbox, Ubisoft, Valve, and Warner Bros Interactive. Last year’s edition saw viewership spike 20% year-over-year, hitting 2.3 million, with over a billion impressions on Twitter.
Keighley on the challenges of launching The Game Awards: The biggest challenge was risking my own money to launch the show in year one – nothing will ever beat that. Thankfully all the game publishers supported us and helped put The Game Awards on the map in year one. But there were a lot of skeptics – they all wondered how a show like this could work if it wasn’t on TV or backed by a major network. The biggest surprise was to see the audience (and sponsors) really embrace the show’s distribution and format – it’s made by gamers for gamers. It’s exciting to be building a new model for live tentpole events.
On the 2016 Awards: The Game Awards will return live on Thursday, December 1. One big change is that we will be broadcasting the show live in virtual reality across all the major platforms. It’s exciting to begin experimenting with VR. This show makes a lot of sense to do live in VR because the VR game market is exploding and musicians are excited by the format too.
On sponsors: It has been great to partner with major brands like Verizon, Bud Light, Taco Bell and AMD to bring their ideas to life inside the Game Awards. The way we approach sponsorships is really through the eyes of the viewer – how can a brand add value to the experience? All of our work with brands is very custom, it’s not off the shelf marketing where sponsors are running their TV spots in the show. Here’s what I can tell you: This audience really appreciates it when a brand wants to come in and support this industry and activate in an authentic way. Verizon was our title sponsor and literally said to me, “How can we help you make the show even bigger and better? You tell us what you want to do.” The level of trust the brands have placed in us is really flattering, and it’s a great audience to reach. Last year 80% of our viewers were millennials.
On eSports: eSports is such an interesting space – I remember doing eSports specials on Spike TV a decade ago for the World Cyber Games. The same is true today as it was back then: It’s all about the human-interest angle. I’m not a big believer in eSports airing live on traditional TV – this audience wants to watch the content on their phone or even inside the game. That said, a lot of the big eSports games are hard to follow if you aren’t an active player. I’m excited to see how a game like Clash Royale does in eSports because it’s a little easier to follow – the same as some of the fighting.
