You can’t have an awards show without a little drama. While institutions like the Oscars can shine a celebratory spotlight on artists and their craft, they also tend to bring out the peanut gallery. Everything from nominations to production choices gets skewered as viewers debate the right way to recognize the art they love.
“You look at the landscape of the video game award show space, and it feels really interesting and cool, but one of the biggest conversations you hear is that the developers don’t have a lot of time to talk about their craft,” Adams tells Digital Trends. “That was a main driving point that coincides with the main overarching one around Spawn On Me, our podcast.
“I want our show to be taken seriously, but also I want folks to not feel like they have to be the most buttoned up and have a pinky in the air when you’re thinking about this really fun pastime,” he says. “There’s a lot of fun to be had that speaks towards the cultural spaces that hip-hop brings to it and Black and brown culture as well.”
A more diverse awards show A big change about 2023’s show is that Adams’ audience got a chance to vote on this year’s nominees thanks to a partnership with GrabLabs. Aided by thousands of votes from his community, this year’s Spawnies features an incredibly wide range of games that don’t look anything like the nominees at the 2022 Game Awards or the New York Video Games Critics Circle.
Though the games award circuit hasn’t come under similar scrutiny yet, but Adams sees the importance of that standard. It’s not just about determining what artists get celebrated, but how a broadcast can authentically reach a wider culture. Though that mission may sound agreeable enough, it can present challenges in the gaming world. Online spaces centered around games can be a hotbed for racism and that’s especially true for Twitch, where Adams streams the show. In recent years, the platform has struggled to combat waves of “hate raids,” targeted attacks in which users spam a streamer’s chat with hateful messages.
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