I’m with stupid

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 11-02-2021
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Seems like media in gaming industry has still a lot to learn from the examples such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Anthem - hype is not everything. Why do I mention it? No, I’m not gonna talk about Cyberpunk 2077 again, some other title caught my attention and by pure coincidence it was a Polish game as well.

The Medium, horror game from Polish studio Bloober Team, premiered in Januray 2021 and it was met with... let’s just say not great reception. Yes, the graphics were good, the atmosphere was pretty good, while the gameplay not so much. Why do I mention it? For one particular reason alone - The Medium was nominated for Gamescom Best Action Adventure Game of 2020 and Best Indie Game of 2020.

What is important about that? Apart, of course, from fact that Gamescom did not took place in 2020 (at least not in traditional way). For once The Medium was planned to premiere on December 10th 2020, which is about 4 months after Gamescom was suppose to take place.

Due to (officially) unforeseen difficulties caused by pandemic (like Cyberpunk 2077 premiere being moved to that exact date) The Medium finally premiered in 2021. And while faced with lukewarm reception it became pretty obvious that it had some adventure elements in it, but action... not so much.

To put it another way - it was suppose to be the best action adventure game of 2020, they year that it did not premiered, but also it did not belonged to the category it was assigned to. Not to mention that it is not that good, so... zero out of three. Well done Gamescom!

The sheer stupidity of giving awards to games that did not premiered yet is astonishing itself, but even if The Medium would turn out to be the best game of the genre what is the point if the award was given before the premiere, so no one actually had a chance to play it? It would be based on what? A hunch?

Another funny detail - with hundreds of games being published on Steam each week (of course I take under consideration that most of them are on crapfest level) you can’t find a game that was already published to nominate?

I can’t name a single other industry, in which awards are given to products that don’t actually exist. Can you recall a car that was given award before it left factory? Movie was given Oscar before it left post-production? Or TV show was given Emmy before first episode? Nope. It is a gaming industry specific weird practice - why waiting what people think? They might not like our product, so let’s give ourselves some awards just for the sake of giving them.

Let’s not forget that Cyberpunk 2077 had received dozens of award before its infamous premiere, but to be honest, it does not look like it’s gonna get many after. I realize it is frustrating for the developers to wait years until premiere of their product, but at the same time media should learn that the difference between what was promised in the product and its final state is usually significant. Not because of bad faith of the developers (at least usually), but because of the hard reality of working on such complicated project and facing financial and technological obstacles.

Yet, gaming industry media, if you keep giving away awards just for the ideas or promises, you might end up like Cyberpunk 2077 - slightly embarrassing and quickly forgotten.

11-02-2021