Why the 2024 Game Awards Dialed Back Its Hollywood Element

As the video game industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, Thursday’s Game Awards took a decidedly inward turn after years of letting Hollywood in.

TGA has always stood out for how much it doesn’t emulate the entertainment industry’s topline awards shows, allowing the public to vote on its categories and chucking traditional commercial blocks for gaming announcements and trailers.

Yet Hollywood has always flocked to it, with Game Awards organizers consistently signing big actors and filmmakers to promote films and TV shows — often at the expense of time devoted to the show’s actual winners.

On one hand, the global livestream’s ever-increasing viewership of more than 100 million makes it a bonanza for those in any media industry seeking easy promotion, which keeps the ceremony well funded. The 2023 show saw the likes of Matthew McConaughey and Timothée Chalamet grace the stage as presenters, with the latter doing so on the verge of Warner Bros.’ “Wonka” hitting theaters.

But last year’s bombardment of actors struck a sour note with the video game industry, which saw the show as undercutting awards recipients during an increasingly challenging time for the industry.

The 2023 Game Awards capped a year that saw a sharp uptick in industry layoffs, which worsened significantly in 2024. Video gaming has lost just under 15,000 jobs this year, the latest cuts of which came from Warner Bros. Montreal on Thursday.

WB Montreal worked on February’s “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” a costly flop that WB Games stopped supporting with new content earlier this week. Accepting an award for best VR/AR game, “Batman: Arkham Shadow” publisher Oculus Studios made it a point to shout out both “Suicide Squad” studios, which worked on previous “Arkham” games.

Industry layoffs were further addressed through Amir Satvat, who accepted the inaugural Game Changer honor for helping beleaguered workers find new jobs.

Swen Vincke, whose Larian Studios won game of the year in 2023 for “Baldur’s Gate 3,” also acknowledged the difficulties the industry is facing when he presented the game of the year award, which went to Sony’s “Astro Bot.”

While poking fun at how his prior acceptance speech was cut short in the last ceremony, Vincke criticized publishers for prioritizing sales targets over creativity and games people want to play, playfully citing his grievances as coming from an “oracle” he spoke to.

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As much as “Astro Bot” legitimized Sony’s strength in games, winning four awards in total, PlayStation’s year was still soured by “Concord,” a pricey live service that debuted to very poor engagement in August before it was permanently shuttered less than two weeks later.

As for the arenas of Hollywood that were part of the 2024 Game Awards, they were all gaming adjacent. Harrison Ford presented an award early in the show but was there to support “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,” a Bethesda release that bowed Tuesday, having granted his likeness to Troy Baker’s voice performance. Aaron Paul, of “Breaking Bad” fame, also showed up to reveal a trailer for “Dispatch,” a new game he lent his voice to, alongside prominent voice actor Laura Bailey.

Netflix constituted the sole big push from the Hollywood side, teasing the upcoming second season of “Squid Game,” but even that was secondary to “Squid Game: Unleashed,” the streamer’s own gaming take on its biggest series. “Unleashed” is out this Tuesday and will be free for non-subscribers for a limited time in the run-up to the show’s second season, which streams Dec. 26.

Likewise, a reveal trailer for video game “Game of Thrones: Kingsroad” was shown, but there was no subsequent promotion of HBO’s “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the next “Game of Thrones” prequel series, due in 2025.

Beyond that, Amazon’s “Fallout” got some love, winning for best adaptation after becoming one of the year’s biggest streaming hits. Netflix’s “Arcane” was nominated for the same award, with music from the “League of Legends” adaptation comprising a performance from 21 Pilots.