This Thursday is the 8th annual Game Awards hosted by Geoff Keighley, which has been in its current format since 2014. Its history can be traced back all the way to 2003, when Keighley worked on the Spike Video Game Awards (VGAs) which ran till 2013. The Game Awards have a spotted history, especially when you look at the Spike years as being very “bro culture” and unfortunately what you would expect from a early 2000’s show focused on video games hosted on Spike TV, whose old slogan used to be “The First Network For Men” and had award categories like “Cyber Vixen of the Year”.
Keighley has tried and succeeded to help erase some of that past history of The Game Awards in recent years, taking a more active role in not only the behind the scenes production but hosting the shows himself and it has really helped the reputation of these awards. Since 2014, the number of views have grown year over year going from 1.9 million in 2014 to 83 million in 2020 during the virtual event held because of COVID-19. Which is what makes Keighley’s comments about Activision-Blizzard during an interview with the Washington Post while promoting The Game Awards so disappointing. Telling the Washington Post that he supported people coming forward with their stories but did not want to diminish developer’s spotlights to showcase their games.
To catch you up on what is going on with Activision Blizzard (and also many other places in games) I will give a quick rundown of things. On July 20th, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard “collecting numerous complaints about unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation” at the company. After this filing, lots of great reporting from Vice, Bloomberg, and many other outlets started to shed more light on the awful culture that has been taking place for years there. Then on August 3rd J.Allen Brack left his position as the head of Blizzard, being one of the longest standing members and there through most of the years of harassment, other members of Blizzard like Diablo 4 game director Louis Barriga and lead level designer Jesse McCree (who they also had to rename the Overwatch character named after him as well)
Then on September 20th, the SEC subpoenaed executives of Activision Blizzard, including CEO Bobby Kotick. Then most recently in November, new Blizzard co-head Jen Oneal step down after 3 months. It was later revealed that when she took the position she was paid less than her other co-head Mike Ybarra and that she reported to Activision Blizzard’s legal department that she had also been sexually harassed at the company. There has been also a report about Bobby Kotick personally intervening in a sexual harassment investigation and a death threat he made to his assistant in 2006. Activision Blizzard employees have stage a walkout and collected a petition with over 700 signatures demanding Kotick be removed from his CEO position. (Thanks to PC Gamer for the timeline)
With all of those things happening with Activision Blizzard plus other stories of harassment within the industry (Ubisoft, Riot Games, Sony’s Playstation division to just name a few), you would think that Keighley would use his now 83 million strong platform to tell the developers and game players alike that video game’s largest platform hears your stories and stands with you. Keighley has since come back on Twitter and said ”The Game Awards is a time of celebration for this industry, the biggest form of entertainment in the world. "There is no place for abuse, harassment or predatory practices in any company or any community.” but that rings hollow when you still have representation from Activision (also Ubisoft and Riot Games) on your board of advisors. There was a quicker and stronger response from Playstation’s Jim Ryan (who usually puts his foot in his mouth) towards Activision Blizzard then what Geoff Keighley has done here. When Hideo Kojima was kept from the Game Awards by Konami a few years back, Keighley gave a strong verbal response at the show, where was that same energy for this?
Keighley needs to use the influence and audience that he has within the ever growing gaming community towards giving these stories more eyes and ears than they would receive from gaming sites across the internet to better the thing that he loves so much. Because when you decide to not take a stance on something so terrible like sexual and workplace harassment, then I hate to break it to you but you have taken a stance, and it is not the side you want to be on.