I’m Geoff Keighley, Producer of the Game Awards. AMA!

Are you Ohhhhh so excited for the event this Thursday Geoff?

I am!

Can you give a ballpark estimate of how many games are going to be announced at TGA?

I think there are a good dozen+ games that will be announced/revealed at the show for the first time.

will the announcers and special guests pre record their messages or will it be traditional on a stage?

It's going to be a combination of things -- some people live, some live on zoom, some pre-taped. Given the pandemic this is sort of evolving daily.

Why does the Player's Voice category show the current voting percentages? Looking at Twitter and other social media, it seems like all that does is encourage brigading, undermining the eventual winner of that category.

We only do it in that category -- it's an experiment, a different approach with a bracket system and showing voting. Social engineering, etc is something we are mindful of and part of the reason the main show categories only have 10% fan voting.

How is it that you can keep reveals from leaking out for an incredible amount of time? Also, if you could personally nominate any game for TGAs which game would it be from this year? If I could nominate any game it'd be Bugsnax just for the fun of it.

We have an awesome team that wants to surprise everyone!

Was there ever an upset at the game awards that truly shocked you?

Good question! I remember Splatoon won best Multiplayer game one year, that was pretty cool/shocking!

Hey Geoff, big fan of the show. There is one question I had for years:

Why do you host this show on a thursday? For europeans its in the middle of the night on friday, so most of us can´t watch because of work / school. Wouldn´t it make more sense for it to be on a friday?

It's always tough to figure out the best time -- we did move the show up 2 hours this year, so it's a little earlier in Europe. We picked the date a long time ago pre-COVID.

1. Why is Half-Life: Alyx not nominated for GOTY?
2. Why is Among Us nominated for best multiplayer (and other categories), even though it didn't come out this year?
3. Why is Demon's Souls not nominated in any category? It has very good reviews and hype, seems weird. Is the release date a factor?

1. You'd have to ask the jury that votes on the awards. I love Alyx and would have put it on my ballot if I voted. The fact that it's a VR-only game makes it harder.
2. Among Us is eligible in all categories, it's a game that continues to grow and improve with new updates. All ongoing games are eligible in all categories, it's up to the judges to decide if they are worthy on nomination in any given year. In a lot of ways that game didn't really get "discovered" until this year.
3. Ask to jury on that one. It's a great game!

well I always ask this but has any material relating to this game awards been leaked already?

Nope, nothing from our main show has been leaked that I know of so far.

What reveal has been the most shocking to you knowing that it will take place on your show?

Joker in Smash was pretty cool! Xbox reveal last year.

Ehi geoff! I'll follow the game awards from italy, can't wait! Two questions for you:

1) Will you give a little bit more room at the player's voice award? Last year every award got this huge presentation, while "player's voice" was assigned in like ten seconds. It's our awards, so i feel like it should be a little be more relevant!

2) What game did you enjoy the most this year and why?

We always try to balance the different awards every year and cycle through unique ones -- it's always tough. This year it was hard with Player's Voice because we didn't know the final nominees until yesterday. And the way we are producing the show, virtually, meant we had to firm up the categories and guests a lot earlier.

Half-Life: Alyx is probably my favorite game of the year, but I also havent' played a lot of the November games yet.

I saw 5 reveals for the 2020 Pre-Show, do you have a total on the number of main show reveals?

I think around 12-15 or so?

Is there any new games being announce at the events that will be bigger than last year?

That's always a subjective question -- what do you mean by "bigger"? Sort of depends on what kind of games you like. We have announcements from big triple-A games and also smaller titles too.

Hi Geoff, what are you looking forward to doing once the Awards are over?

Getting some sleep! This has been a tough one.

With G4 now being back in full swing, any chance we will see any Presence from them this year or in the future?

Maybe? Not this year. I've talked to them a bit, think they are still figuring out their plans overall.

Hey Geoff, in your opinion, is their a 'megaton' announcement in this years Game Awards?

That's a loaded question! One man's megaton is another man's disappointment. I think we have some fun stuff lined up, but I'll let you all judge that on Thursday night :)

Every year The Game Awards seems to top itself EVERY year, what would you say your favourite year has been so far?

Hard to say, I really liked our 2018 show with Reggie/Phil/Shawn opening, the RDR2 performance, etc. That one was really special.

Hey Geoff! What difficulties did the pandemic cause when setting up the show? (Other than the pandemic causing this year's game awards to be virtual)

Well it's a lot of things -- just a lot of stress with the uncertainty of everything. We want to keep everyone safe, but still bring together the community around the world. It's definitely the most difficult TGA we've produced.

Hey Geoff, how do you think the future game shows will play out once the pandemic stops ?

I think things will continue to be more virtual -- and global. Last year we started The Game Festival to bring you guys game demos at home. And we're doing that again, and also streaming demos with no downloads with Nvidia.

The days of regional consumer/trade shows are changing -- we're really focused on bringing the world together around games digitally.

I know you're impartial about the show and don't vote towards any of the categories. But what games do you want to win? What would you be happy to see recognised?

Also, are there any presenters on your dream list you'd love to get on the show in the future?

We have one presenter for the show that has been a dream of mine to have at the show -- we'll be announcing them soon!

You may have talked about this before, but how will the awards be handed this year? Will they be made physically, or will they just be awarded 'digitally'?

Nominees will be joining us live via Zoom -- but it will all be fully live in the main show, meaning we aren't telling anyone in advance who wins.

What happened to the Industry Icon award last year and will it return this year?

It won't return this year. It will next year hopefully. We really want to do that properly and it felt cheap to do it without a big in person audience to celebrate the individual.

Hey Geoff, my friends and family watch the game awards live every year. What’s your favorite part of the planning processes?

It's probably right about now when I see the finished reveals!

Will presenters be live in studio with you or remote via Zoom/etc?

Sort of a combination of things -- it's evolving and changing daily tbh.

When did you start planning this years show?

In january

Hi Geoff, this year it was said that TGA was gonna being streamed from LA, London and Tokyo this year. How this is gonna work exactly with game nominations and worldwide announcements/premieres ?

Our main stage is in Los Angeles, and then nominees will join us virtually. We have the London Philharmonic joining us from London, and then something cool from Tokyo as well.

Will we ever be able to see the numbers of nominations a nominee got that made it eligible for the award? It would be cool to see how close a game got to be nominated over another one for a category.

I'm not sure if we'd ever show that -- we could, but I am also mindful of the lower scoring games. Most traditional awards shows don't reveal the number of votes for nominees or winners.

Hi Geoff, can you tell us how long the show will be?

Probably around 2.5 hours for the main show I think, similar to past years.

With COVID-19 being an issue, how different will this year's Game Awards be compared to previous years? Will it be completely virtual or will there just be a smaller audience social distancing?

Also, thanks for putting this event together every year, the Game Awards are always a joy to watch.

No live in person audience at all this year. It's just not safe.

Hey Geoff! I know these days are busy for you but in the downtime months do you get time to sit and actually play some video games?

I do, I can't wait to go back to that next week! I'm going to play Miles Morales first I think.

Will there be a live feed for the winners of each category so we can see/ share their joy (I assume you cant invite everyone over amirite)?

Correct, for the main show categories the nominees will all be joining us live and the winner will accept live.

Why are the fan votes only 10%? Shouldn't it be 50/50?

This is the system we've used and it seems to work pretty well. We have the Player's Voice award that is 100% fan voted. Voting continues through end of today.