Every year, Geoff Keighley usually gets up on stage and hosts The Game Awards, an event that finds video games being given awards for certain categories. It’s basically called the “Oscars of gaming” and finds numerous nominees and one winner per category. Now, this year it has been confirmed that there will be an award focusing on accessibility.
The confirmation came from Geoff Keighley in an interview with GamesBeat, discussing the upcoming event. Last year, GamesBeat points out that with a physical audience and a digital audience combined, The Game Awards 2019 saw nearly 50 million viewers with a peak of 7.7 million.
Geoff told GamesBeat that he was excited about a new award which is for Innovation in Accessibility which will join the Global Gaming Citizen program, the Games for Impact award. Geoff explains, “We have specialists and we’ll ask our regular jury what they think about accessibility,” he adds, “But I really want people who are experts to recognize the work for a colorblind mode or other things.”
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in every event that usually takes place, to take place digitally. As it happens, all these digital events have been doing fairly well in views, and we’ve even had Geoff hosting the Summer of Gaming event and well…he’s pretty much everywhere right now.
The Game Awards 2020 will still be going ahead as a result of the positive outcome from these digital events, as Geoff says, “Those things encouraged us to go forward with the show in December, even though we didn’t know what it would look like.”
The Game Awards 2020 looks to be available to watch this year at most online platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, and while there’s no in-person audience, the show will be filmed at “live stages in Tokyo and London and Los Angeles” and will also find ways to keep the fans excited through those who may co-stream the show.
Personally, I think it’s a fantastic move to introduce an award for accessibility at such a large awards ceremony, and I’m excited to tune in on December 10, 2020, when the show is planned to go live.
