In a few hours we´ll know about the Goty and the nominations, and I couldn´t stop thinking that everything on the industry is about marketing, a game just by being nominated gets free publicity, that´s why there is always many trailers of upcoming games whenever this show is on, I mean, that´s good, even if this kind of shows tend to be not that good. I´m the first person to criticize The Game Awards, they are kinda bad not gonna lie, still I can´t deny how important they´ve become in these years for companies, because, as I said, this show is all about free marketing.
Don´t get me wrong, it´s not like I hate TGA, I usually watch the shows whenever they are on, even if they are kind of bad, I still get somehow entertained and this time is different because of Xenoblade Chronicles. I´ve never voted on TGA tbh, I´ve never felt like that urge to vote a game on certain category, but this time I´m feeling like I want to give my grain of sand to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 -one of the nominees for Goty- even when I know it´s not gonna win obviously, it´s competing agains´t monsters games like GOWR or Elden Ring. Anyways, I want you to remember the marketing word.
Kit and Krysta are former employees from Nintendo, they have a cool podcast when they talk about their stuff when they worked for Nintendo and from times to times they say interesting stuff. Nintendo always have been that kind of company that never cared too much about TGA, even so, they wanted The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild to win Goty at 2017, you know, like, they were really into that stuff, Kit and Krysta mentioned that it was the first time that actually Nintendo wanted the Goty for one of their games, they also mentioned that Nintendo was badly worried because of Horizon Zero Dawn, they were even worried because Super Mario Odyssey was nominated too at that time. Do you know why because a company like Nintendo at that time really cared about TGA and the whole Goty stuff? Because of marketing, my friend, as simple as that, they really needed that free marketing.
I want to emphasize what I mentioned, NINTENDO WAS AFRAID OF HORIZON ZERO DAWN and that´s curious, I mean, Kit and Krysta mentioned that the atmosphere in the company was extremely tense, that they were actually thinking that Horizon was going to get that Goty, I remember they mentioned something like they practiced the whole speech for months, everytime Nintendo was deleting and recreating the whole speech thing, and you know, it´s insame when you think about this, we are always in a burble saying things like TGA are not even that imporant when we don´t know how TGA are actually that important for videogame companies because of the marketing stuff.
The truth is, we are always saying things like creators doesn´t care about prizes and stuff or trophies, well, Kit and Krysta mentioned too that Anouma and Fujibayashi really wanted that trophy you know, that they were tense and nervous and that when they actually got the trophy they felt happy, like they could close an era and even celebrated with a dinner, that´s interesting because like I said, we are always things like creators dont even care about TGA and well, they care lol, not everyone of course, but there is people out there that actually cares.
It´s understandable that Nintendo actually cared about TGA at 2017, they even know how important is the show in terms of marketing, it was a complicated time for the company because of the failure of the Wii U, they wanted to become that thing everyone was talking about, they needed Zelda to win Goty to boost Nintendo Switch sales and that worked for them, if it wasn´t for this success, who knows, maybe Nintendo wouldn´t be making more consoles.
A game just by being nominated gets free marketing and that´s why I´m happy for Xenoblde Chronicles 3, when it got the nomination I though it was fake, I mean, the picture I saw, I thought it was edited lol but when I confirmed it was for real it was like damn my boy did it I can´t believe it. Monolithsoft is the developer of Xenoblade and they really had a bad time, Xenogears is a masterpiece (narratively speaking) but Square didn´t have faith in them and to be honest, that game was too ahead for its time, same with Xenosaga and for the first time in ages, it seemed like they were actually in the good path with Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, but things happened, Wii U was a failure and Xenoblade Chronicles X was a failure as well because of it, until Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came to save the day and that leads us to today: Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
The history of Monolithsoft is one of personal triumph, finally after so many years they are getting some recognition because of their work and frankly that makes me so happy for them, which is funny because I´m way too cynical when we talk about companies but I just can´t do that with this one. I´d love to play GOWR or Elden Ring but I just can´t, maybe next year, they are excelent games but even eso I highly doubt they´ll make me feel something similar I got while playing XC3.
I can´t wait to watch TGA tomorrow, it´ll be interesting, if you ask me, I think Elden Ring should be the winner, but we´ll see about that, if I feel like it, maybe I´ll talk about the event in a few days.
The Youtube podcast video is not of my property: