Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke took the stage at The Game Awards, not to claim an award this time but to present one—the biggest award of all, in fact, Game of the Year. But he used his time in front of the microphone to first share some thoughts about the current state of the videogame industry, and where it's all gone wrong.
Vincke started off by saying that not only will he be the first person to know who wins game of the year tonight, he also knows who will win the next year, and the next year, and the year after that. He learned this information, he said, from an oracle, who told him that change is coming.
"The oracle told me that the Game of the Year 2025 is going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here on stage," Vincke said. "It's stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand. They didn't have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn't meet those targets.
"Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn't serve the game design. They didn't treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet. They didn't treat their players as users to exploit. And they didn't make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or policy. They knew that if you put the game and the team first, the revenue will follow. They were driven by idealism, and wanted players to have fun, and they realized that if the developers don't have fun, nobody was going to have any fun. They understood the value of respect, that if they treated their developers and players well, the same developers and players would forgive them when things didn't go as planned. But above all they cared about their games, because they love games. It's really that simple."
This isn't the first time Vincke has spoken out against profit-driven industry practices that have led to a decimation of the videogame industry over the past few years. In March, he blasted the corporate "greed" that's devastated game studios, saying. "I've been fighting with publishers my entire life, and I keep on seeing the same mistakes, over and over and over. It's always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers."
The situation has grown pressing enough that even Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, who faced criticism for avoiding the topic in 2023, addressed it directly during an early portion of the show. The first-ever Game Changer award to be handed out at The Game Awards was in fact given to Amir Satvat, for his work in supporting laid-off game developers as they seek new employment in the industry.
As is his way, Vincke ended his story on an upbeat note. "Winning Game of the Year turned out to be a life-changing event for us. It was an amazing thing. To those who will win game of the year 2024, you have no idea what's waiting for you. It's an incredible honor, and you're in for a heck of a ride. And remember, should you be told to wrap it up for tonight, you can always come back next year and chat for three minutes."
Vincke was famously hit with the "please wrap it up" sign during his Game of Year acceptance speech for Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023. It's nice to see he doesn't hold a grudge. And, believe it or not, Baldur's Gate 3 did win yet another award at The Game Awards tonight—for Best Community Support.
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