Why Was Hogwarts Legacy Snubbed By The Game Awards?

you would think that being a juror on the game awards would require you to review and cover in a meaningful way the games that you're responsible for nominating but for the game awards that may not necessarily be a Bonafide requirement the game awards announced the nominees across 31 different categories on November 13th of 2023 in a year packed with amazing video games from beginning to end I was a little curious to see how these nominees and the categories would play out needless to say there were definitely some surprises and for the purposes of this video I'm going to focus on the best RPG category balers Skate 3 Final Fantasy 16 lies of P sea of stars and Starfield all five of these games were nominated for best RPG when I looked at the nominees at first glance I thought that everything was just about right but then as I thought a little bit more on it I realized that something was missing hogwart's Legacy so I went back through all the other categories that it would have made sense for Hogwarts to be nominated in and nothing Hogwarts Legacy was absolutely nowhere to be found the game that per various reports is the best-selling video game of 2023 that brought in over $1 billion in sales has been completely and negligently omitted from the game awards so I got a little curious since sales clearly are not a factor here I had to wonder if the review scores had anything to do with this so I started looking around because I totally understand like for Hogwarts Legacy to not be a part of the game of the year conversation makes sense but best RPG like it's it's a solid RPG to begin with right so but for it not to be there at all was a little perplexing so if you look at Starfield for example Starfield currently is sitting at an 83 on Metacritic with a 7.0 user rating and Hogwarts Legacy is sitting at an 84 with an 8.5 user rating balers Skate 3 has a 96 fall Final Fantasy 16 has an 87 Li of P has an 80 SE of stars has an 88 Hogwarts Legacy scored higher than two of the five nominees in the best RPG category So based on this it doesn't seem that review scores were a factor here because if they were then clearly Hogwarts Legacy would have and should have and could have replaced any one of the two other nominees that had scored higher than lies of p and Starfield so let's just address the elephant in the room if it's not the review scores and if it's not the sales then could it have anything to do with the anti-trans rhetoric that has come from JK rling for some time now well for that to be a factor that would imply that there is and or was some sort of bias in the selection process at the hands of the jurors so this got me thinking how does the game Awards choose the nominees and more importantly who does the choosing so I went ahead and looked up the list of jurors if you go to the game awards website you can go ahead and find exactly everybody that they have on their jury panel if you will this is where things start to get a little interesting knowing the list of jurors that were involved I then decided to see how many of them actually decided to cover and or review hogwart's Legacy and here's what I found but first I want to make it abundantly clear I am not here to attack any one of the juror decision positions to or not to review play or cover Hogwarts Legacy I am not attacking their reviews I'm not attacking the jurors themselves I am here to attack the process out of the 24 us-based jurors 14 of them did not review the game out of the 10 that did two of them wrote some pretty damning reviews of the game that could be construed as having punished the game because of jkr's anti-tr rhetoric if that is the case then two out of the 24 American based jurors failed to be objective in they review with the game and punished it because of JK rling so I got some questions if more than half of the jurors did not review hogwart's Legacy then how are they even allowed to be a part of the jury how are they allowed to have a hand in the nomination process and if we were to look at the juror's due diligence across the other different categories in the game of WS would we find the same level of disparity that we have found here so I dug a little deeper I wanted to see the kind of coverage that the 14 jurors that did not review Hogwarts Legacy gave to the other five five games that were nominated in the best RPG category and what I found is indicative of a process that has absolutely no checks and balances in place only two of the 14 jurists that did not review Hogwarts Legacy actually reviewed all five of the nominees in the best RPG category that would be easy allies and kind of funny one of the jurors of the 14 that did not review Hogwarts Legacy did not review or cover any meaningful way any one of the five games in the ab RPG category that would be Entertainment Weekly game gamertag radio pride.com and variety only reviewed one game out of the five nominees in the best RPG category lies of P was only reviewed by three of the 14 jurors that did not review Hogwarts Legacy and on average these 14 jurors only reviewed two and a half of the five games that were nominated for best RPG so let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture how did the rest of the jurors all 24 of them do when it came to actually reviewing and or covering any meaningful way the five games that were indeed nominated for best RPG and when we look at the jurors here's what we find 58.3% of all jurors did not review hogwart's Legacy we know that now 12.5% of all jurors did not review Starfield yet he got nominated having scored below hogwart's Legacy 45.8% of all jurists did not review lies of p and SE of stars yet Liza P got nominated even though it also scored below hogwart's Legacy 41.7% of all jurors did not review Final Fantasy 16 and Baler Skate 3 on average only 50.7% of all jurors reviewed each game the jurors that did not review Hogwarts Legacy only reviewed 51% of the games that were nominated in the best RPG category in other words they only reviewed two and a half of the five games that were nominated out of all the jurors each juror only reviewed 61% of the nominees this translate to three of the five games so for the most part when we look at the entire list of the American based jurors they only on average reviewed three of the five games that means two of the games got nominated without being covered and so I started wondering what is the process how are they actually selecting the games that get nominated and this is what happens they are sent a ballot by the game awards to all these different people under jurors and the editorial staff for each one of the jurors gets to answer and pick their nominees and their winners for example the best RPG ballot is empty and they're going to write down each member of the editorial staff is going to write down their answer the five most common answers get nominated for that given category if there is a tie then a sixth game can be added into the category which makes me wonder if that's what happened with the game of the year category because there are six in those lies of P was nominated for best RPG yet only three of the 14 jurist that did not cover Hogwarts Legacy actually covered lies of P let that sink in for a moment so what this tells me is that lies of P got nominated in a scenario where 11 of the 14 jurors that did not review Hogwarts Legacy didn't even review lies of P now I know just because they didn't review the game doesn't mean that they didn't actually play the game but the reviews here serve as an important point of reference it would help give us perspective on their decisions to or not to nominate a given game though lies of p is indeed a good game by all means it basically begins to look as if the game was nominated into the category to keep another game out of it now I have no issues with games media Personnel taking stances on any sort of social issues at all they're all human too and that's perfectly fine but my main concern at this point is the Integrity of the selection system at hand all of this leads me to believe that the jury and selection system in place at the game awards is broken or at the very least not yet fully refined oddly enough when looking through the different rules on the game awards website as to you know how the votes are split up you'll find that they use a blended vote which means that 90% of the the vote goes to the jurors and 10% of the vote goes to the fans this is how the winners are selected for each category the explanation for why they use that style of voting makes a lot of sense so I'm not here to argue that but what I am here to argue instead is since the jurors get 90% of the vote what criteria if any is there in place that they have to meet in order for them to be on the jury if they get 90% of the vote then how can it be possible that they can't even review 90% of the games nominated now I understand there's a lot of games that come out every year and this year was no exception as a matter of fact I may even dare say that this year was the more challenging in in regards to those that review the games for a living right but still if you're 90% of the vote and you can't even review 90% of the nominees how is that allowed to happen and how in the world does Entertainment Weekly gamertag radio pride.com and variety get to even be a part of the jury when they barely reviewed one of the five different games in the best RPG category with Entertainment Weekly by the way taken to cake because they reviewed zero and yet they are a part of the jury so lastly let me wrap this up going back to the votes that the jurors get versus the fans that 90% versus 10% split let me read to you directly from the FAQ Regarding why fans can get 100% of the vote now I don't believe fans should get 100% of the vote but just check this out creating a 100% fan bot presents several challenges first given that some games are exclusive to one platform a public vote puts a single plat games on an at an inherent disadvantage over multiplatform titles in addition it is important that Winners cannot be socially engineered in any way we find that a blended vote is the most credible and authentic way to select winners if winners cannot be socially engineered then why did each juror on average only review half of the nominees why are some of the members allowed to be a part of the jury while barely having any coverage on any of the nominees why does one member of the jury get to be on the jury with absolutely no coverage in any of the nominees in the best RPG category the answer is a negligent and poor jury selection process when more than half the jurors did not even touch or review Hogwarts Legacy it's clear as day in this case that although winners cannot be socially engineered losers can

Channel: Player Versus Game

Views: 2,037

Keywords: hogwarts legacy, hogwarts, harry potter, the game awards

Id: FpX5LOnISC8

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023