Since 2014, The Game Awards is considered one of the most prestigious award ceremonies in the gaming industry. And with this year’s Game Awards, the event will start shifting into a festival standpoint. The Game Festival, as Geoff Keighley calls it, is the first step in that shift.
The Game Festival will be a 48-hour event that will allow players to try out the upcoming games on Steam with their demos. This year’s Game Festival will include 13 titles as a “first-of-its-kind digital event”. The demos will go live on December 12 and will last until December 14. After the event is done, the demos will be removed from Steam. If you ask me, The Game Festival can be a breath of fresh air. The demo releases for video games are nearly dead at this point and I think The Game Festival has the potential to resurrect it with its global community.
The Game Festival 2019
- System Shock (Nightdive Studios)
- Eastward (Pixpil/Chucklefish)
- Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games)
- Moving Out (SMG Studio/Devm Games/Team 17
- Roki (Polygon Treehouse/United Label)
- Chicory (Greg Lobanov)
- Wooden Nickel (Brain & Brain)
- Haven (The Game Bakers)
- Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
- Acid Knife (Powerhoof)
- The Drifter (Powerhoof)
- Carion (Devolver)
- SkateBird (Glass Bottom Games)
“Six years ago I bet everything I had to create The Game Awards as a way to celebrate our passion for gaming. Now feels like the right time to take the next step with The Game Festival, a completely digital approach to the consumer event space. Let’s face it: Not everyone can attend a physical trade show or consumer event. The Game Festival is designed from the ground-up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”
