The BAFTA Games Awards celebrates the craft of making games
12.11.2023
By Brian Crecente
The hope is that highlighting these titles—selected by the more than 1,200 games members of BAFTA—will both offer more insight into the selection process and also spark conversations around a collection of notable video game creations.
“Part of it is back to being in the conversation around the best games of the year,” said Tara Saunders, chair of BAFTA’s Games Committee, noting that the BAFTA Games Awards are held in early 2024. “There's a lot of conversation towards the end of the year around what are the best games of the year, and I think for the BAFTA membership voice to be in that is really important.
“I think the list will kick-start a huge amount of discussion. Knowing that is what professionals have lifted up, I think that's interesting to people.”
The decision to unveil a list of notable games earlier in the judging process is the most recent sign of an approach that helps maintain the relevancy of the show. Since its inception in 2003, the BAFTA Games Awards have embraced change.
Evolution
In those early years, the BAFTA awards looked a bit like many of the other awards being handed out to video games at the time. There was a focus on genre and platform. But small signs of a shift away from that approach started showing up almost immediately. By the 2010s, the awards had shifted mostly away from those genre categories and toward the sorts of awards designed to highlight the creators as much as their creations.
“The awards have evolved a lot,” Saunders said. “If you look at them now, they're very much more based around the craft of making games. So animation, artistic achievement, audio achievements.”
The animation award—which was introduced in 2020—is a recent example of how those changes come about. Prior to 2020, animation was considered a part of the larger artistic achievement award, but each year the committee reviews the awards to see if changes should be made. They decided that animation was its own discipline worthy of its own category.
“I think animation was really being overlooked as part of the art award,” Saunders said. “Every year we review the awards and look if there's anything that needs introducing based on how the games industry is shifting.
“I think the awards have really evolved along with how the industry has evolved.”
The current state of the BAFTA Games Awards makes it clear that it is an award show that is, as Saunders said, about “celebrating the creation, the craft, and the quality of games with the aim of rewarding those outputs and inspiring the future of the industry.”
Saunders said she also hopes that in publicizing these awards the committee doesn’t just underscore the treasure trove of good games coming out each year, but that it also shows that making games is a valid career choice.
The 2024 awards have just one genre category: Family.
“I think it's important to have things like family games because if not, you'd probably get all of the big-budget action adventure games kind of in there and actually part of the awards are structured in a way to showcase the breadth of the industry,” Saunders said.
The Process
The BAFTA Games Awards have an interesting—and, yes, evolving—approach to its voting process.
Entries opened this year on June 1 and closed on Nov. 9. Once submissions are closed, the games are grouped into their categories and voted on by all games voting members. The top ten for each category is longlisted.
That longlist is being announced for the first time on Dec. 14.
Meanwhile, shortlisted entries in the Best Game and British Game categories are judged by the games voting members to determine six nominations in each category. Finally, those six are judged by the same group to determine the winner.
The rest of the categories are sent to juries made up of nine to 12 industry experts in that particular field, and chaired by a member or former member of the Games Committee.
The jury meets to debate the nominees for these categories. There’s also a blind vote to determine the winner, which isn’t revealed until it’s announced during the ceremony.
The nominees are revealed on March 7, with the awards ceremony taking place on April 11.
“I've seen the rigor of the process both as a general BAFTA member, before I was on the Games Committee, and then as part of the Games Committee where our role is to put those juries together around the specific awards,” Saunders said. “To have a group of top talented animators voting on the animation awards is really important when you get to that point and you're discussing the quality of animation across the longlist of games.
“The discussions involve people who know what they're doing, talking about why these games should be awarded.”
Award Season
The release of BAFTA Games Awards’ longlist comes the week after this year’s Game Awards wrapped. The Game Awards, hosted and co-produced by Geoff Keighley, brings in a mammoth audience each year to its internationally streamed show which features not just awards but game announcements, entertainment, and trailers.
The BAFTA Games Awards itself is held about two months after the DICE Awards, which take place in Las Vegas following the DICE Summit.
But Saunders said BAFTA doesn’t look at other awards shows as it continues to refine its approach to highlighting the best games and game-makers in the industry each year.
“It's very much focused on what it's doing itself,” she said, “and looking at what it does itself in relation to the industry.
“We try to keep the awards fresh and relevant to the industry each year to drive and celebrate specialist craft work. Our awards are also member-driven and I think that's a key point. They're not commercially driven. They’re also voted on by membership, which is actually really important. They're peer awards.”
The BAFTA Games Awards also doesn’t address international issues or industry turmoil.
“We keep it about the celebration of the craft of making games,” she said, adding that BAFTA Games does address those sorts of issues throughout the year in other ways. “I think that it is really important. BAFTA does a huge amount of work behind the scenes to tackle serious issues.”
Earlier this year, BAFTA teamed up with Safe In Our World to host a Games Mental Health Summit, for instance. The organization also hosts Masterclasses on topics as diverse as dystopia in games, video game composing, and the evolution of black representation in film, games, and TV.
But the awards, Saunders said, are for celebration.
The Craft
That focus on the craft of making video games underscores why the BAFTA Games Awards exist.
“What the awards really do is validate the seriousness of what we do,” said Saunders, who is also the studio head of PlayStation’s London studio. “OK, we make games for a living. We make entertainment. But I think celebrating the craft of that and celebrating the craft of that in a public domain is really important to actually elevate the cultural significance of games.
“BAFTA really does a hell of a lot of good work to elevate the cultural importance of games and celebrate their power as a really strong storytelling medium. It's critical to what we do.”
Stay tuned for the BAFTA Games Awards longlist, which you’ll find on the Epic Games Store News on Dec. 14.