E3 2021 To Have An Awards Show

Well, this just makes perfect sense for a year of E3 where they announced a few weeks ago that they wanted to gamify the entire experience with leaderboards. Look, I get it, you want to boost fan engagement while also giving an air of respectability. However, an awards show to “determine the most anticipated games of the event” isn’t going to change anything. Revealed in an announcement on Tuesday, June the 1st, we now know that the ESA will host an awards show.

The official E3 2021 Awards, set for June the 15th will be a look back at the previous few days of E3 trying to determine which is the most anticipated announcement of the whole event. President and CEO of the ESA, Stanley Pierre-Louis, said, “For this year’s event, we are collaborating with editors at some of the world’s leading video game media outlets to create the Official E3 2021 Awards Show, recognizing the show’s most anticipated games.” He went on to say, “The broadcast is going to be packed with exciting announcements and reveals, and celebrating innovative publishers and developers is an ideal way to close E3 2021.”

The event will be hosted by three leading personalities in gaming, which means I’ve only heard of one of them. Greg Miller is joined by Jacki Jing and Alex “Goldenboy” Mandez. At least it is not the Ken Doll that has since split from the ESA’s showcase to host his own Summer-long showcase. As usual, being the one with all the gripes in the world, I don’t love the idea of this awards show. Honestly, what does it matter that we hand out awards? Unless we’re making them out of slightly used tinfoil and being humorous about it, I don’t see the point in giving out awards for things we know so little about at this time.

Nonetheless, unlike the Game Awards or anything else, fan engagement won’t entirely dictate what is going to be the winner. Instead, the ESA has called in the editors of IGN, GameSpot, PC Gamer, and GamesRadar+ to form a panel of the usual industry-friendly people. Look, I’m not going to say it is rigged from the outset, what I’m saying is that there isn’t going to be anything you enjoy showing up in there. If Final Fantasy XVI gets a release date, Monster Hunter Rise DLC is announced, or something else, JRPG fans will be disappointed when Elder Scrolls 6 (or Skyrim 2) gets game of the show for 5-seconds of gameplay.