Almost 2 million people checked out the inaugural "Game Awards 2014" show created by former VGAs host Geoff Keighley earlier this month, Keighley himself relayed to Polygon. The 1.93 million viewers of this year's show is more than a 75 percent increase over the number of people that tuned in for the finale of Spike TV's long-running "Video Game Awards" last year.
"I am absolutely stunned by the results," Keighley said. "We didn't have any marketing budget or TV spots for the show. I'm used to having a lot of support resources - a promotional team, a digital media team, a PR team. All we had was the support of the game publishers and fans to spread the word and on social media.
"It's empowering that we as a community can get the word out virally about a show like this. I always knew the show would get a better critical response from the community, but in many ways I was making a more serious show that risked not having as much mainstream appeal. That's why Kiefer Sutherland, Conan O'Brien, Trey Parker and Imagine Dragons were such important bookings. All of them truly love games and came to celebrate our medium."
"The Game Awards 2014," which ran a bit long, as most awards shows do, clocking in at more than three hours, had a 96 percent "favorable" sentiment on social media, according to media monitoring and analytics company, Sysmos. Viewers watched an average of 28 minutes of the show with audience members posting more than 350,000 chat messages on Twitch, YouTube and MLGtv.
It was a show that included nearly a dozen game reveals, live performances and, of course, the awards themselves.
Regardless of this initial success, a show for next year isn't a certainty. When Keighley was asked if there would be another show next year his rather peculiar reply was: "I'd definitely like to see it continue on if publishers and fans want to keep it going. But yeah, no idea what shape it will take."
