Last week Game developer Organizers of industry show/promotional extravaganza The Game Awards, led by Geoff Keighley, have said they have no plans to do anything with their Future Class initiative this year, have reported. Now the program, founded in 2020 with the goal of identifying new talent in the field of game development, is faced with a black hole of the future. To make matters worse, those who participated in the initiative during the years it was in operation were left frustrated and unable to access the web page confirming they had ever been part of the program.
A number of developers featured as part of the Future Class initiative and who remain part of the dedicated Discord server have already reached out to us. Guardian about how the fate of the program left them feeling. They also documented some back-and-forth between themselves and The Game Awards organizers, including game show host Geoff Keighley, over improvements the contestants wanted to see in the program and wanting the 2023 show to acknowledge that. Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The initial push was reportedly based on the negative experiences that nominees in the early years of Future Class had when attending the show. “We were basically props,” said game producer and Class of 2020 member Dianna Laura, citing examples such as a meeting at Starbucks that participants felt upstaged them, main show seats located behind camera risers that blocked views, and mentoring programs over the next year limited to brief Zoom conversations with industry representatives.
While this advocacy, according to the report, led to an overall more positive experience for later nominees, attempts by members to persuade Keighley and company to read a statement during the 2023 Game Awards ceremony expressing support for Palestine and calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip led to their open letter ignored. Kayleigh, who did not respond to The Guardian's request for comment (I also reached out to her), according to one attendee, sat looking “indignant” during a follow-up call in which some members recommended that the awards show have more female presenters and acknowledged the mass layoffs of developers this year.
Many participants were left disappointed, especially after the Future Class inductee archive was removed from The Game Awards website, while some also questioned whether their efforts to advocate for improvements to the program and acknowledge key issues may have contributed to the initiative being left in limbo. “Since then [we pushed back] it was like, “This is too much trouble, it would be better to make peace,” Laura said, while community manager Natalie Cheko added, “As a result of defending ourselves (the very thing we were inducted for), we were punished for what we were supposedly celebrated for.”
The silver lining to the situation is that members have obviously pulled together as a Discord community and continue to do so. So, as misguided and cynical as The Game Awards' Future Class project was, at least it appears to have helped bring together some like-minded people with noble goals.
