Where To Watch And What To Expect

It’s that time of the year again: Geoff Keighley’s annual Game Awards ceremony will be held today, December 8, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles at 4:30 p.m. local time / 7:30 p.m. ET. Are you going to watch along with us?

Thanks to a very handy tweet from the official Game Awards account, we know that you’ll have the choice of watching the event on YouTube, Twitch, Steam, or Twitter.

You may have your favorite platform of choice already, which by all means is a fair way to make up your mind as to where you’ll park your eyes and ears for about three hours. But as the tweet indicates, you can see the event in 4k on YouTube, claim exclusive rewards on Twitch (details below), watch on Steam (yes, Steam) to possibly win a Steam Deck (you’ll need to register) or, uh, catch the festivities on legacy social media website Twitter dot com.

Where to stream? If you ask me, the chance to win a Steam Deck is a pretty enticing reason to watch the awards on Steam.tv, which is totally a thing that exists. Valve is pledging to give out one of the damn things for every minute of the awards. Valve’s mini PC is one of the coolest pieces of gaming hardware around, so that’s hard to turn down.

Read More: 14 Best Steam Deck Games Of 2022

But maybe Twitch rewards are more your style. The full details of the Twitch viewer rewards for The Game Awards are listed here, but here’s the gist of it:

• You’ll need to watch 60 minutes of The Game Awards between 7:30 p.m. ET and 10:30 p.m. ET.
• You must watch the show on one of Twitch’s sanctioned channels (the official Game Awards channel is a good bet, but the full list is here).
• Rewards will be sent to your Twitch inbox and you must redeem them by December 10, 3 p.m. ET (that’s this Saturday, by the way).

But what are you winning? It’s largely some cosmetic items, the only one of which I care about is the Warframe syandana if we’re being honest. Actually I hope it’s Warframe and not Wraframe, Warframe’s evil twin with the goatee and sinister laugh. But there’s also a free game. Have a look and maybe something strikes your fancy:

So you’ve got a choice of the highest resolution on YouTube, a chance at winning a Steam Deck by watching on Steam, or guaranteed (provided you’ve followed everything listed above) cosmetics for Fall Guys, Warframe, Among Us, a deluxe-edition upgrade for Sifu, Twitch emotes from Cult of the Lamb, and a free copy of Rogue Legacy (on the Epic Game Store).

Or, you know, you could watch it on Twitter. Decisions, decisions.

Okay. That’s where and when and what you might win. But what is even going to be at this event besides shallow self-congratulatory celebrations to fill the meaningless void that is our existence? (You can see the full list of nominees for tonight’s awards here, and I know at least one person who will be tuning in just to have his heart broken when Xenoblade Chronicles 3 doesn’t win Game of the Year.) I could publish reckless speculations on my part (Half-Li—I can’t do it), but instead let me lay out what we almost certainly for a fact know will be there.

• Come on, it’s Keighley. You know his choom Kojima will be there. Everyone’s wondering what to expect from the lauded Japanese dev’s studio in a post-Death Stranding world, but based on a typically mysterious tweet from the man himself (retweeted by the official Game Awards Twitter) it feels likely we’ll see Kojima’s latest jam.
• If you’re into music being played at a gaming event for some godforsaken reason, you might be pleased to know that Bear McCreary, composer for Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, and a little video game called God of War Ragnarök, will be in attendance for a live performance of “Blood Upon the Snow” from that very game.
• We also know that a brand-new trailer for Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion, Lightfall, will drop during the event.
• It also seems we’ll see a bit of EA and Koei Tecmo’s upcoming Monster Hunter-inspired game, Wild Hearts. This one definitely caught my attention back in September, so I’m interested to see what’s in store.
• Baldur’s Gate fans will want to check out a new look at the upcoming third entry in this legendary RPG series.
• We’re also going to see some gameplay from Jedi: Fallen Order’s sequel, Survivor. It’s true because Keighley said so (and I don’t care because it’s not Titanfall 3).

Beyond the games, some important, possibly even fancy people are expected to make an appearance. Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Troy Baker, and Ashley Johnson will be at the The Game Awards ahead of the upcoming HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, expected next year. So will, um, Animal from The Muppets. Josef Fares, director of A Way Out and It Takes Two, is also expected to be there to wow us all with his colorful vocabulary.

So that’s when, where, why, and what we’re expecting to see during the Geoffawards tonight. Of course there might be a surprise or two we haven’t covered here, but I guess that’s how they get everyone to watch. That, and all the free Steam Decks.