Thread by @MRIXRT

TheGameAwards featured a wildly insincere moment they called the Game Changers Award. There's so much wrong with this single moment that I feel I need to highlight each and every part of it separately. I tried to make it a single tweet! I tried! It can't be done

For context: The Game Awards has stalwartly refused to acknowledge that anything bad ever happens in the gaming industry. Thousands of people would be laid off, and the show would start with "It's been an incredible year, gaming is the best, let's celebrate!"

He started off by admitting that layoffs happen, but then wavered and quivered at the idea that he must always remain neutral. This was a very hard decision! Truly, it's impressive how hard it was to say "This year has been difficult for some," especially at such a serious event

Then, they paraded Amir Satvat up on the stage after explaining that he (believe it or not) made an excel spreadsheet that people put their information in, if they were laid off. There have been a lot of lay offs, for several years... but now there was a spreadsheet!

I don't mean to downplay so hard, if you're one of the people who lost their jobs I -honestly- feel for you, and I know no one is going out of their way to help you, so every single bit of help feels like A LOT. But this is literally a spreadsheet where you self input information

When your entire plan is ripped away from you, and suddenly the future you thought you had is now an impossible fiction, it can absolutely feel like you need ANYTHING. And to be clear: there is now a whole network of other people who have rallied to provide REAL resources

They brought this man up on stage, and said "He made a spreadsheet, when no one else could do anything!" They paraded him in front of the people who literally fired everyone. It's a room of the people who fired the people you say you're helping. They awarded you for it.

A large chunk of audience is people who chose to lay off people a month after Christmas. They're planning to lay off people right now. They're going to do it next month. They gave you an award for providing volunteer services to their McKinseyian sacrifices. They clapped for you.

The ultimate irony of course is that they positioned Amir as some guy who just felt really bad and did all of this "for no reason" and "with no expectations" and "never asked for anything in return." While that's true, it's not exactly honest, and there is a difference...

1st: Amir is positioning himself as some sort of expert, some sort of...#1 google search result for "games jobs resources" that provides "exclusive perks" and funnels viewers to other people's blogs--most of whom charge for paid speaking gigs, coaching, and "career optimization"

TGA also positioned Amir as some guy who just felt really bad for everyone, some fan of games who saw this tragedy and felt a need to do something to address it, and while yeah he's being paraded in front of the people who fired everyone, he's at least doing SOMETHING! except..

Except Amir is (surprise) part of the same crowd. Amir finds game companies for Tencent to acquire, after coming from Amazon Games, which collectively have laid off at least 1000 people. He's not some random guy, he's part of a $490B multinational supercorporation

Tencent owns Riot Games, and has major stakes in Ubisoft, EpicGames, FromSoftware, Larian Studios, Krafton, Grinding Gear, Remedy, Digital Extremes, Inflexion, Supercell, Platinum, Yager, Kakao, Paradox, Fatshark, Funcom, Sharkmob, Frontier, and even Discord.

Tencent represents 50% of China's mobile game market, and 35% of the entire gaming industry, and is the most profitable gaming company (Yes, more than Microsoft or Sony or Apple or Google or EA or Nintendo) and beats most of those by double or triple earnings

So you have an exec for gaming's top company applauded by gaming's highest execs for creating a self-input spreadsheet & leveraging other people's volunteer labor, receiving an award for helping people laid off by the people applauding the guy who works for one of the offenders

And look, great that he's doing anything at all.

Wouldn't it be nice if that room full of industry executives, representing $500B in annual revenue, did more than award a guy for making a spreadsheet?

And isn't it SAD that the very best ANYONE did was to make a spreadsheet?