Geoff Keighley promises no 'NFT stuff' at this year's Game Awards

The Game Awards will return as an in-person event for 2021, with an invite-only audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and many more watching digitally on more than 40 different streaming platforms worldwide. And it's going to be a big one: Host Geoff Keighley told Epic Games that this year's event will feature 40-50 games “some way or another,” including new game announcements in the double digits.

“It's great to have celebrities, it's great to have music, but I think focusing really on games is important,” Keighley said. “Especially this year, there'll be a lot of content for 2022 and 2023 that will be showing us our kind of biggest lineup yet of world premieres and announcements.

“What we really learned last year was at the end of the day, it really is the games and the trailers that drive the show.”

At the same time, this year's show will also apparently have more trailers for “videogame adjacent” content, like television shows or movies inspired by games. Keighley didn't share specifics about what will be shown, but said that “the awards are about half the show and the other half is the announcements and premieres.” 

And while The Game Awards viewership is apparently massive, reaching a whopping 83 million livestream viewers in 2020, Keighley said he's looking to expand audiences even further by bringing the show into—you guessed it—the metaverse.

“We're thinking about what can we do in Fortnite Creative. What can we do in Core?” Keighley said. “So it's early days with that stuff, but I do think in five years more people will watch our show or participate in our show from within a kind of real-time 3D environment than just watching a traditional video feed.”

There is one new technology The Game Awards won't be chasing, however. “We're not doing any NFT stuff,” Keighley said.

The Game Awards 2021 takes place on December 9. We'll be watching and sharing news on the big announcements as they happen.