BAFTA Games Awards 2024 interview: the rapidly shifting tides of an unforgettable year

This year, the BAFTA Games Awards will celebrate its 20th anniversary with the latest nominations proving just how much has changed across two decades.

The confirmed line-up of nominees for the 2024 BAFTA Games Awards is a testament to the games industry’s ever-evolving creativity, commitment to diversity, and refinement of, in my opinion, what is the most impactful form of storytelling. Baldur’s Gate 3 leads the charge with 10 nominations - the depth of its world continuing to ignite imaginations - followed by Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 with nine. Alan Wake 2 has accrued eight, while Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fall next in line with six each. It isn’t just the major studios topping the nominations chart though. Dave The Diver and Hi-Fi Rush both boast five nominations, while Cocoon and Dredge have four each.

2023’s releases took us from the outer reaches of space to far off fantasy lands, pulling us from our bedrooms and plonking us straight into some of the most immersive worlds imaginable. It’s no secret that it was a stellar year for game releases, one for the history books in fact, but it would be remiss not to mention the fact that 2023 was also a year plagued by industry volatility. We sat down with chair of the BAFTA games Committee Tara Saunders and executive director of awards & content at BAFTA Emma Baehr to talk about the whole picture, from the year’s highs to its lows - and how BAFTA is at the forefront of supporting creatives throughout it all.

Baldur’s Gate 3 tops this year’s list of BAFTA Games Awards nominations, walking away with 10.

I don’t think any of us are going to forget 2023’s line-up of releases any time soon. Even whittling down this year’s Best Game nominees must be hard, let alone pick a winner. It’s interesting to examine what made 2023 so special. “Even as a developer myself, I find it really hard to answer,” Tara began. “There's just a little bit of magic in the air somehow that led to all of these great games coming out at once. It is the 20th year of the BAFTA Games Awards this year [...] so it's really great that we can kind of celebrate this [year] and a big milestone for BAFTA.”

She continued, “It's likely 2023 will go down as one in history as one of the best years of new video game releases. I think some of that might be that, you know, we are seeing what is truly possible with this new generation of technology. Sometimes it takes time to learn how to push the current generation technology as far as you can. But there has been a really steady stream of work, just creative and imaginative work, that's poured out of some of the best and brightest developers in the business. And I think it's a stellar year. I don't know exactly why other than maybe the magic of timing.” Magical, indeed. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 excelled in somehow managing to improve the impeccable traversal introduced in its predecessor, and then there’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder - those Wonder Seeds making for what is quite literally a transformative experience.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

When the quality of the nominees is so high though, I was curious as to whether Tara and Emma thought voters would need to change their approach to differentiate between such stiff competition. “There’s a few things that we've done this year,” Emma said of the awards’ process changes. “We opened entries three months earlier. We wanted to make sure there was more informed voting, giving and allowing access and opportunities to play a wider range and variety of games. We also have been growing our membership and this year, we have the two categories of Best Game and British Game voted for by the members.”

“There's [a] more diverse range of expertise,” she added. “In the broadest categories, we want the broadest expertise to be voting for it. The other change that we've done is we published a longlist back in December. We had more entries this year, 257. That went to 60 in the longlist which effectively demonstrated the breadth of games. Part of our mission as an arts charity is that we want people to have engagement [with these games] and in order to do that, we need to give people more time to engage in play.”

I was pleased to hear Emma mention the longlist. It’s the first time it’s ever been published in the history of the BAFTA Games Awards and for me, I appreciated the way it shone a light on releases that may have missed out on securing a full shortlisted nomination but still deserve to be celebrated. “I completely agree,” Tara told me. “It actually did more than I thought it might do. It engaged in conversation. [...] People were like, oh, I haven't seen that, I haven't played that. There were some hidden gems in there that I have seen now come through to the nominations that I think if we hadn't published that longlist, maybe could have been overlooked. It’s really helped to broaden the overall nominations.” An assuredly positive development.

Plenty of indie titles achieved shortlisted nominations alongside the AAA majors. As Emma pointed out, indie games were very much at the forefront of the Games Beyond Entertainment category, made up of Chants of Sennaar, Goodbye Volcano High, Tchia, Terra Nil, Thirsty Suitors, and Venba: “That’s [made up of] all first-time nominees - and all in such a range of personal stories and themes covering anything from climate change to nature of identity, to sharing traditions of cooking [...] That category really lends itself to bringing those independent and first-time nominees out to showcase.”

Kepler Interactive

The breadth of games on offer to us, as players, really does feel more diverse than ever. I asked Emma and Tara about their observations of this widening sense of diversity within the industry. “There’s still work to be done but the industry is really trying to change the shape of who it is,” Tara began. “And I think BAFTA is really helping with that. [...] They will never put on an event that is a bunch of white men sat on the stage alone. They think about diversity and representative representation through it, which I think if you see that, it encourages you to join that industry, because you see that it's a place for you. And I think BAFTA is doing amazing work behind the scenes there through all of the activity that it does year round, not just on awards night, because awards night is like a big spotlight on it. And yes, you know, we will make that as diverse as we can. But also make sure that it's authentic to the industry as well. There's a balance there. You can't do fake diversity. It's got to be authentic. And I think that's always in the conversation through what I see working with BAFTA.”

On the topic of authenticity, you cannot mention what a stellar year 2023 was for games releases without touching on the other half of the story. It’s something that’s bled into 2024. The industry continues to be affected by mass layoffs, with a volatile and unpredictable landscape affecting many creatives and developers. Emma spoke on the support BAFTA offers: “We create communities, we create connections. One of the big things that we have brought in the last couple years is BAFTA Connect, which is a new tier membership. That's people that are beginning their careers and mid term [in their] careers. We wanted to ensure that we had an opportunity to come in at membership and you know, build that trajectory. But we wanted to create learning opportunities, networking opportunities.”

Nintendo

Emma continued, “I think we're privileged at BAFTA in that we've got this amazing network in our membership of film, TV and games, and there's convergence over those three sectors. But we can create those opportunities of networking, we can bring in people. We create a lot of socials, whether that's throughout the country - we had one in Belfast last week, we've had one in Liverpool over the last sort of six months - as well as regular ones in our headquarters. But, you know, those are the opportunities where we can bring in people that can be writers, environmental artists, CEOs, and we can connect those people [with the industry]. So you've got those opportunities and that support.”

“I can speak to that personally,” added Tara. “I've grown my own career due to my involvement with BAFTA and I think that the networking side is actually really important. Networking and learning is kind of merged together. Aside from the physical meet-ups, there’s a really healthy Discord community supporting each other. When things do happen, people engage and BAFTA is giving a platform where that can happen and help people onto the next thing.”

Epic Games Publishing

The duo highlighted BAFTA’s collaboration with Safe In Our World for the recent Games Mental Health Summit and the BAFTA Breakthrough programme from which the recognised Samantha Béart has gone on to secure a BAFTA Games Awards nomination. While the BAFTA Games Awards are indeed a special night, support for the industry is running throughout the entire year - and it’s not just London centric. Tara touched on BAFTA’s presence at Scottish Games Week and the Yorkshire Games Festival, extending the charity’s reach across the country.

To end, I was curious to know if there was an increasing sense of collaboration between BAFTA’s various branches. With the success of The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Twisted Metal, it certainly feels as if the power of gaming’s storytelling is being recognised across the wider entertainment industry. “As I said, we're privileged to have this amazing network. We do cross-sector master classes and events, and they're all very, very well attended. You're learning from each other,” Emma said.

“Some of that transmedia content is just a really great way of pushing out into different audiences,” Tara added. “[These projects] bring in different audiences and put the spotlight on games.”

The BAFTA Games Awards 2024 will be held on 11 April.