“June is definitely a good time for people to ramp up, get people excited about things coming in the future. So yes, there will be some good announcements. They’ll be good, meaningful updates on games,” Keighley stated, including that, for instance, in 2021, the Summer Game Fest confirmed off gameplay of “Elden Ring,” a beforehand introduced sport that also drew plenty of curiosity. “Will you get everything you want? No. But I think there’ll be some good stuff this year.”
The 2022 gaming news occasion is generally digital, although it can function an in-person element. Imax film theaters will air the Summer Game Fest within the U.S., Canada and United Kingdom beginning on June 9, dwell from Los Angeles. Viewers can tune into the very same present on Twitch. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
While particular person sport firms will do their very own occasions, as they’ve in previous years, Keighley stated he plans to arrange issues in order that they don’t closely overlap. In one other main gaming showcase, Xbox will maintain its live-streamed occasion on June 12.
In mild of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Keighley stated he has been in conversations with a number of Ukrainian studios whose sport titles — comparable to GSC Game World’s “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” — have been impacted.
“There have been a number of teams, honestly, that we were talking [with] about content for our show, that are in Ukraine, and they’ve had to relocate and can’t finish their trailer, can’t finish their game, because they’re in the middle of a situation,” Keighley stated. “We’re conscious of those games and actively trying to think about what’s the right way to recognize some of those teams and the hardships that they’ve been through.”
Keighley made headlines in 2020, when he introduced he was skipping E3 for the primary time in 25 years, saying the occasion wanted to evolve.
This 12 months, Summer Game Fest will happen within the backdrop of one other canceled E3, simply because it did in 2020.
“You’ll find no bigger fan than me of what E3 represented to the industry. And I went to it for 25 years,” Keighley stated. “I still think E3 needs to figure out its place in this new digital, global landscape. Game companies have figured out there are lots of great ways to program directly to fans. With Summer Game Fest, we’re very cognizant of that; we’re not just trying to be an E3 replacement. We’re doing something very different and approaching it as a free, digital-first celebration of games. The great thing is we can build it from the ground into something completely new. And we don’t have the baggage and legacy of trying to sell booths to people or hotel rooms.”
Keighley instructed The Post final December that the opposite occasion he hosts, the Game Awards, would take a “thoughtful, measured” method towards non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For this 12 months’s Summer Game Fest, Keighley equally stated he had no plans to have something NFT or blockchain-related.
“Some people are like, ‘Oh Geoff, I see you following an NFT account on Twitter.’ And it’s like, I’m interested to learn about that stuff. But I’ve yet to see anything that really crosses over to content that would be accretive to the experience. Look, if I see a game or experience that I think is really going to be compelling and interesting and leverages those technologies in a meaningful way, we’ll of course look at it,” Keighley stated.
As for whether or not Activision Blizzard, an organization going through a number of lawsuits and authorities investigations, can be current at Summer Game Fest, Keighley stated the state of affairs was evolving. Activision Blizzard didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“In the back of our minds, obviously, is the zeitgeist of what’s going on at both of these companies but also, in the community,” he stated. “Everyone’s opinions continue to evolve among all these topics, so it’s hard to put a pin in something and say, ‘Hey, this is exactly how we’re going to treat this throughout the entire year.’ ”
Another hotly mentioned trade matter is unionization. When requested whether or not organizing labor would impression Summer Game Fest, Keighley stated, “Trying to make our show is ultimately to support creators of games and let them showcase their work. I hope we empower game creators, through our shows, to reach audiences and feel like they can reach those audiences directly.”