
The journalist Geoff Keighley, producer and host of The Game Awards, responds to suspicions for his long-standing friendship with the creative Japanese.
Last Wednesday we knew all the nominees to which today are the most prestigious video game awards, The Game Awards. After some very humble beginnings, with the name of Spike TV Awards, Geoff Keighley has been increasing the value of this event until being considered by many as "the Oscars of the video games". In turn, Keighley maintains a great friendship with Hideo Kojima, already public for several years, while Death Stranding is nominated for a multitude of categories in this 2019 edition, including the Game of the Year.
Does Death Stranding deserve to be nominated?
This is done with a 83 in Metacritic, which is a good average but far from the highest among all GOTY nominees, and most importantly, with a disparity of opinions as rarely remembered with a video game of such magnitude. Obviously, all this has made these Kojima game nominations questioned, and Keighley wanted to clarify the issue.
"I respect and appreciate the complaints," Keighley begins by saying to Kotaku. "This is why we have the Frequently Asked Questions section on the web, above, so that the process is clear. It is something that I do not vote for either the nominees or the winners. In my role as producer I work closely with publishers and developers at many levels, so I leave this critical aspect to the media. "
In fact, that of Kojima is not the only great relationship that Keighley has with some important personalities of video games, since his friendships with Reggie Fils Aime, former president of Nintendo America and Doug Bowser, the current one, with Rob Kostich are also known , president of Activision, and with Phil Spencer, also president of Xbox. That is why a small selection of media are the ones who choose the nominees, with some mediums being some such as Eurogamer, IGN and Polygon.