The Game Awards 2022 set a new attendance record

For many they were Game Awards this year probably the largest video game event. After the E3 was canceled again, the many announcements at the Game Awards made for new audience records. As Geoff Keighly, who has hosted and hosted the show since 2014, now announced, a record number of viewers was set again this year. Around more than 20% could be increased compared to the previous year. In addition to the many prizes for the best games of the year, the numerous trailers and new announcements should also be responsible for this. Not only were the release dates for long-awaited games like Final Fantasy XVI also revealed shiny new projects, such as about Death Stranding 2 by Hideo Kojima premiered at the Game Awards. So the show was not a classic award ceremony in 2022 either, but rather a mix of trailer unveiling and award show.

So many people watched live

As Geoff Keighly announced on Twitter, a whopping 103 million people watched the Game Awards live from around the world this year. This is an increase of 20% compared to the previous year. At that time “only” 85 million people tuned in. The awards ceremony has been around since 2014 and since then the show has set new viewership records every year. If you started in 2014 with almost two million live viewers, you could already see 2.3 million in 2015, 3.8 million the year after, 11.5 million in 2017, 26.2 million in 2018 and 45.2 million people in the year before Corona lure in front of the screens.

In 2020 there was a steep increase in viewership to a whopping 83 million, which died down a bit in 2021 with 85 million viewers, but was still impressive. According to the Game Awards press release, the show also set new records for social media views, with Twitter seeing a 28% increase in conversations and becoming the #1 trending topic in the United States.

“We are thrilled to announce that we have broken new records for the ninth year in a row”announced Geoff Keighly. “It’s been really electric on stage this year and it felt so good to be celebrating with the fans and the industry again.”.

These are the reasons for the record

The award show has been able to regularly set new records over the past few years. There are certainly many reasons for this. Video games have now fully arrived in the mainstream and inspire millions of fans worldwide. But the many trailers and new announcements that the Game Awards 2022 came up with should also have played a major role in its success.

In addition to completely new brands such as Judas or Banishers: Ghost of New Eden, long-awaited sequels such as Death Stranding 2 by Hideo Kojima or Armored Core 6 by From Software have also been announced. And games like Star Wars: Jedi Survivor or Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty were presented to the world public for the first time with moving images.

The Steam Deck campaign may also have had a major impact on the number of viewers. A Steam Deck was raffled off every minute during the show. However, only those who watched directly via Steam could win. According to Keighly, that was a total of 9.5 million people who became aware of the awards ceremony via Steam.