Baldur's Gate 3 director shares what he wanted to say at The Game Awards but couldn't

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best game of 2023, the well-deserved GOTY in one of the most intense and highest-quality years in video game history. In an emotional moment at The Game Awards 2023, Swen Vincke, founder and CEO of Larian Studios, accepted the statuette and gave an emotional speech dedicated to a member of the studio who passed away this year. The problem? The event only allowed 30 seconds of speaking time, with a not-so-pleasant countdown on a screen in front of the winners, telling them to finish when the timer ran out.

Criticism of the way the event was conducted in front of the award winners, but Swen Vincke wanted to highlight everything he wanted to say in his speech that he could not do at The Game Awards 2023. He did so on X (Twitter), creating an extensive thread and demonstrating that there was much to comment on about a gala that was not fair to the award winners.

Vincke began by calling it a “great honor” to win the award, congratulated the other nominees, and noted that it “has been an incredibly competitive year” in which every nominee deserved to win. He also thanked “Geoff Keighley and the people that organized The Game Awards. for creating an award show so big that it gets mainstream attention. While 30 secs is a bit short , there’s nothing like the game awards and it’s an incredible achievement.”

As for appearing on stage in armor, in Vincke’s words, it is in honor of the community of players, a tribute to them and how important they have been to the development of the game. As for the team, he noted that “over 2000 people are listed in the credits and since I can’t call out everyone, I want to focus on a group of people that don’t always get the credit they deserve. Team QA, team localisation, team customer support, team operations, team publishing, team play testers, and every other developer at Larian, BG3 wouldn’t exist without you and you all deserve to be very proud of this.”

Finally, he dedicated the award to friends and family who passed away during the game’s development, including Larian’s lead cinematic animator and Wincke’s father, who died a week before the early access launch. “Games are a unique art form, as important as books, music or movies. Many developers, myself included, make games because they love seeing others engage with their creations in a way only games can offer. They don’t care that much about the money made beyond it being the fuel they need to create new and better games. It’s worth reminding everyone that fuel is but a means, not a goal. Whereto and how we journey are what matter and what we remember.”