The Game Awards 2020 kicks off this Friday, December 10, and it's expected that more viewers than ever before will tune in. Not just because the show keeps getting bigger, but because the show is getting more accessible.
The Geoff Keighley-produced Game Awards has been on a fast-moving upward trajectory for years, with each new show catching more viewers than the one before it, and in 2020, Keighley and company are ensuring even more people can enjoy the experience. While The Game Awards will be simulcast across a number of platforms on December 10 beginning at 3:30 Pacific, those who tune in via YouTube Gaming will be able to use an audio descriptive mode new to this year's show. Keighley announced it himself on Twitter.
"I’m happy to confirm that #TheGameAwards will have a special audio descriptive mode livestream on @YouTubeGaming for the first time.
Accessibility matters."
The new feature comes in the same year that The Game Awards honors teams that have shown a special commitment to accessibility within their games as well. This year's Innovation in Accessibility award is the first of its kind, with nominees including The Last of Us Part 2, Watch Dogs Legion, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Grounded, and Hyperdot. Like a lot of categories, it seems The Last of Us Part 2 is favored to win due to the enormous breadth of its accessibility options, which at launch in June were hailed as the best in the business. Though all these nominees - among other games as well - are plenty deserving of praise for the lengths they've gone to toward making gaming a better time for all kinds of players.
The Game Awards will be livestreamed this Friday, with a pre-show beginning in the early evening in the Pacific time zone, 3:30 pm. That pre-show is said to include five world premieres, while the main show is no stranger to reveals either. It was just last year when Phil Spencer took the stage to reveal the Xbox Series X at The Game Awards, and this year's show is rumored to feature games such as Elden Ring, Silent Hill, and God of War Ragnarok. The look-ahead is just as much a part of The Game Awards as the statuettes given out to the past year's successes.
