• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

Discussion Kit and Krysta: Nintendo did not expect Breath of the Wild to win at TGA 2017 ( + other TGA Nintendo tidbits)

Hero of Hyrule

Hero of Hyrule

Frieren the Slayer
Pronouns
He/Him


This is from the newest episode of their podcast, and I found a lot of interesting since it answers a lot of questions about where Nintendo is w.r.t. The Game Awards (please note these are not their own words, and I am paraphrasing, except where I use quote marks, where it's more or less a direct quote):

  • Nintendo Japan seems to swerve wildly on TGAs, being all in on them one year, to flat out not caring about them the next
  • In 2017, Nintendo absolutely wanted the critical spotlight and spectacle for the core market and that's why they went all out with their participation in 2017
  • At the eleventh hour, Nintendo started doubting whether or not BOTW would actually win, because they were concerned that Mario Odyssey would split the vote with it, leading to some other game to take the win. This situation caused what Kit and Krysta refer to as literal "mass panic".
    • Nintendo thought Horizon would win.
  • Nintendo spent literal months on acceptance speeches, which is a level of taking things seriously that other companies apparently usually don't engage in.
    • As the night of the show approached, apparently this was at least partly to try and keep everyone's mind off the "vote split" theory that got "people shook"
  • There were multiple categories that BOTW and SMO were nominated in and didn't win in, which made Nintendo's contingent even surer neither game was going to win. By the end of the show that evening, morale was fairly low.
  • Once Zelda won Game Direction, confidence was restored.
  • Aonuma and Fujibayashi were extremely excited and pumped, and at the very least it is clear the individual developers do care, even if Nintendo as a company may be hot and cold on it. Aonuma was incredibly happy and excited at the game winning, and that victory marked the culmination of the BOTW journey to him.
    • Apparently Koizumi had already accepted that Breath of the Wild would beat out Super Mario Odyssey.
    • Koizumi is also the producer of the Switch overall, so he counted even BOTW's win as a win of his own.
  • Everyone at Nintendo was incredibly happy and celebrated hard at the afterparty.
  • After TGAs, BOTW would go on to win hundreds of awards, only adding to the festive mood.
  • Geoff Keighley is involved in pretty much every aspect of the show (and is incredibly accommodating of everyone)
  • "We were worried about Horizon, we should have been worried about Persona 5. That's a game everyone talks about at almost a Zelda level even five years later."

They talk about a lot of other stuff, including some very personal stuff for Kit, and as always, their show is full of cool anecdotes and some great banter. Definitely give it a watch and go support them!
 
Last edited:
RochHoch said:
"Nintendo thought Horizon would win"

Pfffffft ahahahahaha. BoTW completely ate that game's lunch in all respects, I'm surprised they were so worried about it
Click to expand...
"We were worried about Horizon, we should have been worried about Persona 5. That's a game everyone talks about at almost a Zelda level even five years later."

They came around eventually
 
Phantom Thief said:
"We were worried about Horizon, we should have been worried about Persona 5. That's a game everyone talks about at almost a Zelda level even five years later."
Click to expand...
This has always been my perspective on it. Never really thought Horizon stood a chance, it was always between the two Nintendo games and Persona 5.
 
I felt like Zelda was the obvious winner going in but it is funny that the mentality of "splitting the Nintendo vote" that sometimes pops up online in jest actually took hold at Nintendo.
 
Funny. I thought the winner was obviously Breath of the Wild and nothing else stood a chance.

It was just “that game” for 2017
 
Phantom Thief said:
Nintendo Japan seems to swerve wildly on TGAs, being all in on them one year, to flat out not caring about them the next
Click to expand...
I think this is the big quote here. Feels like Nintendo will care about the TGAs when they feel like they have a legitimate shot of winning a big award. Think they'll go in hard for the 2023 TGAs, with Zelda likely being a frontrunner.
 
Wow, that's adorably humble for Nintendo to not think they had the win in the bag and thought Horizon would win. Can't say the same for other companies I'll highly bet...

But most shocking is that they DON'T know that they win in advance? I thought winners are notified pre-show to be ready for acceptance speeches, promos, and the like? That's a shock.
 
Thunder84 said:
I think this is the big quote here. Feels like Nintendo will care about the TGAs when they feel like they have a legitimate shot of winning a big award. Think they'll go in hard for the 2023 TGAs, with Zelda likely being a frontrunner.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but the past few years and millions upon millions of sales have probably left them confident and content enough that they feel very little need to appeal to the "core market" at TGA, unlike 2017.
 
Hero of Legend said:
But most shocking is that they DON'T know that they win in advance? I thought winners are notified pre-show to be ready for acceptance speeches, promos, and the like? That's a shock.
Click to expand...
Nah, I assume most award shows leave the winners in the dark before they're announced. Especially TGAs which Geoff tries hard to push as the premier awards show of the year.

Geoff's mentioned in a community Q&A that the statues aren't engraved in advance at all and have to be shipped to the winners after the show when they do get engraved, and mentions he hopes one day they're like the Oscars where they're engraved on-site at the afterparty.
 
Hero of Legend said:
But most shocking is that they DON'T know that they win in advance? I thought winners are notified pre-show to be ready for acceptance speeches, promos, and the like? That's a shock.
Click to expand...
i'm pretty sure that's standard fare for every award show, that's why things like the infamous Moonlight mix-up incident at the Oscars happened.


Toad King said:
Geoff's mentioned in a community Q&A that the statues aren't engraved in advance at all and have to be shipped to the winners after the show when they do get engraved,
Click to expand...
this, as well. which has unfortunately led to a few incidents where they've gotten lost and had to be recovered. it previously happened with Celeste.
 
Last edited:
Man, that's really something.

Then again this is Nintendo coming off the heels of the Wii U so uncertainty despite BOTW being a generation-defining game doesn't sound too far-fetched to me.
 
0
Toad King said:
Nah, I assume most award shows leave the winners in the dark before they're announced. Especially TGAs which Geoff tries hard to push as the premier awards show of the year.

Geoff's mentioned in a community Q&A that the statues aren't engraved in advance at all and have to be shipped to the winners after the show when they do get engraved, and mentions he hopes one day they're like the Oscars where they're engraved on-site at the afterparty.
Click to expand...
Krvavi Abadas said:
i'm pretty sure that's standard fare for every award show, that's why things like the infamous Moonlight mix-up incident at the Oscars happened.



this, as well. which has unfortunately led to a few incidents where they've gotten lost and had to be recovered. it previously happened with Celeste.
Click to expand...

Hmm, would explain why Disney goofed in actually SHIPPING out tags to stores showing Ralph Breaks the Internet having won its award (it lost to Spiderverse IIRC):

Winner-Academy-Award-Best-Animated-Feature-Film-Ralph-Breaks-The-Internet.jpg
 
Hosermess said:
Maybe, but the past few years and millions upon millions of sales have probably left them confident and content enough that they feel very little need to appeal to the "core market" at TGA, unlike 2017.
Click to expand...

Or alternatively they need to appeal to the core market on select years - notably launch year.
 
It’s cute that they were so giddy about winning GotY 2017. As much as I don’t care for TGA, if devs are happy with it, go on, continue to exist.

Thunder84 said:
I think this is the big quote here
Click to expand...
They do seem self-aware enough to know what kinds of games have a shot at winning i.e. they probably aren’t holding out hope that Kirby and the Forgotten Land is going to win.

Another thing is that Switch has proven to be wildly successful with the core audience, so they don’t really need further proof that they’ve secured that market.
 
I could see a world in which BotW and SMO split voted and Persona 5 or Horizon pulled out an upset win. I'm somewhat convinced that's what happened last year with It Takes Two winning goty out of nowhere.
 
BassForever said:
I could see a world in which BotW and SMO split voted and Persona 5 or Horizon pulled out an upset win. I'm somewhat convinced that's what happened last year with It Takes Two winning goty out of nowhere.
Click to expand...
It Takes Two was super well received. Definitely a game that garnered no shortage of acclaim. An 89 on Metacritic, "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on Steam, and so on. Even though Metroid Dread was my GOTY pick, and it'd have been amazing to see it take home the big W, I'm not surprised ITT won. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants the polished feel of a Nintendo platformer in a highly varied and entertaining co-op experience. Heck of a time.
 
I‘m always amazed when we get some confirmation that Nintendo really is as weird of a company as we think it is.
 
Rooster said:
Nintendo cared a lot more about this than I thought they would've.
Click to expand...
Or some people on YouTube that desperately needs clicks blow up some things. Perhaps all of Nintendo was really desperate, perhaps one person of Nintendo once said something like that and forgot about it a moment later.
 
EnergyDrink said:
Or some people on YouTube that desperately needs clicks blow up some things. Perhaps all of Nintendo was really desperate, perhaps one person of Nintendo once said something like that and forgot about it a moment later.
Click to expand...
Kit and Krysta worked for Nintendo for over a decade, though. That's not to say everything they share should always be taken without the expectation of at least some exaggeration, here and there (it's only reasonable not to expect everything to line up 100%), but I trust that they were very much in the know about these things, and aren't simply embellishing upon the truth to get clicks. I know some folks act like the whole of TGA is a farce, but I find it endearing that it meant so much to the BotW devs to secure that GOTY win.
 
Aurc said:
Kit and Krysta worked for Nintendo for over a decade, though. That's not to say everything they share should always be taken without the expectation of at least some exaggeration, here and there (it's only reasonable not to expect everything to line up 100%), but I trust that they were very much in the know about these things, and aren't simply embellishing upon the truth to get clicks. I know some folks act like the whole of TGA is a farce, but I find it endearing that it meant so much to the BotW devs to secure that GOTY win.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be the first time they've embellished things for whatever reason, like that particularly egregious time they claimed the Pokémon company thought playing a nuzlocke run was as bad as hacking, making the Pokémon companies have to make an official yet obvious statement about how that was clearly not true.
 
Horizon? Really?

Really?

Would understand that if it was GoW 2018 vs BotW, but Horizon, nah. I'd say Mario Odyssey was more of a threat for BotW that year.

lexony said:
I‘m always amazed when we get some confirmation that Nintendo really is as weird of a company as we think it is.
Click to expand...

It's that weirdness that makes them so fun, even if the most weird situations can be rather tiring for the outside spectator.
 
Well that year was literally do or die for the company. They bet the farm on Switch’s success and their games HAD to succeed in every respect, or else the company had no future beyond crappy mobile titles.

Not that surprising that they became so desperate that winning the TGAs became a high priority.
 
I love these stuff they share, it's very cool that they do.

The only other game I actually thought would stand a chance against BotW was PUBG honestly, mostly because of the absolute colosal impact it had on the industry in 2017. It was an absolute juggernaught. The other games never stood a chance simply put because BotW was a superior game, but PUBG had another thing going for it so it was the only one I ever thought could do it.
 
Aurc said:
Kit and Krysta worked for Nintendo for over a decade, though. That's not to say everything they share should always be taken without the expectation of at least some exaggeration, here and there (it's only reasonable not to expect everything to line up 100%), but I trust that they were very much in the know about these things, and aren't simply embellishing upon the truth to get clicks. I know some folks act like the whole of TGA is a farce, but I find it endearing that it meant so much to the BotW devs to secure that GOTY win.
Click to expand...
My comment had nothing to do with the games quality. My point was entirely if we got the votes breakdown I wouldn't be surprised if the final vote count for 2021 game awards was very close where 1-2 votes could have swung the winner. This is different to how I expect say TLoU P2 on 2020 to have been a sweep of almost all the goty votes.
 
As someone in the 'Mario Odyssey was great but not that great' camp, it is wild looking back and thinking the result was ever in doubt. BOTW was just on another level compared to everything else that year (and I say that as someone who enjoyed the other noms).

It's interesting to see how Nintendo have cooled on TGA as a concept. I guess they don't feel as though they need it in the same way as before. I can see them utilising it for announcements which would benefit from a December reveal (I'm still fairly certain they have something for this year given March remaining blank for instance), but gone are the Wii U days in which Nintendo needed all the exposure they could get.

Next year for Tears of the Kingdom may not be a slam dunk as with Starfield and Resi 4 it could be a packed field. But boy oh boy can you imagine the ding dongs if it had been Zelda vs Elden Ring vs God of War?
 
0
Gartooth said:
I felt like Zelda was the obvious winner going in but it is funny that the mentality of "splitting the Nintendo vote" that sometimes pops up online in jest actually took hold at Nintendo.
Click to expand...
Because its a real thing?

Most people have only one or 2 platforms (console + their work/generall pc), having multiple consoles is really a subset of the enthusiast market.

Those groups usually vote on stuff they played/liked.
So nintendo fans will vote for nintendo games, sony fans for sony (and multiplat) games.
if sony has a clear winner, and nintendo has 2 contestants, you split the subgroup by ~2, then nintendo players would outnumber the sony crows by a factor of 2 to still have a chance.

(Obviously its not that clear, some will vote for other things, some will have played all of them,...)
But there is a reason why in politics there is a push the closer it gets to the final vote to get affiliated or politically closely aligned contestants to drop out because it is clear who would get the vote of their audience of they drop out.
 
Not a single mention of Reggie the presumed Game Awards champion that carries the interest of Nintendo for the show all by himself. Maybe we can stop treating this speculation as a truth for once.
 
Yeah, I remember people on the internet saying the Nintendo vote would be split, I guess that means Nintendo = internet people lol

But my opinion was always that BOTW was guaranteed GOTY every year and Odyssey would easily be GOTY in a year without BOTW, so Odyssey was shafted by being released in 2017 and not 2018
 
0
Nintendo being so much into TGA makes me hopeful for the Metroid series.
Even if it didn't win, Dread getting nominated for GOTY likely means they are definitely not going to drop the (2D) series anytime soon. They do care about the critical acclaim, even if it might not sell much.
 
BassForever said:
My comment had nothing to do with the games quality. My point was entirely if we got the votes breakdown I wouldn't be surprised if the final vote count for 2021 game awards was very close where 1-2 votes could have swung the winner. This is different to how I expect say TLoU P2 on 2020 to have been a sweep of almost all the goty votes.
Click to expand...
Ah, I get it. Sorry about that, I misinterpreted.
 
0
My takeaway is that I'm kinda shocked that for all the production value put into TGAs they wouldn't use ranked voting ballots and the judging panel amounts to nothing more than a radio button poll on GameFAQs
 
0
In hindsight, BotW’s win seems obvious. The game still wows people all these years later, has stood the test of time and become an all time classic, and has GREAT legs saleswise.

But I remember not thinking it was a sure thing too. Likely, yes, but I mean you had Odyssey, which was equally as well recieved on meta and had JUST came out. Plus you had PUBG which hadn’t been eclipsed by Fortnite yet and still took the world by storm, and overwatch had just won last year. Plus the “honeymoon phase” statements were still going on from its detractors lmao.
 
Homura said:
Nintendo being so much into TGA makes me hopeful for the Metroid series.
Even if it didn't win, Dread getting nominated for GOTY likely means they are definitely not going to drop the (2D) series anytime soon. They do care about the critical acclaim, even if it might not sell much.
Click to expand...
Can we stop with the Metroid could be drop cuz it doesn't sell that much. When Dread, a $60 2d game, outsold every Xenoblades easily and that franchise just got it's 3rd game released on Switch in like 5 years. On top of getting the best post release DLCs support out of all Nintendo games. Come on.
 
LukasManak22 said:
So we missed Koizumi getting his Mario suit on stage.

But seriously, it kinda suprised me how much they care about it, the speeches and so on.
Click to expand...
If they were trying to court the core audience then it’s no surprise they went all out to present an image to them. I also suspect they really wanted that award as a culmination of the work the Zelda team put in; so they tried to make it as perfect as possible. Plus there is a novelty to doing something like that once.
 
0
Toad King said:
Nah, I assume most award shows leave the winners in the dark before they're announced. Especially TGAs which Geoff tries hard to push as the premier awards show of the year.

Geoff's mentioned in a community Q&A that the statues aren't engraved in advance at all and have to be shipped to the winners after the show when they do get engraved, and mentions he hopes one day they're like the Oscars where they're engraved on-site at the afterparty.
Click to expand...
There is zero reason this can’t be done now. My son runs track, and they have engravers on-site for medals. This wouldn’t even cost very much and takes almost zero time. Weird they don’t have that in place now.
 
0
Interesting story. Honestly glad to see Nintendo execs and creatives deservedly start feeling themselves around the Switch and BOTW's year 1, given how the next few years followed suit. Given that context, it feels like they actually have their eyes on the prize this time.
 
0
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom