The Game Awards' Controversial Catch: Dave the Diver
MINTROCKETs Dave the Diver stirs controversy amongst gamers running up to The Game Awards (Source: MINTROCKET)
2023 has seen the release of many, now critically acclaimed games, and with that comes “The Game Awards” that not only allows for the public to voice their opinions on what their favourite game of the year is, but also for developers to get their time to shine on stage.
This is especially important when it comes to highlighting independent developers who despite being limited in their budget and scope get the chance to celebrate their games success and popularity.
This year’s Game Awards are no different, highlighting many of this years successful independent developers and their games such as “Dredge” from Black Salt games and “Cocoon” from Geometric Interactive.
However, one such nominee has caused a stir of controversy throughout the gaming industry - “Dave the Diver”, from developers MINTROCKET which released in June of this year, an adventure game that follows a diver named Dave as he catches and collects fish in order to help manage his sushi restaurant.
This is due to MINTROCKET being a subdivision of Korean video game publisher "Nexon.” Nexon is a video game publisher that has existed since 1994 and as of 2021 had grossed over £500m in revenue, leading to there being an obvious issue of whether to consider MINTROCKET’s nominee an indie game.
This is despite the games development team only being comprised of 30 people and the studio only having been around since May of 2022, however with an undisclosed budget and such a large parent company, the debate is still ongoing.
Geoff Keighley, Host of The Game Awards was asked to speak on the topic during a Q&A livestream in which he said “You can argue it either way. It’s independent in spirit and that it's a small game with a—I don’t know what the budget is—relatively small budget, but it’s from a larger entity whereas there are other games on that list from much smaller studios.”
His comments echoing both sides of the debate and later highlighting previous nominees that could have fallen into Dave the Diver’s situation such as “Journey” from Annapurna games who were very closely tied to PlayStation and Sony.
Even fellow nominee Dredge which while developed by Black Salt games was published by Team 17, a popular video game developer and publisher known for their creation of the “Worms Battleground” series.
Despite this, the debate has continued onto many social media platforms, but there seems to be no end to the discourse with the original announcement from The Game Awards account on X (formerly Twitter) receiving a community note seemingly trying to invalidate the nomination.
However, with The Game Awards slowly approaching and there being no change to the nominations despite the controversy and outrage, the situation and debate will only conclude when The Game Awards goes live on 7 December.