In celebration of the event’s 10-year anniversary, the organizers of The Game Awards announced a special concert event celebrating games coming out this year, past Game of the Year winners, and other seminal franchises across the video game industry. Today, the lineup of games part of the 10-year celebration has been revealed.
The twelve games announced include Arcane, Diablo, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy XVI, God of War, Hades, Hogwarts Legacy, League of Legends, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Starfield, Star Wars, Jedi, and The Last of Us.
Some might notice that there is no Nintendo title in the lineup, which seems odd considering the big year the company has with The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Geoff Keighley said that they weren’t able to get a deal done. “We talked to Nintendo about it. It just didn’t work out, timing wise, to do something,” he says. “We’ve worked with them a lot on the Game Awards music, and hopefully we’ll be playing ‘Zelda’ music there if it gets nominated. One version of this was just plug in 10 game of the year winners over the past decade, but what we wanted to do was something that was a little more eclectic.”
Keighley also talked about including Hogwarts Legacy which Keighley acknowledged might disappoint people following the boycott of the game over J.K. Rowling’s controversial comments. He said that the game was too big to ignore. Plus, the Hollywood Bowl is showing both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows this season. “I mean, it’s a successful game,” Keighley says. “It’s a really good game, theoretically. But I’m sure there will be some pushback, but the Bowl has a ‘Harry Potter’ movie the night before. It’s one of those things. There’s lots of ‘Potter’ things out there, but I’m sure there will be pushback.”
According to Keighley, each game will get around 8 minutes on the stage. The soundtracks will lean large and orchestral with a few exceptions like the rock-leaning Hades and the sparse, Western-inspired The Last of Us scores. Keighley also said that most of the game studios will be creating original montages to accompany the performances.
This isn’t the first time the Los Angeles Philharmonic has done something video game related. The orchestra and the L.A. Master Chorale performed selections from the Final Fantasy games at Walt Disney Concert Hall back in 2004 and over the years has hosted “Video Games Live” at the Hollywood Bowl, the last time being in the mid 2000s. The Bowl regularly hosts film and theater events but video games have been a rarity
Talking about the event and the rarity of video game-related shows, Meghan Umber, Senior VP or programming with the Philharmonic said: “We very much consider the Hollywood Bowl a venue for everyone. I have no interest in saying what music is more important than other music. … Maybe we’ll be welcoming new audiences to the Bowl. Maybe it will be audience members who have been there before but really love game music, but I think it’s important to provide our platform to game music as well.”
The Game Awards 10-Year concert will take place live at The Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, June 25. Tickets are now on sale