Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Single Game Awards Nomination is a Participation Trophy as BioWare’s “Return to Form” Fails to Perform and Puts Spotlight on Games Journalism

The Game Awards 2024 is just around the corner and voting is open for those who want to see their favorite games win. As always, there tends to be snubs and flubs with every award show. Games that are expected to be on the list will be absent while games that shouldn’t be on the list will cause controversy. Yet others will get the pity trophy. For BioWare, and to the shock of many, Dragon Age: The Veilguard received a single nomination in a category that is more of a  participation trophy for a game that journalists gleefully proclaimed was a “return to form” but fails to perform. 

It’s amazing to see how Dragon Age: The Veilguard failed to get any nominations for the top categories such as “Game of the Year,” “Best Narrative,” “Best Art Direction,” “Best RPG,” “Best Action/Adventure,” or even “Games for Impact.” Instead, Veilguard got a single nomination for “Innovation in Accessibility.” 

But what does “Innovation in Accessibility” mean? 

According to The Game Awards website it’s a category for, 

“Recognizing software and/or hardware that is pushing the medium forward by adding features, technology and content to help games be played and enjoyed by an even wider audience.”

Simply put, the category acknowledges games with settings and features that allow consumers to curate and adjust the game’s visuals, difficulty, keybinds, audio, subtitle options, combat, exploration, user interface, and more. And, to be fair, Veilguard has a lot of accessibility options that became a selling point for the game and got it free advertising from game outlets.

Sure, some of the options in Veilguard are cool like colorblind settings. But it’s hard to believe that so much time was spent by BioWare to make the game accessible while limiting the game itself when compared to past installments. That they were more worried about a small subset of gamers while ignoring the game in many ways. It’s also difficult to not laugh at the idea that BioWare not including spiders in Veilguard might have helped the game get the nomination.

So how is it that Veilguard received so many glowing reviews from the mainstream game outlets and journalists, yet only got a single nomination for a category that is nothing more than a glorified advertisement for a game’s features? 

It’s hard not to point to Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s lack of nominations as an indictment of the video game news outlets and journalists. That their opinions didn’t amount to a mound of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial game copies; now buried in a pit and ridiculed by gamers en masse. One only has to look at Veilguard’s sales performance on Steam to get an idea of how poorly-received it has been by consumers. That it’s ever-declining players numbers, the constant mocking on social media, and more paint the real picture that games journalists tried to graffiti over with their bombastic and garishly-written editorials.

Even BioWare and Electronic Arts have been quiet when it comes to Veilguard’s sales performance and reception by gamers. 

The lack of award nominations is damning for BioWare since Dragon Age: The Veilguard because  it even failed to receive a nomination in the “Games for Impact” category despite the praise heaped upon it for its inclusivity and diversity by journalists. Especially with how trans-inclusive Veilguard is with Taash, a trans storyline, and its inclusive character creator that included top surgery scars.  DEI was a major selling point for Veilguard and to see it snubbed in this category is eye-opening, especially when a game such as Tales of Kenzera: Zau was nominated despite being a massive flop (player count peaked at 287 on Steam). It even got passed over in the “Game of the Year” category by Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree which is DLC.

Veilguard’s failure to be nominated for the “Games for Impact” category is a testimony not to the game’s DEI push, but how bad its writing is. A great example that your game, no matter how much a product panders to a certain subset of consumers, won’t sell if the quality is poor.  

But what is amazing is how the same mainstream game outlets, which heaped praise and glowing reviews on Veilguard, are now turning on it. From IGN stating that Veilguard is “at war with itself” to TheGamer saying that it was “too woke.” The turnaround is enough to give anyone virtual whiplash since these are the same outlets that ignored Veilguard’s poor performance since the day it launched to its ever-dwindling player count and relevance in social media discussion.

Whatever opinion you may have about Veilguard and its inability to be nominated for any significant category for The Game Awards there is one absolute fact. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s The Game Awards snub is a damning indictment for BioWare, how far it has fallen, and video game journalism as a whole. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard continues to be a failure and video game outlets are unreliable due to their bias and agenda-driven practices.

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