GamesBeat unveiled its 2024 Visionary Awards at the close of the GamesBeat Summit event in Los Angeles.
The Visionary Award winner is Remedy creative director Sam Lake, and the Up-and-Comer winner is Kahlief Adams, CEO of Spawn On Me.
The GamesBeat Visionary Awards started in 2018 to recognize industry leaders who took a daring, visionary approach to shaping the future of gaming, forging new paths that have mesmerized audiences and redefined the very nature of video games. We give out two awards every year: the Visionary Award and the Up-and-Comer award. This year’s ceremony was hosted by Leah Hardy, a global marketing leader with decades of experience from companies like TikTok and Meta.
The winners were chosen by a panel of 12 judges from all across the industry, including Insomniac CEO Ted Price, indie developer and advisor Rami Ismail, and Zebra Partners co-founder Perrin Kaplan.
Visionary Award presentation
Unfortunately, Lake was unable to attend GamesBeat Summit in person. Hector Sanchez, the former head of the Unreal Engine games business and one of Lake’s good friends, introduced him via video. Sanchez recalled how memorable it was for him to work with Lake on Alan Wake 2 after being a fan of the first game. He remembers when Lake came to Epic’s headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina to pitch the horror game sequel — “it was seven years of thoughts just circulating in his head” — and how blown away he was by the presentation.
Lake expressed how he wanted to push the medium forward with Alan Wake 2, and that’s when Sanchez knew it’d be a special game.
“I’ve never met a guy who just exudes passion for the art of storytelling,” said Sanchez. “He’s an amazing orator. He’s an amazing writer. He’s really a gadfly, a man about town.”
In lieu of an in-person appearance, Lake sent in a recording of himself accepting the award. He said he felt proud and energized to be recognized by his peers like this, but that it also made him feel old and had his impostor syndrome “flaring up.” He thanked all the people he’s been fortunate enough to work with throughout his nearly 30-year career in the industry.
“It’s one thing to have a vision you believe in, a story you want to tell and ideas on how to create the experience. But it’s a whole different thing to have it be made concrete,” said Lake. “Making video games is teamwork. It takes a large group of brilliantly talented people to take the vision, craft it into a game, and put their own spin on it. I’m here today receiving this award very much because of the people I’ve been privileged to collaborate with through these years.”
Lake said he sees himself as a writer and storyteller, and that he’s drawn to many different forms of art and storytelling such as prose, films, painting, comics, and musicals. He loves to combine those other mediums with video games and create “a universe out of these fragments.”
He quoted both David Bowie and David Lynch when talking about the importance of passion and ambition in the creative process.
“To have passion, I feel you need to create something of your own, something personal, something only you can do,” he added. “You need to put yourself in. Invent, experiment, be bold, push it. The good news is as human beings, all of this comes naturally to us. … The bad news is when a project is big and when there is a lot of money involved, people tend to get nervous. They want to minimize risks, make safe bets, and take away the interesting edges.
“In my opinion, this is a losing game. You need to stand out. The bolder ideas and the sharp edges are the treasure.”
Up-and-Comer Award presentation
The Up-and-Comer award honors someone who is an up-and-comer when it comes to achievements in the game industry. It isn’t based on age or experience. Rather, it recognizes that the biggest potential of the honoree lies ahead of them. Past recipients of the award include Rich Vogel, a veteran of the online gaming industry and studio head of T-Minus Zero; Eve Crevoshay, executive director of Take This; and creator Natasha “ZombaeKills” Zinda.
Gamertag Radio founder and host Danny Peña presented the award to Kahlief Adams. He said he had a whole speech he wrote about his longtime friend, but decided to skip it so he could speak from his heart instead. Peña shared a conversation he and Adams had nearly 10 years ago, when Adams confessed to him that he wanted to quit podcasting about games because he felt he wasn’t getting any support from the industry.
Peña pushed him to keep going and told him that his voice was sorely needed.
“I told him, ‘Nah man. We need people like you to continue to talk about the issues happening in the gaming industry, especially [for] representing black and brown folks,'” said Peña. “At that time, there were no real conversations about that. Fast forward to 2020, during the time of the Black Lives Matter protests. Khalief got together with a couple of black content creators, and they had a very important discussion on things that were happening in society and also in our industry.
“It was so good that a lot of the gaming companies started making changes on highlighting people of color. And it was because of Khalief.”
When Adams accepted his award on stage, he talked about his experience growing up in the Bronx in New York City. His parents were drug addicts, so it was his grandma — saying “she snatched me out of the pediatric ward as soon as I was born” — who took him in and raised him. She was also the first person to introduce him to video games.
“She said this is going to be the thing that sustains you, and it’s going to keep your ass in the house in a way that’s going to keep you safe,” said Adams. “And it was fantastic to be able to understand that my grandma in that moment … gave me the thing that is now the driving force in my life. She gave me something that no one else could have.”
Adams said he’s proud of how his work on Spawn On Me and The Spawnies award show have helped change the way the industry talks about race. He has had over 300 guests over the past 10 years on the podcast, and it was one of the first shows to talk about games and race in such a big way.
“People ask me all the time, what is the driving force behind doing Spawn On Me? What’s the reason why you do that work? And I tell people making games is magic,” said Adams. “It’s one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen in your life and you get a chance to be behind the scenes, and you get a chance to see that work happen in real time.”
At the end of his speech, Adams encouraged people to be kind and empathetic to those who interact directly with online communities.
“We’re on the precipice of seeing so many different bad actors in the space [who] do and say anything in a way that wants to pull at you and say you are not human. You don’t have a voice. You don’t have a reason to be here,” said Adams. “As a person who literally just got off the internet on X [formerly Twitter], and having people tell me that I don’t have worth, this [award] tells me I have worth. This tells me that people see me. And that’s fantastic.”