For the best part of 15 years, every June I would get on a plane to Los Angeles to cover E3. It was the giant video games conference where most of the major games and consoles of the past few decades were first shown, from the PlayStation to the Wii U, Fallout 4 to Final Fantasy VII Remake. Alas, the pandemic killed E3, and so this year we have a cluster of loosely affiliated and competing events instead: Summer Game Fest, run by Geoff Keighley of the Game Awards; the Xbox Games Showcase; indie-driven event Day of the Devs and many more. It all kicks off tomorrow, 6 June. The Guardian's journalism is independent.

The Game Awards are done and the video game marketing machine is winding down for the year, but this industry never fully stops. This week, we're taking a look at what The Game Awards could have done better (a few things, it turns out) and breaking down some of the biggest announcements from last week's show. We're gonna talk about The Game Awards a lot this week, but one of the biggest announcements from last Thursday's show was the existence of Light No Fire, a new title from No Man's Sky studio Hello Games. It's a planet-sized, multiplayer game about exploration and community-building, and it uses procedural generation to fill every valley and mountaintop with life. There's no release date for Light No Fire just yet, but Hello Games has been working on it for five years. Also at The Game Awards, we saw the reveal of a Blade game from Arkane Lyon, OD from Kojima Productions, Windblown from Dead Cells studio Motion Twin, and Exodus from Archetype Entertainment, a studio composed of BioWare, 343 and Naughty Dog veterans.

The Game Awards got it wrong this year. One of the titles nominated for Best Independent Game, Dave the Diver, was produced by Nexon, one of the largest video game studios in South Korea. No matter how hard you squint, it is not indie. Dave the Diver is an excellent pixel-art game about deep-sea fishing and restaurant management, but it was commissioned and bankrolled by Nexon subsidiary Mintrocket, with billions of dollars and decades of experience at its back. When The Game Awards nominees were announced on November 13, fans were quick to point out the error, and the recurring debate over what "indie" means was reignited.

Believe it or not, this issue marks a year of Pushing Buttons. However long you've been a subscriber, I wanted to say thank you so much for reading. Whether I've been chewing over the week's gaming news, philosophising over what games can offer us in times of crisis or just writing (again) about how brilliantly creepy Zelda: Majora's Mask is, putting this newsletter together has consistently been a highlight of my working week. I try to bring you a balance of analysis, opinion, reminiscence, recommendations and good old-fashioned journalistic storytelling, but if you have any thoughts on what you'd like to see more of in this newsletter, hit reply and tell me. And if there are any guest writers you'd like to see in your inbox in 2023, let me know who they are and I'll try to make it happen. When the first issue went out, the world was still emerging tentatively from Covid-19 lockdowns, when video games had been a vital social lifeline for millions.

The high point of the ninth annual Game awards arrived within its first 15 minutes. A charmingly unkempt Al Pacino arrived on stage to present the award for best performance, quickly admitting that he neither played "a whole lot of video games" nor could read the teleprompter especially well. Still, he managed to hand the gong out to actor Christopher Judge for his electrifying performance as Kratos in God of War Ragnarök. Dressed in a sparkling gold suit, Judge began his moment in the sun by hugging the Hollywood star. This was just the start of a further 10 heartfelt minutes on stage, the actor relaying the personal anguish he went through leading up to the game's production.

In the interim, other events, such as The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest have grown in prominence. Both are hosted and organized by Geoff Keighley, a longtime host at E3 until 2020 when he announced that he would not be returning to the trade show, citing concerns about its lack of innovation. Keighley's Summer Game Fest in 2021 was a resounding success: The show received over 25 million live streams with a peak of 3 million concurrent viewers globally, according to figures shared with The Washington Post, and it hosted the first gameplay reveal of FromSoftware's mega hit, "Elden Ring." Despite both Summer Game Fest and E3 both being slated for June 2023, Keighley has maintained that the two events are not competitors.

It's June, and video game fans across the globe know what that means – it's not E3. The old, in-person gaming show has been canceled for the third year in a row, but this summer will still be filled with news and virtual events, thanks in large part to Canada's sweetheart Geoff Keighley. It all takes place in early June, which is like right now, so let's take a look at the schedule for Summer Game Fest and break down what to expect from the studios involved. Summer Game Fest is less a singular event and more a state of mind. It comprises a handful of virtual shows spread over 10 days, starting on June 2nd with the PlayStation State of Play stream.

The Game Awards used to be considered the video game industry's Oscars. Now, the event, in its fifth year and set to be streamed live around the globe Thursday night, is becoming more like the Emmys. That's because games are changing, says the show's creator and executive producer, Geoff Keighley. Just as the Emmys awards seasons of TV shows, "we almost have seasons of games now. With'Fortnite,' even though it came out last year, it's still nominated this year because they keep updating it," Keighley said.

The 2016 Game Awards have come and gone, and it's time to give the ceremony its postmortem. And is this the video game award show we need, or the one we deserve? Let's go over the good, the bad and the cringeworthy of last night's show. The Schick Hydrobot says a lot about this year's Game Awards. Because we should be positive as often as we can, let's start with the good... Long-time video game commentator and entertainer, Geoff Keighley was the big winner of last night's show.

We're still a few weeks out from announcing our own Game(s) of the Year list, but 2016's first Faux Video Game Oscars event happened last night: The Game Awards, the show that Geoff Keighley spun out of Spike's old Video Game Awards. And as with every year, the awards themselves took second stage to the non-stop hype train of trailers for next year's games. So inside, you'll find all of the World Exclusive Reveals from last night's 2016 Game Awards. That means Mass Effect: Andromeda, Guardians of the Galaxy: A Telltale Series, and more. The "World Exclusive Reveal" train started before The Game Awards even officially started, with Gearbox and People Can Fly revealing Bulletstorm: Full Clipa.k.a.