The best speech at The Game Awards

There were some pretty cool trailers, too.

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke at The Game Awards 2024. Via TGA’s official stream.

An extraordinary week of gaming news had its feel-good peak on Thursday night with a speech at The Game Awards from Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios.

It was simply good to hear Vincke, who had been cut off during last year’s running of the annual Los Angeles event while accepting top honors for his team’s creation of Baldur’s Gate III.

But what he actually said was all the more special. “Feel-good” here means inspiring, more so than cheerful. His speech was hopeful, if not happy. Call his words a corrective, a “catharsis,” or a calibration of what should be true about the best efforts to make the world’s best video game.