As we approach Gamescom and Geoff Keighley’s Opening Night Live, I’ve been thinking about showcases.

I love a gaming showcase. The excitement of the initial announcement, the speculation of what we might see, and far-flung ideas you might have with your friends. It's fun. It's a great opportunity to talk about this wonderful hobby in a different way. Then cometh the day of the showcase, the anticipation of what they're going to show; what'll they open with? What'll be their "just one more thing"? Will they use the "world premiere" guy?

"For me, it is fun watching showcases that build hype, but watching, or in our case, Discording it up while we watch "˜em is very exciting because of the interactions / reactions."

Steve - GSC community member

And then, of course, after that the hype, the disappointment, the "can't it be November yet?" chats. It's a wonderful way to see what's coming and what to get excited about. IF, people watch them...

Therein Lies the Rub

Since joining Gamer Social Club, I've covered a number of showcases, in fact, I think the writing team wouldn't argue that I'm the de facto showcase coverer (real word, shush). And that's because I want to. When a showcase airs, it's not always possible to watch it live. I know personally I want to see everything that was shown. That's why we write our summary showcase articles. They're designed to give you, the reader, an article with everything in one place; all the announcements, trailers, platforms, release dates etc. They're a bit of work, but I truly believe they hold a lot of value and are really helpful.

Of course, we cover the big announcements too, but it's not realistic to write an article for every title, plus, is that the most effective way? You're much more likely to miss something if we did that. So, for that want to help, we try to cover as many as we can.

The personal benefit of doing them, is that I'm watching them all. Getting to see all the cool, unique, and sometimes, down right weird games that are coming is awesome. I'm seeing, and getting excited about, so many more games than I would have previously.

Back in the classic days of E3, I'd always watch the big showcases (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, EA, etc) but I was less bothered by others. I never looked to PC or the smaller showcases. Sometimes that's because of the time they took place, and other times, because I wasn't as active in seeking out new games in the way I am now.

That, and the fact that there were less showcases...

Quantity Over Quality?

Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2025 was a thing recently, as you may well recall. The idea of it is to bring gamers together across a range of diverse and varied creators all over the globe, and celebrate them. Headlined by the Summer Game Fest and Xbox Showcases, there were 16 showcases on the line-up, officially part of SGF.

However, and this is a big however, there weren't just 16 showcases at that time. I guess, because of the hype around SGF, other groups / folk / organisations want to get in on that action. Between 27 May and 12 June, there were 28 showcases in total. 28! And they weren't short. Ok, some were, but in the main, they were lengthy, and had a LOT of games.

"I think there may be the right number of showcases but the issue is having them all clustered over a two week period, and also having games appear at several showcases. It creates fatigue. I am not certain there are not too many showcases, but feel that they would work better spread throughout the year, but it still may prove too much.

The best showcases were the ones that didn't highlight too many games, gave time for the devs to talk about their games, and gave each game its time. It is a hard balance to find, but I feel my favourite ones did the best of this, comparative to their size / standing / audience.

My favourite showcases this year have been Six One Indie, iii-Initiative, Xbox Games Showcase, Access-Ability Summer Showcase and the Women-Led Games Showcase.

Harry, Guides Editor

I've done some stats for on the showcases that took place during that time period:

• 28 showcases
• Over 38 hours of showcase (full run times of the YouTube videos)
• 1120+ games shown

Sounds great right, 1000s of games for the whole world to see, digest and get excited for. But...is it? Are people watching them? Well, some people are. Based on current YouTube views (of the main English language videos) as of 10.08.25, the showcases have done the following numbers:

Summer Game Fest 2025 Showcase Stats

• TinyBuild Connect 2025 (27.05), 14 games shown, 26 mins, over 126,000 views
• Thinky Direct (29.05), 21 games shown, 32 mins, over 13,000 views
• Indie Quest (29.05), 44 games shown, 1 hour 38 mins, over 50,000 views
• Horror Game Awards Summer Showcase (31.05), 102 games shown, 2 hours 33 mins, around 6,600 views
• State of Unreal (03.06), 3 games shown, 2 hours 3 mins, over 524,000 views
• Best Indie Games Summer Showcase (03.06), 245 games shown, 4 hours 20 mins, over 35,000 views
• The MIX Summer Game Showcase (03.06), 58 games shown, 1 hour 57 minutes, over 16,000 views
• Shack News Indie Showcase (04.06), 23 games shown, 55 mins, over 4,600 views
• PlayStation State of Play (04.06), 23 games shown, 55 mins, over 3 million views
• Access-Ability Summer Showcase (06.06), 20 games shown, 51 mins, over 7,800 views
• Summer Game Fest (06.06), 58 games shown, 3 hours 25 mins, over 8.5 million views
• Day of the Devs (06.06), 20 games shown, 1 hour 40 mins, over 88,000 views
• Devolver Direct (06.06), 1 game shown, 10 mins, over 25,000 views
• IOI Showcase (06.06), 3 games shown, 2 hours 15 mins, over 140,000 views
• Wholesome Direct (07.06), 62 games shown, 1 hour 12 mins, over 114,000 views
• Women-Led Games Showcase (07.06), 39 games shown, 49 mins, over 39,000 views
• Latin American Games Showcase (07.06), 54 games shown, 56 mins, over 41,000 views
• Southeast Asian Games Showcase (07.06), 45 games shown, 48 mins, over 27,000 views
• Future Games Show Summer Showcase (07.06), 55 games shown, 1 hour 38 mins, over 1.3 million views
• Green Games Showcase (07.06), 30 games shown, 56 mins, over 28,000 views
• Frosty Games Showcase (07.06), 54 games shown, 50 mins, over 47,000 views
• Xbox Showcase + Outer Worlds 2 Direct (08.06), 31 games shown, 1 hour 58 mins, over 3.9 million views (Xbox and Game Awards stream numbers)
• PC Gaming Show (08.06), 81 games shown, 2 hours 25 minutes, over 910,000 views
• Death Stranding 2 On the Beach (08.06), 1 game shown, 1 hour 21 mins, over 556,000 views
• Black Voices in Gaming (09.06), 19 games shown, 1 hour 27 mins, over 23,000 views
• VR Developer Direct (10.06), 3 games shown, 21 mins, over 15,000 views
• Konami Press Start (12.06), 13 games shown, 36 mins, over 735,000 views

I'm going to say it, it's too much. Is it worth the effort, time and energy to coordinate and pull together these showcases for such low returns?? Only the creators can confirm that.

Of course, SGF, PlayStation and Xbox do the numbers, they're the big all singing all dancing ones. But what about the others? It can look like it's quantity over quality, and when you see marketing promoting the massive numbers they have, it stresses me out. How many of those 50+ games are you going to remember?

Gamer’s Thoughts

I spoke with members of the Gamer Social Club community, asking them, and others on social media, how many of the showcases did they watch. Reminder that these are people fully involved with games, not those filthy casuals (I kid, of course). I received 21 votes on my small poll and the results were not surprising:

• 2 (10%) people didn't watch any of the showcases
• 13 (62%) people watched between 1 and 5 showcases
• 6 (29%) people watched between 6 and 15 showcases
• No one watched between 16 and 28 showcases.

We asked GSC community members to share their thoughts on this subject. You’ll see there thoughts throughout this article. I asked if they think there are too many games at showcases, and if there were too many showcases overall. I also asked if there were any in particular they enjoyed.

"I do think there are too many showcases overall. Especially once you start to see overlap in the games between the different showcases. I definitely understand a want / need to highlight creators of different backgrounds that traditionally overlooked or not known for their games. I think it's also a lot to have so many showcases in one weekend. It would almost be nice if we had different showcases on varying months instead of just Summer Game Fest and one other time during the year. Spread out the love of games throughout the year. Highlight games that are coming out sooner than those coming out a year or two from now, when we lose interest or forget about games.

Don't know if I had a favourite, but my gosh I had a least favourite...the PC Gaming Showcase had some of the cringiest hosts..."

Candy – Editor

"100% there are too many showcases now. However, I do think that quite a few of them serve a very good purpose. Highlighting specific genres and / or platforms, spotlighting certain regions and cultures, and their game developer highlights.

That being said, specific games do not need their own showcases. Little Nightmares, Death Stranding 2 - calling you both out!

Some of my favourites were the Wholesome Direct, Latin American Games Showcase, Southeast Asia Showcase."

Sean - Writer

Justified Existence

I'll tell you what, there's so many of these showcases that absolutely should be doing the numbers. They had so much to show, and there were so many interesting looking games amongst them. And, rightly so, we should be celebrating and biggin’ up developers from those different communities, and regions all over the world. There's some insane talent on display and that representation is so important, and more importantly, right! Not only that but some highlight amazing work going on to improve gaming for everyone, the Access-Ability Showcase for instance. Or how gaming can be a force for good in fighting climate change with the Green Games Showcase.

The problem isn't that they exist, it's that they all exist in a two-week vacuum. Gamers want to game, they don't want to watch 38 hours of showcases. Yes, it's exciting to see the next big exciting things, and discover their favourite new title, but they ain't blowing a full weekend to do it. And that means that so many cool games struggle to be seen.

And what about the games that appear in multiple showcases? Speaking with a developer at Glasgow Indie Game Fest recently, they told me that you have to apply to be included in a showcase, but it's then up to those pulling the showcases together to decide which games feature. I suspect that there's not so much coordination in terms of what is going where, especially if a showcase isn't part of the Summer Game Fest official programme.

So What's the Show-olution?

I guess there's a multitude of ways to make improvements:

Spread Them Out

First off, make use of the other 50 or so weeks in the bleedin' year. Yes, there's going to be less around celebrations / holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Day of Maximum Occupancy etc.) but flippin' eck, there's plenty of quiet weeks.

The only reason Summer Game Fest is a thing like it is, is because it's filling the shoes of long gone, E3. We don't need all the big gaming news one weekend in June.

Learn From What People Love

I know there's a lot of praise for Xbox's Developer Directs. Hearing from the developers and focusing on a small number of games is great. Getting more details, and behind the scenes of a game, and how it's made seems to strike s good balance. Nintendo's Directs are regular and smaller affairs that are succinct and set expectations (except for the nonsense Switch 2 Direct in April, that was the worst one I'd seen in recent memory). Sony's latest State of Plays have been really good at saying "this is what we're covering". Similarly, Nintendo categorically telling people to stop speculating "there will be no news on the Switch 2 in this direct" etc.

They Don't Have to be Showcases

Ok, radical thinking time. There's a real opportunity to give games the proper spotlight and deep dive they deserve. Can you imagine if Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest / Opening Night Live / The Game Awards created a new programme of gaming coverage. Build a daily, yes daily, programme that focuses on one game every day.

But there's a comprehensive coverage from that programme. Here's the intro, trailer, the dev introducing it. Then cover it over the course of the day, show gameplay, the people working on the music, the voice actors, the whole shebang. What a great opportunity to reset our relationship with the making of games and the gaming community, who sometimes show a shocking lack of awareness for how things are created.

This would give 350 ish games a day each to celebrate their game and bring more focus to what they're doing. And that's just the beginning of course. By doing that raises the game's profile so more people and outlets can follow and report on it.

This is perhaps incredibly naïve and would of course require an incredible amount of work. BUT, a well-established, and powerful body like The Game Awards surely has the resources to spotlight games in such a way. I would love it to be honest, excited to see what the next game was each day. Then, if I wasn't interested, it'd only be another day for another potential new favourite game!

350 days (accounting for Christmas and other holidays and such) sounds like a lot, but look how many games were covered in two weeks alone. Plus, there were some duplicates, some games appeared across multiple showcases.

Keep Showcases but Do Them Better

Respect our time! Use formats that work, keep the excessive skits, bits and chatter to a minimum. Hosting a showcase, done right works, but they can get excessive and cringey. The Best Indie Games Showcase was FOUR HOURS LONG. The Horror Game Awards Showcase, which I really enjoyed, had 102 games on show. That's too much man, I can't remember all of that, and some games shown were like 7 years old! And you know, we didn't cover the four hour one, I can't blow a full day writing that up, there's not even a list of titles shown. Shoutout to the Horror Game Awards Showcase for including the games shown in the description.

Respect the games. I cannot state this enough. Fuck your montages. The number of games isn't worth diddly squat if you're banging 15 into 2 mins because you're giving each of those games like 5 seconds. Some of those clips are done before I've processed the title of the game. There's been some great montages that give the game time to breath and show a bit more.

A little selfishly, there's ways that organisers of showcases could help us out. Sharing a press release with the full line up ahead of time means we can prepare and get ready (there's obviously a risk of people breaking embargoes / leaks and such so I understand that that's not always possible). But the most important thing is, have your trailers ready to upload to your YouTube once they've been shown. The Future Games Show showcases have been excellent with that. As soon as a trailer was shown in the showcase, boom, the separate video was shown.

Some showcases you've got to go hunting YouTube to find them, and even then they're not always there. Why is this an issue? Well, how are we supposed to show you an exciting game without being able to link you to a trailer. Feels impractical to starting quoting timestamps in showcases in the hope you'll go searching.

"I think there's too many showcases, you can start to see a lot of overlap which feels a bit little bit like dead air.

Presumably, it's done because not everyone will be watching every showcase, but seeing the same game multiple times with no extra info doesn't really make me more hyped for it. I'd also prefer if they were spread out throughout the year. There's so many in such a short period that I'm never going to be able to catch more than 2 or 3, and I'll never remember half of the games from them all.

Some showcases I think have a good balance in number of games, others have far too many, especially if there's a lot of montages where you don't even really get the chance to see the games. Ones where they then upload all the trailers immediately afterwards are ideal, so I can actually go back and check out things I thought were exciting.

That's probably why Future Games Showcase was my favourite. They had some technical issues on the stream, but they had a good variety of games, the few short montages they had actually spoke about the games featured, and all of the trailers were up almost instantly, so I could look back at the ones I wanted to wishlist."

Lady V - Lead Reviews Editor

Stop Ranking Showcases

I don't think giving showcases a score is helpful. Every time a major ones takes place, Geoff Keighley has a poll appear on Twitter asking how you'd score the showcase. These are inherently flawed because people score it by the games they've seen and that doesn't work. Why? Because we all like different things. If there were loads of FPSs on show, and you don't like FPSs, then you're going to score it down.

If we were going to score anything, it should be HOW it is presented. Was there too much talking? Too long, too many games etc. Were the games given the right amount of time? I know that some people on those polls will be taking those things into consideration, but we can't separate out those perspectives.

How would you grade today's Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase?

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) July 31, 2025

Show What Now?

Ultimately, there's a wider conversation to be had in relation to how we consume the media around gaming. Music, books, and films (mainly), don't have showcases of upcoming titles. They do press releases, announcements and advertise. We should embrace new ways of doing things and try out different approaches, they can be plenty of fun..

Most importantly, we should temper expectations and stop engaging in pointless dick wagging. Those conversations don't help us; sure you might like Xbox over PlayStation, or think that GTA is overhyped, but being an ass about it or yelling at developers doesn't help. You might have legitimate points to make about what you like or don't like about something but you should be articulating it in a constructive way. Imagine the anxiety and nerves of showing off something you’ve been working on for years, only for some anonymous troll to just dogpile on you slamming your hard work.

So, this is a plea to the Geoff Keighley's and Aaron Greenberg's of the gaming world. We love games, we love showcases, and we love finding new exciting experiences, so let's respect the industry and give it the proper care and attention these amazing creators deserve.

Let's reset our reveals. It's time for a REVEAL-olutioin.