Despite having the best excuse not to, The Game Awards is doing a live, in-person show this year

Even though it’s the one awards show with a built-in justification to stay virtual, The Game Awards is going to do a live, in-person show this year for the first time since the start of the pandemic. People want to see The Oscars and The Emmys do live shows because they like to see celebrities dress up and politely laugh at jokes and comedy bits, but The Game Awards is a show about celebrating people who make video games.

We don’t need to see what those people look like all dressed up, they just look normal people. (Save for a handful of exceptions, like vampire cowboy Koji Igarashi.)

The Game Awards is a fun event, or at least it’s more fun than it has any right to be, but it’s not like anyone would have ever noticed or cared if every show in the future involved creator/permanent host Geoff Keighley standing in a virtual room while weirdly big-name presenters, weirdly big-name musical guests, and mostly normal winners stood in their own virtual rooms.

But Keighley wanted a live show and a live show he will get. This year’s show will happen on December 9 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, and Deadline says it will feature an appearance from the show’s usual orchestra for a “traditional medley of Game Of The Year contenders themes.”

Those contenders haven’t been announced yet, but… did Hitman 3 and Resident Evil Village have music? We’ll know in December, because The Game Awards’ orchestra will hopefully be playing their themes.

The 2021 show will air on pretty much every platform that does videos, like YouTube and Twitch, and it will also (if history is any indication) feature a handful of exciting new video game announcements. By the way, if the Oscars or Emmys ever get desperate for attention, announcing some new video games would be a way to do that—especially if the announcement is that, say, Brad Pitt is going to be in the new Super Smash Bros. game. People would love that.