Summer Game Fest

Summer Game Fest is the world’s first fully digital, global celebration of video games. Launched in May of 2020, Summer Game Fest unites the entire video game industry for a summer celebration, featuring digital events, demos, announcements, and breaking news for video game fans. It’s the creation of game industry legend Geoff Keighley that, in his words, is “the world’s first fully digital, global celebration of video games.” He has been personally running this event every year since 2020 in an attempt to give publishers and developers a way to showcase their projects to the world in an organized and professional way. Summer Game Fest kicks off with a live showcase hosted by Keighley that features announcements and game reveals.

Summer Game Fest 2022 will feature a slate of digital livestream shows — including a spectacular live Kickoff show, hosted by Geoff Keighley, filled with world premieres, and Days of the Devs with iam8Bit and Double Fine. THE FESTIVAL WILL ALSO FEATURE a SLATE of TBA events from game publishers and platforms IN JUNE. STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS.

This year, the event will kick off on June 9 to June 12 and the activities include:

• Summer Game Fest:A live, cross-industry showcase of announcements and games, hosted by Geoff Keighley
• Tribeca Games Spotlight:A showcase featuring exclusive gameplay and creator interviews from Tribeca’s official selections.
• Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase： Join Xbox and Bethesda for a look at what’s next.

There is no registration needed, everything is fully available and free to watch on your streaming platform of choice. There is no need to register and share your information unless you wish to join our mailing list. Summer Game Fest is free and available to watch on all the major livestream platforms — including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more.

“I think everything’s going to be really compact within a matter of weeks as the industry sort of represents itself to the wider world in June, with everyone sort of doing events,” Keighley said. “I know there’s a prevailing sentiment that everyone likes everything kind of packed in two days, or three days, or something like that. But that’s really hard to do because companies want to own specific days. So, I don’t know if we’re ever gonna go back to that old model of everything being sort of compacted into just a couple of days.”

Keighley did say that this year will see fewer companies doing standalone events, and instead many of those studios and publishers will likely be participating in first-party events, a throwback to the days of E3.

And the Summer Game Fest will be hosting post-press conference round-ups to discuss the big news of each stream.

Keighley added that a change in tempo and quantity of announcements is likely not because this is a digital only event, but because the industry itself is changing.

“It’s just not how companies are set up today,” he said. “I mean, they’re more live service games. I look at the landscape now and the most exciting stuff for me is coming from a lot of these independent studios, or venture-backed companies, versus the big, traditional publishers.”

Another big change coming to this year’s Summer Game Fest is the addition of live-events held around Canada, the U.S. and UK.

“So people will be able to gather and watch the show with their friends and celebrate,” he said. “Now we’re going to have tens of thousands of consumers coming out to Summer Game Fest, but we’re not going to make you fly halfway around the world or halfway around the country to visit us. We’re bringing it to you in a sort of decentralized way.”

Keighley is also aware of the mantle he’s taking on in stepping in–at least this year–in the place of E3. For instance, it’s important to the team, he notes, to ensure that the event isn’t just focused on western developers.

“There’s so many amazing independent developers around the world,” he said. “It’s been really interesting to spend time talking to developers this year.  One of the ways that what’s going on in the world impacts game development. We’ve been thinking about that and I think you’ll see some of that kind of representation in our show in some interesting ways to talk about the global state of game development and who the people are making these games.

“We’re really thoughtful about trying to show a very global view of who’s making games out there.”