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Play Spiritfarer, our E3 Best Visuals award winner, for free with 12 others

Taylor Lyles
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Besides announcing the big winners and unveiling new projects, this year’s Game Awards will also include a slew of yet-to-be-released game demos that will be free on PC, including Spiritfarer, Digital Trends’ E3 Best Visuals award winner.

Developed by Thunder Lotus, Spiritfarer has players control Stella, a ferry master who builds a ferry boat and embarks on a journey to explore the world while also befriending and caring for animal spirits before finally releasing them into the afterlife. Spiritfarer blew us away at this year’s E3 because of its unique lighting effects and highly detailed, hand-drawn 2D art style. While no official release date has been announced, Spiritfarer will arrive sometime next year for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Spiritfarer
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Game Awards host Geoff Keighley explained in a Medium post earlier this week that for the first time in the show’s history, it will debut The Game Festival. A consumer-focused and digital-only event, providing more than a dozen limited-time demos to download and play on Steam.

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According to Keighley, the original concept for The Game Festival was to emulate the hand-on experiences found at gaming trade shows and consumer events, like E3 or PAX East. “Now feels like the right time to take the next step with The Game Festival, a completely digital approach to the consumer event space,” Keighley said. “The Game Festival is designed from the ground up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”

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The games will be available until Saturday, December 14, at which point Valve will remove all the demos from its digital distribution platform. Other limited-time demos available for the next 48 hours include Chucklefish’s science-fiction RPG title Eastward, Nightdive Studio’s System Shock remake, the co-operative love story Haven by The Game Baker’s, and a bird-centric skateboarding game called SkateBird.

The Game Awards kicks off at 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 p.m. ET today, Thursday, December 12. It will be livestreamed on more than 60 platforms, including Facebook, Mixer, Steam, Twitch, and YouTube. Before the show airs, check out our predictions for which games we think will take home awards this year.

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Taylor Lyles
Taylor Lyles
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Based out of Baltimore, Maryland, Taylor is a contributing writer for Digital Trends covering the latest news in the computer…
Summer Game Fest returns just before E3 2023 next June
The official artwork confirming Summer Game Fest's return on June 8, 2023.

Geoff Keighley has confirmed when Summer Game Fest will return in June 2023. It will begin with a live kickoff show on June 8, 2023, placing Keighley's game announcement alternative less than a week before E3's grand (intended) 2023 return.
Unlike past years, Summer Game Fest Live Kickoff 2023 will feature a live audience, like Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards. It will take place in the YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park, with tickets going on sale in early 2023. It will still be livestreamed across platforms like YouTube and Twitch, though. It's currently unknown who's participating, how long Summer Game Fest will run afterward, or if it will feature a Summer Game Fest Play Days-like element for fans. Still, Keighley says all of that info will be revealed ahead of the event next year, teasing what people can expect. 
"In keeping with tradition, we'll have tons of exciting announcements from the developers that are pushing the games industry forward, and will once again highlight other publisher digital events, demos, and more surprises to be announced in the coming months," Keighley says in a press release. 
That June 8 start date, and the other Summer Game Fest events likely to follow, put Keighley's show just ahead of E3 2023. The ESA and ReedPop plan to bring E3 back between June 13 and June 16, 2023. With five days of lead time on E3, Summer Game Fest can coexist with the long-running gaming conference and encompass the plethora of publisher showcases that tend to precede E3.
Geoff Keighley made it clear that he wants Summer Game Fest and E3 to coexist for a while. "We've had extensive conversations with ReedPop about E3," he said in an interview with Epic Games Store. "I think it'll kind of fit together and flow kind of from what we're doing into what they're doing and stuff. E3, to me, is this kind of master brand that represents gaming news in June."
With the start date of Summer Game Fest confirmed, the coexistence of these two summer gaming events is a reality. Summer Game Fest returns on June 8, 2023.

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E3 2023 returns in June with separate business and consumer days
The logo for E3 2023.

E3 2023 will return as an in-person event from June 13 to June 16, 2023, as announced by ReedPop today.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) already revealed that E3 will return in 2023, but now we know exactly when the event will take place, along with several other key details. E3 will once again take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center after a four-year hiatus, but will incorporate separate days for industry professionals and general consumers.

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With E3 2022 canceled, these are the summer gaming events to watch
E3 logo

We learned this week that 2022 will be the second year since 1995 to not have any kind of E3 expo. While the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) says E3's physical and digital cancelation this year enables it to "devote all our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer," it also raises questions regarding how game announcements will happen this summer. Companies like Microsoft and Nintendo often tie big reveals to E3, so what is the industry's plan now that E3 2022 is officially canceled?
So far, we only know of a couple of events that will take place, though there's still time for a lot more to be announced. For those wondering how E3 2022's cancelation will impact summer 2022's game reveal landscape, we've broken down everything that is and isn't happening -- and that might happen -- in the coming months. 
What's not happening
E3's absence leaves a crater in the usual gaming hype cycle. Typically, the yearly event took place for a week in Los Angeles and served as a spot where game publishers could announce and advertise their upcoming slates of titles and game-related products. In 2020, the ESA canceled the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it returned digitally in 2021 with mixed results. 

On March 31, the event organizers at the ESA confirmed that there would be no digital or physical E3 event this year. That was quite surprising as more and more in-person events are returning, and the ESA even demonstrated that it could hold the event digitally before. The event may return in 2023, but this year the E3 event that typically consolidates many gaming announcements to one week in June won't play out like normal.
Outside of E3, we also know that EA won't hold its yearly EA Play Live event this summer. Typically, the publisher has its own events outside of E3, but chose not to this year because "this year things aren't lining up to show you everything on one date." That means that if we get new information on titles like the Dead Space remake or the next Dragon Age and Mass Effect, it won't be at an E3-adjacent event. 
What is happening
There are still some major gaming events that will take place this summer. This June, the biggest one is Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest. The creator of The Game Awards plans to hold a Summer Game Fest Kickoff Livestream full of new trailers and announcements. Last year's event featured the release date of Elden Ring, so there are certainly high expectations surrounding the showcase, especially as E3 won't be drawing away any reveals. An indie-focused Day of the Devs presentation and other Summer Game Fest-branded events are also expected to take place this June. Keighley tweeted that Summer Game Fest festivities "will be less than one month this year." 
IGN confirmed that its Summer of Gaming event would also take place in June and feature exclusive trailers, gameplay, and interviews. Bethesda has also teased that it will show Starfield this summer, and we're supposed to get another look at Final Fantasy XVI soon.
As for in-person events, a couple of them are happening later in the summer. Gamescom, a European gaming expo equivalent to E3, will happen in person in Cologne, Germany. In Japan, the Tokyo Game Show will be the final big in-person summer event between September 15 and 18. While E3 might not be happening, it's clear that some digital showcases will happen this summer and that events outside of America are still on track to take place in person. 

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