At last year’s Game Awards, actor Christopher Judge won the Best Performance award for his role as Kratos in God of War Ragnarök, and gave an acceptance speech so long it became a highlight of the show. Judge returned as a presenter at this year’s Game Awards, and of course cracked a joke about his verbose speech—at the expense of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Immediately after Judge started speaking at this year’s awards, music began to play him off.
“Alright, alright, I get it. I’m not gonna stand up here making long speeches, I’m going to stick to the script. No eight minute speech like last year,” said Judge. “But fun fact: my speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty campaign.”
The audience seemed genuinely surprised by the joke, responded with a big “oooh” and laughter.
“Ah, another company I’ll never work for,” concluded Judge before presenting this year’s Best Performance award, which went to Neil Newbon for his role as Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3.
You can watch the moment on YouTube here.
The Oscars, which are typically hosted by comedians, are known for gently roasting their attendees every year, and sometimes not-so-gently. But biting jokes haven’t been a major element of The Game Awards, with Keighley playing it pretty straight, so Judge’s joke surprised us as much as the audience.
The context here is that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 did indeed feature a shorter-than-usual campaign, which is one of the reasons we called it “an expansion in everything but name and price.”
