Gamer.no - Kyle Bosman talks working with Geoff Keighley- In English.

Originally written for Gamer.no in Norwegian.

I sat down with Kyle Bosman to talk Muppets, “Please Wrap It Up”, Alligator Brides, and what it’s like being a part of producing three of gaming’s largest shows.

Kyle Bosman at the 2024 Game Awards. Credit: The Game Awards

Geoff Keighley’s dream of creating an Oscars-esque show for video games came true with the birth of The Game Awards in 2014, and since then his portfolio of industry events has expanded with gamescom Opening Night Live in Germany, and Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles. Today, all three shows have grown to become some of gaming’s biggest annual events with millions of viewers, and developers vying to be featured on their stage. Geoff however isn’t doing it alone.

Kyle Bosman is a man of many talents; to some, he’s a popular streamer on Twitch and talented video creator on YouTube, to others he’s Geoff Keighley’s long-time collaborator who can be spotted performing bits in the crowd at The Game Awards, donning a headset behind the scenes during Summer Game Fest, or hosting the Opening Night Live pre-show at Gamescom. Besides the public appearances, Kyle has collaborated with Keighley for years on all of the three big annual Keighley-led events as a writer, consultant and floor producer. Having first met Kyle over a decade ago during his time at GameTrailers and Easy Allies, I thought there would be nobody better to chat with to learn more about what goes into producing these shows which - like so many other things in gaming - are covered in a blanket of secrecy. 

Kyle Bosman and Geoff Keighley in a promotional video for The Game Awards 2016. Credit: The Game Awards

Kyle’s Roles

Kyle’s official titles on the shows are as a Floor Producer at Summer Game Fest, Floor Producer and Pre-Show Host for Gamescom Opening Night Live, and Consulting Producer for The Game Awards. He joins a team of sometimes hundreds working on each show, and says that they also add crew from Gamescom when they are in Germany.

– Most of the shows are put together by television people who do a lot of shows all year long, like the director, technical director, lighting, music, hair and makeup, all these roles. I’m one of the rare people on the team who only does video game stuff. Like, I wouldn’t be there if the show wasn’t about video games. Not everyone is a super fan of the games industry, but they are incredibly good at putting on a live show, which is so difficult. It’s crazy how many things can go wrong, and how few things do in the end.

Kyle Bosman during the 2025 Gamescom Opening Night Live Pre-show. Credit: Gamescom Opening Night Live

As a floor producer, Kyle tells me his job at Opening Night Live and Summer Game Fest is generally assisting backstage, while for The Game Awards his main job is to be by Geoff throughout the broadcast. In addition to these roles, Kyle is also what he calls an «unofficial script consultant» on all three shows, as well as introducing the host at the top of Summer Game Fest and Opening Night Live.

- I’m fairly responsible for the [Opening Night Live] pre-show in terms of shooting it and writing and pre-edit and all that. But in terms of the main show itself, my major responsibility is to check over the script. I give a bunch of notes, the scripts are mostly pre-written by the time I get there. The notes I give are basically like consultant notes. So it’s basically [saying] like, «Hey, I don’t think this will go over well» or «I think it would be funnier to do it this way». Opening Night Live has fewer jokes for Geoff or the co-host, which is I think why they let me really let loose in the pre-show you know, just to have a juxtaposition there. With Summer Game Fest, it’ll be a thing where there’s a moment in the script, and Keighley’s like «Do you have any jokes for this?», and so what I do is I come up with alts, and that’s like kind of frequent in terms of writing for TV or shows. It’s like, «give me five jokes we can put right here» and he’ll pick one.

Writing for The Game Awards

Kyle says that for The Game Awards however, there is far more writing than for Summer Game Fest and Opening Night Live, with not only more people to write for, but having to adapt the voice each joke is written in based on what the presenter does for a living. With the pool of The Game Awards presenters usually being a mix of game talent and Hollywood royalty, the challenge is often not only to make sure each joke lands- but that the talent doesn’t stray too far away from the teleprompter.

- Typically, we definitely try to write jokes for the specific person.  And there is another writer who is much more professional than I am who does a lot more [television] shows than I do, and everything goes through him. Our stuff combined becomes the show basically. There have been a bunch of moments where someone has super gone off script and just kind of said something completely different. The more famous they are, the more layers are between you and talking to that person, so sometimes you’ll get a script approved and it was just really approved by someone’s agent or manager, and by the time the talent gets to the show, they have a whole other idea of what they want to do. So the main writer deals with that, he has to walk through the teleprompter and talk to the person and might come to realize they have no intention of reading any of it. It’s definitely like the more famous you are, the more likely it is that you’re going to want to do your own thing and may have not even seen the script at all before you walked in today.

Al Pacino, Matthew McConaughey and Jordan Peele have all appeared on-stage at The Game Awards. Credit: The Game Awards

One of the recurring bits that Geoff has famously brought back for several years during The Game Awards has been the inclusion of The Muppets, a collaboration which Kyle has written for as well.

- The Muppets is a really fun collaboration because that’s almost the closest it gets to a [traditional] writer’s room. Disney has Muppets people, the Muppets have Muppets people, then we got two writers writing jokes for that, and then we got the performers themselves who know the characters and will come up with stuff on top of that. They lean on us for like video game references, obviously. So I’ll write some jokes, and something that Geoff likes might not necessarily be something the Muppets [people] think the Muppets would make a joke about. They’re like, «It doesn’t ring true for Statler and Waldorf to know this much about video games». 

- Is there any joke you wrote for The Muppets that didn’t make it in?

- I wrote a lot for Statler and Waldorf. I would often think «this one is good» and then it didn’t go in. I’m used to it, it’s a thing you can’t get precious about, you can’t take it personal. Bitterness won’t lead to collaboration. You have to be flexible and don’t take the stuff personally. For the Opening Night Live pre-show I get to do whatever I want to some extent, but there were definitely some jokes that got cut even from that, things we couldn’t talk about or make fun of, but I am always surprised how much they do let me get away with. They let me make fun of the show a lot which I think is important, but it’s pre-approved, and a lot of the edits are just like «this is too long», but it’s never «can you make it funnier». They give me a lot of freedom, which is good.”

Statler and Waldorf at The Game Awards 2024. Credit: The Game Awards

*That* Call of Duty Joke

When I asked Kyle if there ever was a joke he wrote that didn’t land the way he intended, he immediately recalled the now famous clip of Christopher Judge presenting the award for Best Performance in 2023, the year after he won the same award for his performance as Kratos in God of War. According to Kyle, while the joke got the biggest laugh of the night, it also spurred a surprising amount of backlash afterwards. Kyle says Judge wanted to make fun of himself and have the joke be about how long his speech was when he won the previous year.

- Judge was down to play. So he said «Fun fact, my speech was actually longer than this year’s Call of Duty-campaign», which I thought was a fun joke, and he was into it. And then he got a big reaction, and he said «another company I’ll never work for». And I thought it was funny, I thought that’s like an industry making fun of itself kind of joke, but the reaction was like, «things are bad for game developers», «a lot of people worked really hard on that campaign», and so it changed my perception of the kinds of jokes we should make, how sensitive we should be. I feel like you got to find the people who are down to clown.

Alligator Brides

Another joke that Kyle wrote that didn’t land the way he intended happened during the 2021 Game Awards. Kyle was writing a joke for The Mandalorian actress Ming-Na Wen, who was presenting the award for Best Narrative. However, the now infamous «Alligator Brides» joke spurred a wave of confused tweets and even an article in The Verge questioning what it meant.

- I was told she wanted to do a mom joke, so I’m like okay, so the way to do this is to really exaggerate it. The idea is like, this is what a mom would assume video games are about, she assumes for some reason that you’re marrying alligators and you have an alligator bride in your video games, right? As opposed to making it like a realistic thing, let’s let it be this weird thing. And I remember nobody really laughed at it, and nobody would have remembered that joke at the end of the night, but then there was an article the next day like «so what’s the deal with the Alligator Brides joke?», and they were asking what I was referencing.

- What were you referencing? You want to clear it up once and for all?

- Honestly it was just another dumb joke I would write. I write a hundred dumb jokes and like two of them get in, and so I wasn’t prepared for that. I should have written to the writer of the story like, ‘I’m so sorry, it was a dumb joke’. At the end they come to the conclusion in the story that it’s a Skyrim reference, which it’s not at all. The idea is a mother’s exaggerated assumption of the types of things you might see in a game. I’ve never seen a grenade factory in a video game either, but a mother might assume there would be one. It’s the mother’s imagination of the types of things games might have.

So there you have it, just a joke about a mom thinking games have things that they don’t - yet. For now, let’s not tell Kyle about the centuries-long tradition of marrying alligators that happens in a small town in Mexico. 

Backlash

Outside of articles and thousands of social media posts debating who should win awards or what trailers impressed the most, waves of backlash come with every showcase. Whether it’s a failure of a show to highlight industry difficulties, or featuring statements or people that sparked controversy, anyone that spends only a few minutes online after a show airs will know the hefty amount of differing feedback and viewpoints that come out each time. Many are asking for the people on-stage who are in many ways representing the entire industry to speak on the many societal issues affecting them. That said, these shows are at the end of the day commercial, and contain content that paid to be featured. When I ask Kyle if they ever read any of the feedback from viewers, he says they do.

- Keighley puts a ton of thought into it because he got some backlash a few years ago where he was called upon to make a statement and he didn’t. He just talked about games and I feel like ever since then he’s tried to speak to issues, especially in game development. Like he definitely goes harder on game development, issues that are happening in gaming and how it’s affecting the people who work on games. He tries to give it an acknowledgement, but then it’s kind of like we’re done talking about that for the rest of the show. I do think that presenters at The Game Awards are allowed to say what they want to say. So there’s not a limit on them I think, I wouldn’t be part of that discussion. But in terms of what we write, I feel like our shows are so commercial that it’s nice to have a genuine message from Keighley at the top, but at the same time it might come off as like, glib. I don’t think any of us think that we’re making art when we’re making our big commercial shows, you know? And so I do think where we come from is respect and not making a bad joke. My involvement is saying «don’t make that joke» at a script that’s already there when I get there, that’s the kind of thing I do. I like reading the feedback, I don’t think I’m the only one who reads the feedback the next day. And if anybody’s reviewing [any of the shows], they’re typically going to have negative things to say that you’re aware of. Like, feedback could say that the interviews are long, but the interviews are what the companies have asked to say out loud, you know?

Geoff Keighley at the Game Awards 2020. Credit: The Game Awards

«Please Wrap It Up»

One piece of backlash that comes to mind is the «Please Wrap It Up» teleprompter message that went viral after the 2023 Game Awards.

The prompter at the 2023 Game Awards telling winners to “Please Wrap it Up”. Credit: X/@DaveOshry

- The previous year, Christopher Judge had won for Best Performance and his speech went on for a super long time. So the year after they had to do this «Please wrap it up» thing and then we got into trouble for wrapping people up too early, and justifiably so. So the producers reacted to Judge going on too long way too hard. They were like «Okay, now everybody’s going to have a time limit and we’re going to say ‘Please Wrap It Up’ for all of them» just because of that one speech. I think Keighley is super aware of all the faults of the shows and is always trying to compromise as best he can. Like, people got really mad at the «Please Wrap It Up» in the teleprompter, there was a lot of flack and tweets about the image of that, and it was deserved, and then we bounced back the year after and we were like, «Okay so we’re not doing that anymore!»

- I remember the video of the «Please Wrap It Up» popping up on the prompter while Swen Vincke was accepting an award for Baldur’s Gate 3 at the exact moment he was literally thanking someone that had passed away.

- Yeah, that’s obviously not great, and everybody would admit that was a mistake we made. Something we do is, they ask the team at the end of each show for notes, like a post-mortem. And then they take those and ingrain them into the next thing. Like, one thing was audience noise, it’s a thing we’re always trying to get down when a trailer is played live, the whole reason we’re playing it live is to get an audience roar at the end. And some trailers are really impacted by that. But people who are just used to TV production are like «Are you crazy, you just made the whole video echoey, why would you want to hear it». And then there was the «Please Wrap It Up» thing, where people posted the image of the teleprompter and made fun of it, but there’s truth to what they were saying. You kind of sift through the garbage feedback and find that there’s some recyclables in there that can make the show better.

The Splitgate-2 Hat

Sometimes however, the controversies spark from things that happen on-stage that were out of anyone’s control. A recent controversy happened during this year’s Summer Game Fest, where the CEO of Splitgate 2, Ian Proulx, walked on stage with a “Make FPS Great Again” hat. 

Ian Proulx wearing a controversial hat on-stage at Summer Game Fest 2025. Credit: Summer Game Fest

- He must have slipped it on before he went on stage. That was a wild thing because everything is so pre-approved when it comes to wardrobe, where that wouldn’t have flown, that wouldn’t have passed, but he decided to bring it in at the last moment. Nobody is in charge of checking his wardrobe [before going on-stage] because everyone’s wardrobes are pre-approved.

Kyle tells me even Geoff gets his outfits approved before walking on stage, although he does have one piece of clothing he always has final say on.

- He’ll have ideas, and he’ll send them to the other executive producer who will say «this one». He might have had a stylist for The Game Awards sometimes. He picks his shoes though, those are all from him, from his collection. The shoes are important.

Geoff Keighley rocking eye-catching yellow sneakers. Credit: Summer Game Fest

Trailer prices and target audiences

Another recent controversy has been around the pricing to be in one of Geoff’s shows. Aftermath had a whole article detailing how expensive it can be to get trailers into Opening Night Live, and Summer Game Fest also had hefty price tags revealed for a spot in the show. It is undeniable that being part of any of these showcases is good press, but it also might prevent smaller games without large PR-budgets from getting their chance in the spotlight, and while Geoff famously has «editorial picks» of games that get into showcases for free, it is unclear what it actually takes to become one of these.

- Did you read the Aftermath article detailing the prices of trailers for Opening Night Live?

- Yeah, that was the first time I was even close to being aware of how much those things cost. It’s not even discussed. At the point where I get in on the production, nobody’s talking about that stuff anymore. It’s all locked in and is what it is, so Gamescom does the main handling of that stuff I believe. Obviously they lean on Keighley too because he’s got a lot of those connections, but yeah, a lot of the time it’s like part of a package. If you’re an exhibitor at Gamescom you can package in being part of Opening Night Live.

- Is there a specific target audience for each show? I feel like this year’s Opening Night Live was extremely heavy on FPS and horror games and not much else, which I found interesting given the fact that Gamescom often has tons of indies and «cozy» games and all kinds of other games on the show floor. It was a very different vibe compared to something like Summer Game Fest.

- I’ve heard Keighley talk about it, not in terms of the target audience, but in terms of how good they are, you know, how good of a reveal you have. All you can do is use what you’re given, and so that’s a weird part of the show? You’re reliant upon how entertaining your clients are, and so that can be strange. In a way it’s kind of almost as if the bigger PR companies are controlling who the target audience is because you are choosing to put your trailer in a specific show. For the pre-show trailers, they are just handed to me in a specific order, so I do think some thought is put into the playlistness of it, the flow and pace of it. But [for Opening Night Live] everybody is paying or booking their trailers through Gamescom, then through the production company that makes it. So you’re handed a list and then you have to make it work. You got to make it flow.

According to Kyle, not only do PR for certain games ask at what point in the show they would be in, but also request to know what trailers will air before and after them. Kyle also says sometimes games will give a script when they want to be promoted with a specific language as an introduction. 

- Was that possibly why it felt a bit more commercial than something like Summer Game Fest? Do more ‘Keighley Picks’ make it into that and The Game Awards?

- That’s the impression I get, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. I feel like with the Game Awards in particular, you will see the Keighley picks, the ones where he will come out and vouch for them and almost say «this one is here because of me» or «I really love this», you know. I know that there’s editorial games, there’s games that get in for free, and then the games that have to pay. It’s never on my end clear what that distinction is, not even in the rundowns, nothing is flagged by like which one is a «big» client and which one isn’t, which is good! There’s always going to be a lot of concessions being made in terms of getting the playlist of the show together, but I think you're right, I think if it comes off more commercial, it probably was.

Sofia Hariz, Isla Hinck, Kyle Bosman, Anne Wernicke and Michael Huber backstage after Opening Night Live in Germany in 2024. Credit: Private

As for the upcoming Game Awards, Kyle says that he will probably begin working on it in November, but that Geoff’s team have already begun preparation. Until then, Kyle continues to make videos about the industry and stream for his fans before hopping on a plane to LA in December.

“There’s three times a year that I’m an adult, which is why I like doing it.”