Jessie Buckley Just Proved The Oscars Should Give Awards to Video Games

Last night, Jessie Buckley made history. Standing on the stage of the Dolby Theatre, she accepted the Best Actress Oscar for her devastating role in Hamnet, cementing her status as the finest performer of her generation.

It was a victory that felt inevitable to film critics—but for gamers, it felt like a long-overdue validation of a performance we’ve been obsessed with since 2022.

You see, the Academy has a "video game problem." They are happy to let A-list talent lend their faces and voices to digital worlds, but they haven't quite figured out how to recognize that work. If they did, Buckley wouldn't be holding her first Oscar today; she’d be holding her second.

In 2022, Buckley took a massive creative leap by starring as Kate Wilder in Supermassive Games’ The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me.

This wasn't just a simple voice-over gig. Buckley provided full motion-capture and vocal performance for the interactive horror title, playing a cynical investigative journalist trapped in a modern-day ‘Murder Castle’. She was like the only good part of the game.

Bandai Namco

Maybe It's Time Video Game Acting Performances Got Their Credit

On the surface, it’s pretty easy to see why the Academy doesn’t recognise video game performances. I mean, it’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it’s all about the movies.

But with how nuanced and lifelike video game performances are nowadays, maybe these should now be recognised at the Oscars.

I mean, across the video game world we’ve had a lot of great motion capture and voiceover performances by Hollywood actors in the past ten years. I’m talking about Idris Elba in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Melanie Liburd in Alan Wake 2, and Lance Reddick in the Horizon series among others.

I’d also strongly argue that even actors who aren’t a part of Hollywood deserve that kind of recognition too. Two of my favourite performances from last year were Konatsu Kato in Silent Hill f and Judy Alice Lee in Hades 2.

At least these kinds of performances get recognised at The Game Awards, which has the Best Performance category to recognise the talented actors who put in the hard work to portray a character through voice acting or motion capture.

Last year’s recipient of this award went to Jennifer English as Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, with Troy Baker, Erika Ishii, Charlie Cox, Konatsu Kato and Ben Starr also being nominated.

I guess we’ll see what the next few years bring. In the same way that animated features weren’t recognised by the Academy until 2002, perhaps the same may be said for video game performances.