The Spawnies interview: Kahlief Adams on creating an award show from the ground up

Ahead of The Spawnies, Kahlief Adams spoke with us about the show's creation.

January 30, 2023 3:00 PM

Kahlief Adams is most known for the Spawn On Me podcast, which has been running for a decade now. Last year, he and Riana Manuel-Peña created The Spawnies. As an extension of the long-running podcast, The Spawnies highlighted the greatest games and achievements from around the industry over the previous year. Now, the duo is preparing to do the show for a second time. We sat down with Kahlief to talk about creating a video game award show from scratch.

In my chat with Kahlief Adams, he talked about his experience running an awards show. Specifically, he told me about the stressful amount of planning that goes into the show. “You’re not only formulating the idea of what you want the show to be… but you’re also trying to program and manage all of the things that make a show, a show, which is extremely hard. It’s a lot more difficult than I expected.”

During the inaugural Spawnies, Adams and Manuel-Peña brought in several guest hosts to announce nominees and award winners. They will do this once again with the second show, but I was curious if Kahlief had any “dream presenters” that he would love to have appear on the show one day. “I’m a huge Ed Boon fan… getting Ed Boon on the show would be super, super cool.” He also shares that Reginald Fils-Aimé and Christopher Judge are on his list of dream Spawnies presenters.

Lastly, Kahlief shared his ambitions for the future of The Spawnies. This includes potentially doing an in-person hybrid version of the event and using it as a platform to empower black creators in the gaming space.

If you enjoyed our chat with Kahlief Adams, be sure to subscribe to the Shacknews and GamerHubTV YouTube channels for more insightful interviews. The second annual Spawnies will take place on January 30, 2023, at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET on the Spawn On Me Twitch channel.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

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