Spike VGA's female performance nomination makes me laugh.

So like alot of people, I am completely cynical of Spike's VGA's.

However I decided to have a look and saw a bunch of nominations we can vote for. Checked around and its the same games being mentioned....I flashed back to my first and last VGA experience were alot of Hollywood Actors had starred in games and Neil Patrick Harris voiced Spider-man a game and promptly won.

So I checked is there any stupid amount of pointless nominations? I found one...its one at-least...however it could be a pretty stupid one.

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2012-nominees/voting/best-performance-by-a-human-female

Can someone point out the elephant in the room....more so if you have actually played and completed Sleeping Dogs you will probably have laughed pretty hard.

EMMA STONE AS AMANDA CARTWRIGHT! I played the game never noticed any of the famous voices, hell I recognized the voice actor for Wei Shen when he appeared in the new Total Recall movie. You put Emma Stone in a film...Id have a hard time telling who she is. That is just me, its funnier considering she is a Hollywood actress and I couldn't tell who she is without a Google search, probably seen her.

So for those who dont know this is Amanda's significance in the game.in the game you finished like 3 missions? before meeting Amanda, a lost American in Hong Kong looking for a Martial Arts gym, Wei helps her find it. You drive to the gym and Wei meets his old martial arts instructor get taught a new move and is introduced to the way you unlocked new moves.

Amanda simply was a line to get you to a tutorial... there is one more bit, after that you exchange numbers say you'll call her. Done.

Something a lot of people NEVER do is phone her since they didn't know they HAD to. So I phoned her and a sort of "Date" was set up. She wanted to get photos of herself showing off Hong Kong so you meet at a tourist Garden on the side of a hill. Except is 8pm and closed, so you bribe your way in and take some photos of her and then leave.

Done, gone nothing else done. She is out of the game, so much 25 hours later I said to myself "What happened to that Amanda woman?"

Id say Lucy Liu with Vivian Lu would have been a stronger candidate. The story of a woman in the a Hong Kong Triad run movie business, that while she is becoming a starlet her "boss" is prostituting her to every one either to makes deals or just because he can.

As well as she is in the game for a good few hours. Even at that it is pretty loose.

However as Jeff has said in the past roughly* "If your looking to the VGA's as credible form of acknowledgment to core of Video Games then you need to re prioritize whats important."

Meaning the VGA's are what they are. We will never be able to change it into "A TRUE VIDEO GAME AWARDS" instead go watch the Video Game Baftas for a better idea.

With the Robert Florence and the VGA Media awards thing. Were Journalist could win...however a lot of them felt it a badge of shame, since this was PR and Marketers rewarding Journalist with a pat on the head saying "You brown nosed us the best, here is a reward for not giving us that 7!...thanks!"

The Spike VGA's isnt all that different.

Still...I absolutely chuckle at how Emma Stone as Amanda Cartwright is a significant character....Hell Not Ping gets more involved ontop of being reused for the Halloween DLC.

Oh Spike........

While I think that Emma Stone deserves many awards for many things, that is kind of laughable. She's in literally two scenes in the entire game.

To be fair, that's the only one of their voice acting nominations that's... questionable this year it seems. Looks the rest of the female, and all of the male, nominees are like, voice actors who arguably DID give good performances. At least it's progress.

Edit: Now if you wanna talk about what the hell is going on with the "Best PS3" and "Bext XBox 360" categories, we'll have something.

They only nominated her in hopes that she would actually show up.

As dumb as the VGAs are I'm quite surprised that The Walking Dead is one of the choices for GOTY.

Guys it dosent matter that Emma stone got nominated she is up against clementine she is going to lose.

It's not just 'female performance' it's 'human female performance'.

@Epidehl said:

To be fair, that's the only one of their voice acting nominations that's... questionable this year it seems. Looks the rest of the female, and all of the male, nominees are like, voice actors who arguably DID give good performances. At least it's progress.

Edit: Now if you wanna talk about what the hell is going on with the "Best PS3" and "Bext XBox 360" categories, we'll have something.

Yeah, that is why I am not blasting every facet of the nominations....otherwise id be sitting making some sort of longer post.

I looked at the PS3 and 360 categories then went "there could be something up with this. I dunno all I remember is playing Indie games the last year. and a few of these titles."

@JasonR86 said:

It's not just 'female performance' it's 'human female performance'.

I know but you try and fit "Human" into the title of this thread. Something had to give.

Jen Taylor does do great voice acting, also jennifer hale

@Akyho said:

@Epidehl said:

To be fair, that's the only one of their voice acting nominations that's... questionable this year it seems. Looks the rest of the female, and all of the male, nominees are like, voice actors who arguably DID give good performances. At least it's progress.

Edit: Now if you wanna talk about what the hell is going on with the "Best PS3" and "Bext XBox 360" categories, we'll have something.

Yeah, that is why I am not blasting every facet of the nominations....otherwise id be sitting making some sort of longer post.

I looked at the PS3 and 360 categories then went "there could be something up with this. I dunno all I remember is playing Indie games the last year. and a few of these titles."

@JasonR86 said:

It's not just 'female performance' it's 'human female performance'.

I know but you try and fit "Human" into the title of this thread. Something had to give.

Who do you think is going to win 'best non-human female performance'?

Wow , no XCOM? Guess 2K didn't pay for enough ads.

I heard an interview with Mark Hamill on voicing The Joker, and he said "My last performance as Joker was in the Batman videogames, which I heard are doing insanely well. I was nominated for best performance, but I lost out to Jack Black playing himself, urrrgggghhh!"
 
and that made me laugh.

The majority of the nominations this year are actually really well handled. I did realize it was Emma Stone voicing Amanda, but only because I knew Emma was in the game from all that prerelease promo material. If I was gonna replace her with somebody, I guess it'd be Tali or Liara from ME3 or Lilly from Walking Dead. If we're gonna limit it to one per game, then I don't really have a replacement. Maybe one of the women from Kid Icarus: Uprising for being able to say such ridiculous nonsense?

That said, Vivian was a much higher quality performance than Amanda in Sleeping Dogs, as were Peggy and Jiang. So I agree that the nomination from Sleeping Dogs is probably wrong. I just don't care because I have zero other people to nominate and, let's face it, Emma Stone is losing to Clementine or Lady Shepard.

Okay, wait, no. I remembered one. Let's let Jenny Romano be nominated instead. She did as well as everybody else in that game (except Mike Patton and the guy who voiced Johnny Powell, holy shit.)

And we can replace Cortana with Chloe Grace Moretz or Susan Sarandon from Dishonored, too, I guess. They loved that game over there.

As someone else mentioned, the male voice nominations are definitely not the obvious ones and do not include the obvious throwaway celebrity nominations from the likes of Black Ops II or Sleeping Dogs. Captain Walker, Lee Everett, and Max Payne are totally awesome choices, and Handsome Jack is not a throwaway, as much as I hate the character. Sure, it'd be fun to see Mike Patton get nominated for voicing The Darkness (it is a delicious voice,) but it's a fine choice.

And then for the majority of the other categories, I think they did a really excellent job. There's other complaints to be made, sure (the fact that the Wii/Wii U category has been announced and opened for voting before the launch of the Wii U is obviously suspect) but it's ultimately a pretty strong set of nominations.

...which is how I felt last year, and then they completely fucked up and announced most of the in-show awards in a two-minute highlight reel and left some of the best awards out of the show entirely. It's some terrible television, and the actual awards given seem to have very little impact on a game's ultimate success, but the nominations are always interesting. When the worst game on the entire ballot is New Super Mario Bros. 2 (BAH BAH) they're doing okay in my book.

the VA's for Clementine or Cortana should win anyway. Emma Stone? Nah

They're the VGAs. They're bound to be stupid.

What gets me is Journey. What all dick sucking went on to get that game nominated for everything? That is one game I did not expect the VGAs the give a shit about.

@Epidehl said:

To be fair, that's the only one of their voice acting nominations that's... questionable this year it seems. Looks the rest of the female, and all of the male, nominees are like, voice actors who arguably DID give good performances. At least it's progress.

Edit: Now if you wanna talk about what the hell is going on with the "Best PS3" and "Bext XBox 360" categories, we'll have something.

I think Assassin's Creed III, Borderlands 2, or Dishonored will win something this yea.

But seriously, what the heck?

Clearly the real issue here is the lack of Cindy Robinson as Zero III in Virtue's Last Reward. Now that was some voice acting, and more than just "being a character". Sadly I guess about as many people played VLR as did 999.  
 
Edit: You also have to love the nominations for games that aren't out yet, see: Epic Mickey 2 (under best adaptation). Now I don't know a thing about the game, but what are the criteria for making this list (actually I'm afraid of that answer). Journey and The Walking Dead also double dip in a few categories, but it's not as egregious as the PS3/360 issue.  
 
Double Edit: Best Song 
Theatrythm Final Fantasy came out this year. I don't care if it's just old songs, you could literally take any song off the soundtrack and it would beat their four choices. Let's not even get into the four they did choose...

@bartok said:

They only nominated her in hopes that she would actually show up.

Yup.

I checked out the nominees. PS3/360 GotY is definitely weird. Also, VGA's still can't tell the difference between art design and graphics since Dishonored is nominated for Best Graphics. Its a good game but just average or a little below in terms of graphics.

@bartok said:

They only nominated her in hopes that she would actually show up.

What, you didn't want to know what the Spike TV audience thought was a better game, Halo 4 or Journey? I personally think it will be an even split. Too close to call.

I also like how ZombiU and Super Mario U are both up for Best Wii U / Wii game of the Year and they aren't even out yet.

Side Note: Persona 4 Arena is up for best Fighting game.

Those are some pretty good nominees overall. Only, like, 2 COD nominations. I liked to see the representation of Fez and Journey. Shame that the Mass Effect 3 score wasn't nominated.

Let's look at it this way, at least Jessica Chobot in Mass 3 wasn't nominated, because come on, I could totally see that happening.

The reason why the Walking Dead was nominated so many times is likely because the "VGA Advisory Counsel" who are all video game reviewers, were probably all playing the last episode of the Walking Dead when they voted. Also notice how it says

"SPIKE TV is pleased to announce the 2012 VGA Advisory Council! It's the Council's job to vote on the VGA nominees and winners."

So they probably already voted for, and know who the winner of all the categories are. Or they will vote. Ether way, these games are not picked by gamers like they want you to think they are.

@Hailinel said:

They're the VGAs. They're bound to be stupid.

I remember Emma's performance standing out and feeling believable and i was surprised by how short that characters stay was for how they played up the "check out our voice actors" video. Regardless, her performance was solid even if short lived.

Some of the GotY stuff was quite surprising. I would have never expected Journey or Walking Dead to be there. And even though I liked AC3, it shouldn't be there. Honestly, I think they should give it to ME3. It wasn't the best of the series, and a lot of whiney people seemed to think the game was only a 10 minute cutscene, but it should be awarded as a result of the sum of its parts, like Return of the King winning best picture

The fact that they still call it "Best Performance by a Human Female" makes me laugh.

The fact that they still call it "Best Performance by a Human Female" makes me laugh.

I resent the VGA's to no end; what a total farce of an awards show. I hate the term dude-bro, but those awards are the dudest of bros in every derogative sense.

For laughs, I went to the wikipedia page to look at previous winners. "Most Addictive Game Fueled by Mountain Dew" (from 2005 no less) is just dirty as heck. There's a whole lot of shameless "categories" like that.

I will give them credit; it's much less obvious than it used to be that their rewards are completely bought out.

Rorie is gonna kick yo ass.

I've never actually watched a VGA awards show all the way through. Once when I was roomies with a high school friend of mine he was watching them and I sat and watched for a few minutes until it hit commercials then I left. I don't think they are terrible... it's an awards show and those are always dumb almost across the board. Maybe I'm not typical as I have never owned my own television and I stopped watching TV actively when I left my parents house, before then actually.. prolly stopped when I got my first game console.

It's not hard or a 'life choice' to not watch tv since I do actually download or stream tv shows I fancy anyways. Might be more accurate to say I don't watch advertisements, since that's the only thing I miss out on by doing things this way. Living in Canada also actually means there are ZERO ads on giantbomb and youtube as well.. haha.

Oh topic, I thought emma stone and all the voice actors did a great job in sleeping dogs. There is a lot of hyperbole going around in the posts saying how few scenes emma stone has and what not.. it's a video game and she actually has more than just 2, and they are decently long. I at least remember the walking around date one, statues or some shit, and the job she did there along with the writting made me kinda want more of that content... they were interesting scenes. It's a massive shame that the date stuff is so not even half baked, it's terribly under developed. I'm not one to want a dating sim game but hey give me well written interesting content and I'll want more... whatever form it's in.

You're a fucking moron if you expect this to be a good awards show for you. It is premiering on Spike so please adjust your expectations.

Hey, let's get some baseball bats and beat this dead horse over here.

@Akyho said:

So like alot of people, I am completely cynical of Spike's VGA's.

As well as you should be. Spike's VGA's are nothing more then a big marketing ploy. Look at the amount of awards they give during the show as apposed to how many trailers they play. Until now I was just curious about them but this year I'm not gonna even bother watching it.

Well how else are they supposed to cater to the key demographic of "Mathew Rorie"

./baseball bat equipped

Spike VGA (and really, GameTrailers in general) are not so useful for gaming content, but they do some level of mainstream dissemination. So if they help the industry as a whole, I can appreciate them. But there not really something you should look at if you already know more than 5 games came out this year.

The GiantBomb GOTY list is usually the most interesting. Not necessarily in terms of buyers guide (if your on giantbomb already.... you already know what you like). But it is an interesting bit of a pleasant reminiscence for the past year.

Two things. At the Oscars there have been plenty of cases of actors or actresses getting nominated for their work in only a single scene. Most recently that I can think of, Viola Davis was in no more than 10 minutes of Doubt yet scored a nomination because those were ten of the most amazing minutes in movie history. Now I didn't play Sleeping Dogs, but I don't think it's fair to discredit a role just because it is minor. In this case I assume they just wanted to nominate a popular actress, but in theory a small but incredible role could be more than deserving of an award.

Second thing, I actually think this is a pretty great list of games. Of the five GOTY nominees I've played three of them and would say those are the best three games I played this year so as far as the nominees go I think this is a pretty solid list. I'm sure the show itself will be awful but the actual nominees seem fine.

It kinda baffles me that you wouldn't recognize Emma Stone. She's super popular. Like, she starred in The Help, Easy A, The Amazing Spider-Man, Zombieland, Crazy Stupid Love and she's gonna star next to Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Sean Penn in Gangster Squad. She's fucking everywhere, is what I'm saying.

But yeah anyways her getting a nomination is pretty dumb. She has such an insignificant role. I mean, people have won acting awards for small screentime before (like Anthony Hopkins, who was in Silence of the Lambs for sixteen minutes), but her character means nothing in that game. It's the VGAs, of course, so it's not totally blowing my mind but it's a tad goofy.

@Akyho: The award doesn't matter how prominent the role was just what was the best preformed role and her VO was actually pretty damn great. So....... I don't see an issue.

I think the dumber thing is: Why the fuck did they get Emma Stone to voice a character in a game for 5 minutes?

@DoctorWelch said:

I think the dumber thing is: Why the fuck did they get Emma Stone to voice a character in a game for 5 minutes?

Name recognition, pure and simple.

Most of their nominees are are weird, I wonder if people vote for these or if people who don't play video games choose them.

Actually, they did a pretty good job with the voice acting nominations this year. I still remember 2009, when they put celebrities into best male and female role (like Hugh Jackman or Megan Fox) and shoehorned Jack Black, Mark Hamill, Nolan North and Claudia Black into some bullshit "Best Voice" category.

@Hailinel said:

@DoctorWelch said:

I think the dumber thing is: Why the fuck did they get Emma Stone to voice a character in a game for 5 minutes?

Name recognition, pure and simple.

Yeah, I get that, but if you're gonna get Emma Stone, why not actually use her? And maybe I just didn't follow Sleeping Dogs news that much, but this is the first time I even heard she was in the game.

Time Out Yall

Emma Stone in Sleeping Dogs. Not a performance. Like kind of a one note character and didn't do anything really interesting with the story(except go to the park). But to say you don't know who Emma Stone is as an actress is bananas. she was in spider man for christs sake. That's why they nominated her. So she would show up (no chance) and give the awards main stream cleb cred.

@DoctorWelch said:

@Hailinel said:

@DoctorWelch said:

I think the dumber thing is: Why the fuck did they get Emma Stone to voice a character in a game for 5 minutes?

Name recognition, pure and simple.

Yeah, I get that, but if you're gonna get Emma Stone, why not actually use her? And maybe I just didn't follow Sleeping Dogs news that much, but this is the first time I even heard she was in the game.

It would probably have cost them way too much to have her perform more. So this way they save money, but can still throw out her name all they want in promotional materials. At least, I imagine that's why.

Why does everyone care so much about this Emma Stone chick, am I missing something? According to wikipedia she's been in like, 2 decent films and then a load of shit.

Clementine ftw!

Let's all do the right thing and vote for Clementine?

You know what, if you DON'T vote for Clementine, you are a horrible person.