VGX 2013: Did Joel McHale make the show better?

@popogeejo: And he had the power to make it better and instead went with "hey, don't let your cheeto fingers ruin your keyboard, geeks!" and asking Tim Schafer if he's high. Riveting stuff.

@animasta: When I say really good I mostly mean she was a decent host. She always seems interested and respectful in the content and she has good energy and is occasionally funny; which is a thousand times better than can be said about literally any other time they ever get a celebrity to talk about video games in any capacity ever.

People suck if they complained so much she had to actually make a response message. Man.

I'm on the fence since a few of his jokes were kinda funny. But overall, his attempt at humor was a bad as watching Michael Jordan playing baseball on Space Jam.

I like him on The Soup and Community but he definitely felt out of place mostly.

No, but it was nice to see him get honestly excited about Game of Thrones and Dying Light.

The four or five adult diaper jokes at the start of the show and then the huge delay of around 2 hours before the final callback of the adult diaper joke was kind of funny but i think that was teleprompted? I liked Joel being there, especially when he gave Geoff shit about his favourite game he is looking forward to and Geoff acting super awkward (i guess rightly so, he doesn't want to burn bridges) made it pretty funny.

Nope, easily the worst part of the whole thing. Bitch of it is, Keighley was the perfect host for the new format and they brought in someone with a modicum of star power too try and woo us and fucked it up. When he didn't come off as a dick he seems to just be there for a paycheck.

I thought it was fine, way better than it has been in the past. This is the same shit he's catching for the Ubisoft e3 thing from a couple years ago. I loved him poking and prodding at Geoff that he "loves" everything. Geoff always seems a little to commercialized and Joel was a good counter to that.

It was an amazing transformative experience and I look forward to the Youtube highlight reels

I only wish David Jaffe could have been there in some fashion. The banter between them would have been something to behold.

You guys act like he wrote his own jokes. He pointed it out a few times how he was reading those shitty jokes from the prompter. Award shows are a joke anyways, I'm always surprised at the amount of people that take them so seriously and need everything to go right. I'm glad he was there to poke fun at it.

Nope. The whole thing was the most cringe-inducing trainwreck I've seen a long a ass time. Geoff was being "Mr. Kinda Serious Cool Video Games Dude" while Joel obviously stopped giving a shit and just seemed annoyed most of the time. The chemistry, or rather the complete lack thereof, made every moment between the two so fucking awkward. They kept trying to talk over each other and Geoff was so busy trying not to offend anyone that whenever Joel did make a decent joke, it was kinda just left hangin there.

I actually like both of them too. Together though? That shit just wasn't workin.

Guys, guys Jeff Green is streaming Dark Souls right now. Things will be alright.

Hard to take it seriously when our biggest award show is literally three hours of advertisements punctuated with a journalist trying to dig a scoop out of a developer who was just there to show off a game and have a good time.

His bored 'act' was amusing at first, but eventually became super frustrating.

He made what was already a shit show even shittier.

I think we can all agree that next year they should get Vinny to host. Now that would be a show.

It was awful with Joel hosting. You could feel how little he cared about being involved.

Could you imagine how much better everything would have went?

he became much better near the end of the Show.

Nope.Nah.No way.

If it was Joel Hayman and Geoff Ramsey... maybe then I'd have actually bothered even caring.

If you want to see someone being shitty and snarky about video games, the people who make them, and the people who enjoy them why not just go to any given video game forum?

This show had potential, and it was all blown away by the inclusion of Joel.

Joel was at his best when he went off script, he could only do so much with the material he's given.

@berserker976 said:

You're smoking crack if you think that Joel is the reason the show was bad. The show hasalways been bad. Geoff Keighley has always produced the show. I am more inclined to believe that Dorito Pope is a big reason the shows suck as opposed to a random celebrity who showed up for a paycheck.

So your saying that the three hour build-up of a new robot skin in Titanfall had potential in being a good show?

Joel brought something to the show that it needed. Without him it would have just been a dry show, even though I like Geoff. He was a snarky asshole but you could tell he was genuinely interested in some of the games that were shown, the zombie game that name escapes me in particular. You want to talk about being so awful I stopped watching, talk about the outside people. Jesus fucking christ. That was awful.

He had some alright jabs at things (especially Geoff), but at certain points he felt unnecessarily condescending. I do think Geoff needs someone like that to contrast to his extremely commercial and stiff presence (and ridiculous layers of clothing). Overall I think the jokes I enjoyed overshadowed the times when he was making poor choices in jabs.

But honestly, t-shirt, buttoned up, zip-up hoodie and a leather jacket?! Come on. Just the first two layers are all sorts of fashion no no.

I support you and the entirety of this post.

You'd have a point if he wasn't 50% of the entire show. Unfortunately, he was, and although he's not the sole reason the show was bad, (I didn't say without him it would have been good, just that it had potential) the decision to have him as a co-host brought the show down tremendously.

No. But I also don't blame him. For the hour and something I watched he was only reading the lines he was given and those were lines no one could make work.

Edit: Also the one time I saw him having fun with Reggie talking about the Seahawks Geoff shot him down. Not cool.

I vote no, but I didn't find him repugnant or anything. I thought his jokes were funny the first couple times he told them.

He played his role well, the role I assume they hired him for. It probably looked really good on paper, but just didn't work out.

The show still has the identity crisis problem it has been trying to drop for the last few years.

@berserker976 said:

Sure, if you thought the show had any chance of being decent in the first place. If you've ever seen one of these things before you know that you grit your teeth through all of Dorito Pope and his soulless lackeys to get to the debut trailers. Those have been and will probably always be the only interesting thing about the VGAs/VGX whatever the hell they call it now.

Hell, they even managed to screw up the world premieres. How many world premiere trailers did Titanfall get? Five?

My point is that Joel was actively trying to salvage the shit-show while Dorito Pope was content to be an inhuman robot. The most entertaining part of the show has been seeing Geoff Keighley have emotions. He's so dull with his vacant eyes and soulless smile that I half-expected him to burst into flames during one of Joel's snide digs.

The show probably would've been a 10/10 if he had, come to think of it.

Joel did a great job at poking holes in peoples' egos. Like when he was talking with Geoff and asking him what the last game was that he actually gave a negative review. We need more people like that in the industry, not less, because eventually it will just people like Geoff running an echo chamber hype machine completely detached from reality.

Is it really "cynical" to try and treat the medium with a bit of respect? No one is saying the show can't be fun but when almost all of your jokes are "this whole thing and everything about it sucks", who are making this show for? McHale wasn't allowing anyone to "enjoy themselves." He was a condescending asshole who made everyone uncomfortable and was very rarely funny.

Oh yeah you guys the show was just sooooooo good that the only downside was Joel not taking the whole thing seriously.

"There is nothing racist about hating that crap. Thank God Beethoven and other classical musicians were not alive to see music destroyed like this."

@hatking: I support your thoughts.

So, here is my final rant for the night then I'm out.

People talking about being embarrassed for their hobby or whatever because of the VGX need to get a grip. First off if you need some sort of justification for your hobby then what are you even fucking doing with your life? Secondly. Even if someone points their finger at you and calls you immature because your associated with video games again who cares? If they are so shallow to not look beneath the surface and make a snap judgement about you is that really the sort of person you want to give a shit about anyways? Like what you like and don't give and don't apologize for it.

If there is anything I find desperate and sort of pathetic about the video game industry as of late its this stupid clamoring by people for it to be taken "seriously" or for "video games to grow up" Its like a kid clinging at his mothers coat yelling "Please take me seriously Please take me seriously" Just enjoy what you enjoy man at the end of the day its a fucking hobby and a form of entertainment. Quit taking it so goddamn seriously.

so who is the best host? Do you want that guy from nerdy best buy spy show I'm to embarrassed to look up but he replaced one of the Warrior's Three in Thor 2?

@demoskinos said:

Hear hear!

Here's the thing. I'm pretty terrified that none of the developers are the LEAST bit prepared to talk about any aspect of the game outside of their bullet points. During the Game of Thrones mini interview, Joel was obviously throwing some softball questions at the two guys on the couch regarding the show that most casual audiences of that show would have understood and they looked like deer staring at headlights. Joel asked the Dying Light guy what his favorite weapon in the game was and the developer stuttered for about 30 seconds trying to remember what weapons has been revealed in the Promotional Packet given to the public.

If you can't be excited about talking about your game in front of an audience and you can't roll with the punches, don't go on a live show. Stay behind your bullet proof glass windows and release soulless Developer Diary videos.

Tim Schafer is a natural at casually talking about his creations and it showed here. Joel obviously respected Tim at the end of the segment, and it came off as a good segment. That's how you do it, people!

But this was literally three hours of advertisements. What drives me insane is how seriously people demand we take this, then they turn around and start telling me to be excited about fucking hair physics. I'm sorry, but that stuff deserves to be made fun of. And if we can't take the jokes, then we're worse off than I thought. Laughter doesn't mean something isn't important or serious. Humor doesn't have to be at the cost of respect. Joel wasn't always on point, but at least he tried to keep it honest.

@milkman: Explain to me how you make this horrible show better? Your audience are gamers who hate you if you don't know anything about the medium and hate you if you show you know something about the medium because clearly you're just reading notes. Your audience is horrible, unpleasable and is the rap performance is anything to go by rather racist in some sections. You are never, ever going to please them so you might aswell get a guy in there who can make the jokes they would before they do.

Surprise though, gamers still whined because a man didn't take the Spike TV VGX awards seriously with Geoff spitting buzzwords for every adver "Trailer." This ain't the fuckin' Oscars or BAFTAs. Yes, it's nice that the studios get some love for their hard work but this is still just a 3 hour infomercial and everyone taking part knows that.

https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/statuses/409490315846762497

@TimOfLegend

I am a huge fan of The Soup so it was awesome to meet @joelmchale in person finally. Super funny, and nice guy too!

Joel McHale represented my utter contempt for a lot of what happened tonight; so, while he wasn't perfect, I think he made a terrible fever dream just a bit more bearable.

If Geoff Keighly wants to create a yearly show that celebrates the Gaming industry, maybe he should unallign himself from fucking spike tv and gametrailers. They go against everything that is great about this industry.

That reply is the reason why there will be no respect. The problem that a lot of people couldn't do during the VGX is get over their own bullshit and enjoy something for what it is.

If people let go of the idea that everything has to be nitpicked and complained about, you'd have seen people enjoying themselves for 3 hours.

@popogeejo: God, I love you. On point, man.

There's really no good reason why Geoff can't host this show on his own. I really don't know why they keep hiring celebrities that aren't even a part of the industry to host, we have plenty of our own celebs to chose from if they really have to put a face up there.

Though I will definitely agree, it's not entirely Joel that's the problem, it's the script. It really seems like the same person is writing it every single year, because it is always terrible and demeaning to the industry.

Yeah, making fun of the people actually viewing, great idea.