VGX 2013: Did Joel McHale make the show better?

I kind of like Joel Mchale, and I don't mind at all when people make fun of my hobby, or don't take the industry seriously. I think it's important to have a sense of humor about things. I didn't watch it though, so I can't say it didn't suck.

Here's mchale vs dorito pope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkUtcn1Nz0s

I'm thinking more about the appearance of Hardcore Dave in that montage of crappy Reggie memes. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

They're just way too polar on how they act. Joel could take a step back and try to be somewhat professional every now and then (it gets grating whenever he chimes in because it's always going to be some -often completely unrelated- joke in the middle of an interesting conversation). On the other hand, I could see where people are coming from in saying that Joel was trying to get Geoff to let loose a little more, but that isn't personally what I want to see from a show like that. I guess it's a good thing that I don't ever seem to catch much of the show, and just watch the reveal news later; then just watch shows like Bonus Round whenever I remember they exist, because that's more in line with the kind of talk I'm looking for.

I was specifically blown away by Joel's point blank at Reggie about his thoughts on the PS4/XBox One at the end of their showcase of the Donkey Kong game (also the only time I can remember him engaging with anything but a roast-worthy comment). At least it turns out that Reggie has his script on that one very well-memorized/is also good at PR.

I would have preferred Geoff hosting by himself or with other video game journalists. Joel's jokes fell flat most of the time. So did all of the skits. Show would have been better without Joel, Mega 64, etc.

So that guy is what some of you people consider "funny"?

The entire show was a big freaking trainwreck- and that guy wasn´t even the worst part about it. The worst part was the announcement of a "new" Tomb Raider game that just about 0 people are going to buy. Thank god for Hello games (and Telltale).

I was shocked that Joel Mchale was a comedian, cos' I didn't laugh at one of his jokes throughout the show, they were so badly delivered. In my opinion the hosts should have been Keighly and iJustine and the show should have been cut down to 2 hours with the removal of the bad jokes.

His style of humor seemed out of place here; it didn't look like Geoff wanted to fool around at all. Joel's bit seems similar to what Zach Galifianakis and Sung Kang do.

It was the first time I was ever able to legit watch it all the way through, and I think Joel was a big part of that. His misery and disinterest was actually enjoyably meta in a certain sense, making it all bearable.

I don't normally find him funny, so I wasn't surprised that only a few things got me to laugh, but that wasn't the problem. There were two main issues, in my mind:

1. There wasn't an audience large enough to be heard laughing so you didn't just take every joke as a bomb, no matter how unfunny they actually were

2. With the exception of Tim Schaffer and that lone guy at the end, the guests didn't understand how (and weren't prepared) to handle quips and other not-questions that weren't your typical Geoff Keighley softballs. As an aside: I find the Telltale guys acting like they had no idea there was sex in Game of Thrones to be super weird (were they *trying* to bomb?). Anyway, I'm not blaming the devs; I'm blaming the format and how it was all handled. Clearly Joel was allowed to go far more off-rails than they intended, which of course resulted in the guests being completely unprepared and his (totally normal for his show "The Soup," by the way) brand of humor was allowed free reign.

But, yes, I think he still made it better. I chuckled a couple times, and he kept it lighter. Plus, getting to see Geoff bite his lip and grind his teeth in white-hot anger towards the end was great.

Yeah, me too. I'll need to keep an eye out for the next one.

I know some people enjoy the cynicism that Joel Mchale brought to the award show last night, but this is much more up my ally. I just want to see companies get awards and feel good about it.

Yes. Maybe some of his jokes were bad but generally speaking it was good to see someone who is not from a major video game website and resembles to a real person.

to give them awards????? recognition of accomplishment? i guess only "funny" guys who are great at deflecting terrible jokes deserve awards.

Now, whats the point of VGX? Its a giant AD, its not an awards show.

The funniest thing about this show is that the supposed "comedian" was the one asking tough questions and quite frankly questions I personally would like to hear the answer to. While the "journalist" was too busy looking offended the "comedian" did not follow the script. All in all, VGX is still as unwatchable as VGA. Doesn't help that I had to get up at 6am to watch it.

I don't care about his snark. His constant aweful attempts at humor though...

I DID miss him though, when PewDiePie was on...

He wasn't that bad.

The problem is that the show was going for a late night talk show vibe. But it's very hard to have an interesting conversation with developers who have had their personalities sucked out by media training!

I muted the show at a certain point, so I don't really know if he improved over the show, but some of the off-script banter he tried did seem much more enjoyable than the jokes he was given. I'm all for having fun and not taking things overly seriously, but that is a far cry from the "throwing everything under the bus" thing he was doing. There are plenty of likeable, funny people with an actual interest in what was happening that could have made it OK (Aisha Tyler skirts the line of laughing with/laughing at the audience just fine). He just seemed uninterested, and aside from that, the rest of the show was underwhelming. It was a huge step back from last year which managed to hit their MTV movie award vibe while not mocking the audience for having the audacity to tune into something that was designed for them to tune into

Really we're upset that he joked about gamers?? This show is such a joke and an insult on its goddamn own, and I wouldn't want some corporate shiteater playing along like this is the oscars. I respect Joel for being transparent enough about that whole thing, its fucking ridicolous and has nothing to do with awards, its all mislead marketing.

I kinda wanted it to be something non-gamers could watch and get interested in but thats really not what that was

The show sucked major fucking balls. It was straight up knife to the chest painful to watch. The whole time I was going "Tommorrow every last one of these people are going to be called into a meeting, be told that they have a present under their seat and its going to be a note with one word on it "fireduptheanus". Man that was horrible.

I'll say this, if I had been given a shitty script with groan inducing jokes, standing next to a wooden sculpture that only wants scoops for his crappy 3 hour commercial, I think I would have done the same thing Joel did. I mean you could see it on his face every-time there was some crappy joke there was this look of "Really?" Then, man said to himself, "Fuck it, I'm gonna read this shit like I don't give a fuck and make this lifeless production crew suffer through it all."

I'm not saying that was the best approach, but you could tell when games like No Man's Sky, Broken Age, and Dead Light came on he seemed genuinely interested. I mean he was actually trying to get people motivated that they were seeing new shit as he was the only guy clapping, and everyone else could have at least gave a shit at showing some enthusiasm.

in some twisted way, yes

This is the first time I've watched the show in years and also the first time I considered it not to be a massive embarrassment to the entire industry (just a minor one). Joel McHale occasionally brought a sense of perspective and humor to what was going on, but I think the show would have been better with just Keighley. In any case, I think talking to developers and showing more trailers and demos is a good direction for the show to go in.

Completely agree with this, its bad enough they host a show about a subject neither of them seem at all interested in, to mock gamers and re-enforce the stereo type of the nerd who lives in a dark basement of their mums house...its just insulting.

I mean. It's not like Geoff didn't deserve this to happen to him. Joel was great at calling people out.

The crossed wires were probably that the devs wanted to talk about their game, and Joel wanted to talk about everything except the game. They just announced a Game of Thrones game, and Joel decides to start talking about Treme.

WAAH! He interrupted my 3 hours of ads and marketing (with some awards thrown in).

I thought Joel was ok but really whether the hosts were any good is moot when the whole thing is a shit show. Having the GOTY acceptance speech met with a smattering of half hearted applause was an embarrassment. Joel oftentimes being the only one applauding the people there was so cringe worthy. Not one of the developers looked even remotely comfortable being there and it's hard to blame them. The last few years haven't been great but at least it vaguely resembled an awards show, I really can't see how anyone looked at the plans for this thing and thought: 'Yeah, this is what people want.'

A bunch of these compilation videos are starting to get made:

There were some redeeming qualities to Joel's presence that people have mentioned and he did have some pretty good moments such as when he asked Reggie about the other consoles or even when he called out Geoff at the end, but most of it was just so cringe inducing that I can't say I appreciated him being there. Obviously, a show like that isn't meant to be taken seriously because the whole thing's a train wreck, but he just made it worse.

The whole event was just such a bewilderingly egregious mess. Without that guys cringemaking attempts at humour and gradual descent into dead eyed desperation to be literally anywhere else, it would have just been boring.

I hope you understand that most of his attempts at jokes was him reading the teleprompter for jokes that somebody else had written.

Exactly, you get snarky asshole when you bring in Joel Mchale, he's a known quantity.

This is the first VGA presentation I watched, so I can't compare it to previous years. But overall it was awful and Joel didn't make it any worse. It would have been worse if Geoff was the sole host because he's so stilted. So much so that near the end I enjoyed it when Joel gave Geoff a bunch of shit about Titanfall and you could see Geoff become perturbed. Joel's jokes were bad at times but not any worse than that horrible hl3/xbox 12 sketch that ran early in the presentation.

Overall it's just a bad presentation and you got the feeling that everyone just wanted it to end. The award presentations fell flat every time because they didn't have an audience. Any time you would be expecting applause all you could hear were five guys in the production crew clapping.

@turboman: Yes. So? I don't care who's fault it was, he was terrible. Wether that is because he is a talentless hack or because he just reads stuff from a teleprompter cause people think he can't come up with something good on his own....not my problem. Not a single line uttered by him was helpfull or funny.

Well if it was lines written for him then it's not his fault he came across as an arsehole....those jokes were also centered around that premise too! He kind of stood no chance if that was the case.

Well, even if it's not his fault (I can't imagine every line of dialogue was on a teleprompter) he still was aweful. Obviously it's the fault of the writers then, but still: He made the VGX even worse.

And that is why he owned.

Of course not, he acted like a Hollywood brat - completely unprofessional and full of himself, and yet contributing nothing. If that's his "act", then he is even more of a useless loser. Honestly, everyone who worked on that awards show should be fired - if you've ever worked in professional video / production environments, then you saw in 5 minutes that it was truly terrible in every way. Amusing as a train-wreck, but also the definition of everything wrong with the entertainment industry. Can you imagine how much money they spent on that high-school-level schlock? And I bet that uneducated pretty-boy with an ego-complex got the biggest check. If you think this is acceptable you're probably still a kid, and easily-exploitable by those more sophisticated than you. You'll learn soon enough.

Honestly, I'm certain that everyone that didn't like Joel takes games way too seriously. It's fucking video games, not the academy awards. Joel McHale did what Joel McHale does, and watching him put Dewrito Pope on the spot was golden.

Was it the most awkward, worst, embarassing VGA/VGX I've seen yet? Absolutely. Were his jokes and questions unfunny or disrespectful to developers, the audience, the industry, the human race? Without a doubt. Is he to blame it was an absolute shitshow? Probably not.

He was probably the worst part about the show.

Good Lord. You are the exact reason this show continues to exist in it's terrible form.

Who cares about video game award shows?

For sure. I would feel nothing but shame to have to read those lines in front of thousands of people. I couldn't believe what I was hearing during those first few minutes of the show.

I feel kind of insulted now by their assertion that, "We listened" in response to trying to improve the show. They still based all the humor on bad videogamer stereotypes; old, tired, overused jokes that aren't the least bit clever. You get the sense that the writers only had an outside view of the industry, as there are certainly a million other ways they can make fun of it without resorting to the laziest material.

The writers made that show horrible. Just streams of shitty jokes that played on stereotypes of gamers like cheetos dust and mythical female orgasms. Gamers aren't all basement dwellers and the whole things was god damn offensive.

Yes. I was amazed at how many jokes the video game people let die in the wind because they were unprepared for a good joke. You could see when he was paired with someone with charisma like the No Man's Sky dude that he wasn't making anything awkward. I saw Keighley constantly looking at Joel with a face that said "you're encroaching on the job I've always wanted" and intentionally or awkwardly deflecting his jokes in order to regain control of the show, and most of the guests taking his jokes as a "wait...who are you?" type of thing when he was JUST doing his best to fit in. The whole thing also had a VERY low rent feel which enhanced any awkwardness going on in front of the camera; what was with the fake applause sound effect after an award and asking Geoff and Joel to turn to the crowd for applause?

I was also amazed how often people in the chat reacted strongly to his jokes like he was playing some sort of asshole. It was almost like no one who plays games watches comedy. I felt like I was in an alternate reality, and it's a bummer to wake up today and see more of the same on Jeff and Patrick's tumblrs. Glad to see this poll is ALMOSt 50/50 though.

This. For some reason, the gaming press and a large number of users on this website (and other gaming sites) come off a miserable people. The reason I enjoy listening to the GB crew is that they often have fun playing video games...... even bad ones. I'm going to stop before I go on a rant complaining about people complaining

The past twelve hours: The same "video game nerds" Joel made was poking fun at, acting exactly like his jokes imply they act.

People need to learn how to take a joke and for the love of all that is good STOP TRYING TO ACT LIKE JOEL NOT BEING THERE WOULD MAKE IT A RESPECTABLE SHOW. Its the VGA/X. Spike TV is involved.

Joel and Odd Future were the only good things about it.

I like Joel but what he did there was terrible and painful to watch.

No, it's people like you trying to force video games to be art. If it weren't for that, people like Joel couldn't shit all over the show and make you look like fools.