So the Spike Video Game Awards have been becoming a more legitimate award show each year, the main categories this year are fairly solid in their nominees, some odd choices here or there but it is fairly solid. Where the VGAs still fall flat on their face is Best Performance by a Human Female, Best Performance by a Human Male and Best Cast.
 
These categories seem to have nothing to do with quality and should probably be re-named to something like Best Celebrity Voice. What does Best Performance even mean when the list is pretty much filled with Hollywood celebrities who phoned in their lines, Megan Fox and Shia Labeouf in the Transfomers game, really? Is it best performance because their likenesses were used for the Character Models? And Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, he was the stand out sore thumb in that game.
 
Best cast is not nearly as bad, but it should also be renamed to Most Hollywood Celebrities In a game, sure Brutal Legend's cast was pretty solid and I guess having Matt Stone and Trey Parker count as a cast, but no Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age and especially Uncharted 2, WTF?
 
Seriously Uncharted 2 is the reason this year's list stands out more for me than ever. I honestly think Uncharted 2 is the only game this year that could possibly claim any kind of Performance category since not only did the actors do their own voices, but they actually had their performances captured as opposed to that entire list of celebrities who maybe came in for a head scanning session and then they were animated by someone else. 
 
It is pretty much a crime to not include Nolan North, Emily Rose and Claudia Black in their categories, hell Elena's cameraman would have been a better pick then anyone else they actually picked. Instead all the real acters get to duke it out in the Best Voice category, which I have to say was not poorly picked, in fact just in terms of pure voice acting I would go with Mark Hamil who absolutely owned his final role as the Joker. But that is the problem, why is there no Best Voice Male / Best Voice Female? Could these actors not get into the Performance category because they aren't "Human"? Seriously again WTF?
 
And on a side note, if they are just going with Hollywood Celebrities for the Performance Category, why does Jack Black also just end up in Best Voice? I mean the character isn't made to look exactly the same as him, but its about the same difference between Samuel L Jackson and Afro Samurai. Jack Black would actually be someone I wouldn't mind winning that category if Nolan North is forbidden.
 
And here we get to the crux of the problem with the VGAs, the whole award show is just a facade to desperately try and get some celebrities to attract the mainstream audience so major Game Publishers have an hour to bombard them with upcoming games. If this show is anything like last year, they are going to spend most of their time on the Performance categories, a little less time on Game of the Year and every other category will fly past without any award acceptance in two minutes flat. The majority of the time will be spent on "Exclusive" reveals of 2010 games.
 
I understand why they do it and I don't expect much more from Spike, but really who actually tunes in to watch this, am I completely off my rocker in thinking we could legitimize all the categories without losing the audience. I am assuming even the main stream audience must have a passing interest in games, otherwise even if they stumbled onto it while channel surfing I can't imagine they would stick around once they figure out what the show is about. I really doubt anyone would be tuning in just for the celebrities, but then again I don't watch the MTV Movie Awards and that is obviously the model Spike is trying to copy, I just really don't think it works in this context, I think non-gamers couldn't care less about the show.