Let me paint a picture for you all. It is Saturday night and I am just settling into an uncomfortable chair for a bit of TV. It is the night of the Spike TV Video Game Awards and as I have some interest in the goings-on of the video game industry I decided to tune in. I change the channel to Spike TV and OH MY GOD WHY ARE THAT SOLDIER’S BALLS IN CHUCK’S MOUTH! Instantly I was turned off from the rest of the show, and even now I cannot determine what Spike TV and the production companies behind this travesty were thinking with the seemingly random attempts at pitching us outdated video game tropes.

I like movies but have no intention of watching the Academy Awards. Music is great but I sure as hell won’t be watching the Grammys next year, or the year after that. But one thing those two shows do successfully is hand out awards to the people who spend their lives dedicated to producing the content. They are respectful and reverent to the talent and allow them to show their emotions in a moment of triumph, while also including popular performers, celebrities, and slightly humorous skits. Having not watched the entire show this year, but by my count a whole three developers were actually allowed on stage to accept their awards this year. And dragging developers from all across the world and forcing them to sit through that shit is completely disrespectful to the same people who are supposed to be honored on that night. As it stands the only positive parts of the show were the tribute of Shigeru Miyamoto and the performance by The Black Keys, and I do not own a Nintendo console nor have I ever listened to The Black Keys in my life.

Sure, the people behind game development are not as publicly available as actors or musicians, but who is to say that they can’t be just as engaging and entertaining. I know for damn sure that people like Tim Schafer, Cliff Bleszinski, and Robert Bowling are all capable of speaking to crowds and even being funny doing it. I think it would be beneficial to build a deeper bond between the players of all these games and the people that craft them, because it is far too simple to dismiss the creators entirely when playing.

What may actually bother me the most is Geoff Keighley’s attitude about the whole situation. Keighley is one of the producers of the show and probably the main mind behind it all. Over the years he has demonstrated his credibility in the industry and he has been out there working for a good long while. But he vehemently accepts that the show is what he wants to be and that it is overall a positive thing for the video games, when in reality it only panders to the lowest, basest instincts of game players. I only hope that he goes home at night and cries himself to sleep because secretly he knows that his show is a piece of shit and nobody with any intellect could possibly enjoy it.

December would be a great time of year for a showcase of upcoming games, new trailers, and announcements. Spike TV could stop pretending they are making an awards show and strip all of that out of it and call it “The Spike TV Video Game Extravaganza” or something like that and use it like a showcase for the next year, because that is effectively what is being done. E3 is in early June and some games just are not ready to be announced at that time of the year and sometimes you just do not want to wait until the June to show off a project, so by having some event late in the year would be perfect.

All I want is for Spike TV, GameTrailers and whoever else is involved to stop portraying this joke of an event as an acceptable awards show and start offending our intelligence in a more direct way, because it turns out they do it every year anyway. One thing I can be sure of is that I will not be watching next year.

D.