Today is Monday 13th December and I am here to rant, rave, and generally talk about video games. Initiate angry drive!

The VGAs

So, Saturday night the 2010 Spike TV Video Game Awards were presented, and I’m going to be blunt, I did not like what I saw. I was expecting all flash and little substance, but the problem wasn’t just that the show itself was of a poor quality, but that it seemed detached from trying to celebrate video games, didn’t make the video game industry look good, didn’t make video game enthusiasts look good, and potentially sent a bad message to video game publishers about what consumers want. As Kevin VanOrd said, it was “a celebration of all that we should distance ourselves from”.

One of the consistent criticisms of the show has been that the presentational style was abysmal, and I can’t help but agree that this was my biggest annoyance too. At times there seemed to be little more than a never-ending torrent of poorly thought-out sex jokes coming out of the presenter’s mouths, it was just insulting to see the kind of immature humour the writers for the show thought they had to force to appeal to people who know about video games. The ceremony also seemed to feel a need to crowbar in as many people as possible from other entertainment industries, from comedians, to actors, to a live band. None of these people represent video games and they shouldn’t be allowed to, it was just a display of celebrity for the sake of celebrity, as though the video game industry was so weak that they needed these people from other industries to prop them up.

The area in which I seem to disagree with most other people over the VGAs is that I didn’t like the large volume of cinematic trailers during the show. Yes, they were pretty, yes I’m inconceivably excited for games like Portal 2 and Mass Effect 3, but I think having so many of these trailers was misrepresentative of what video games are about. Cinematics are part of video games, just as music, and many other art forms are, but at the core of all good video games is gameplay. On a relative scale the video game industry is currently in its infancy but it’s still much, much more than vulgarity and nice graphics. It’s good to see so many people expressing their dissatisfaction with what Spike TV are doing because the idiocy they are peddling shouldn’t represent the industry. We need to drift away from spectacles like the 2010 VGAs and look to ceremonies like the 10th IGF/GDC awards; hosted by people who understand games, dignified, and carried out with proper presentation.

Panorama on Video Games

The VGAs weren’t the only people to be portraying video games in a less than flattering light in the last week though, Panorama decided to tackle the issue of addiction to video games. For those of you who are not familiar with the show, Panorama is the long-running flagship documentary series of the BBC. This means that here in the UK a lot of people listen to what they have to say, and their opinion carries a fair amount of weight. The BBC are usually considered one of the most unbiased news sources in the world, but as it turned out Panorama seemed to really phone it in, providing us with yet another one-sided, fear-mongering account of the effect of video games.

The report was carried out by one Raphael Rowe, a man who’s knowledge of video games didn’t seem to stretch beyond Pong, and someone who held such basic misconceptions as console games and online games being two distinctly different things, and that games rewards systems are based solely around giving players new features and lives as they progress. He spent far more time talking to addicts in their bedrooms than people with proper knowledge of the effect of games, and he even journeyed to Korea to study the anti-addiction camps and playing habits there, while failing to draw any distinction between the way gaming links into Korean culture, as opposed to western culture. It was mentioned that there’s no proven link between video games and addiction, but that didn’t stop Rowe and his colleagues from splicing together lots of provoking imagery of people concentrating on computer screens, or claiming that RPG mechanics were directly adapted from Skinner’s Box psychological experiments.

One of the very few people in the program who made any sense was the single academic featured, Mark Griffiths of Nottingham-Trent University, who emphasised that video games are a positive influence on most, and that the real answer to all of this is more research into video game addiction. Presenter Jeremy Vine also used his very brief slot at the end of the show to make the necessary point that video game addiction is very rare. In the year 2010 I thought we would have come a long way since “Doom fries your frontal lobes” but it seems that ignorance surrounding video games is still far too prevalent.

What I’ve Been Playing

Before I wrap this up I want to again, thank Giant Bomb for giving me the Noble Map Pack as part of their give-away a couple of weeks back. I’ve played quite a bit of it and there seems to be somewhat of an emphasis on open spaces in all of the maps, but they’re all well-designed and gorgeous to look at. While I can’t say they’re the greatest games developed, Harm’s Way and Doritos Crash Course also came out on Xbox LIVE Arcade for free in the last week, and I have to say they are surprisingly advertisement-free and competently made.

Duder, It’s Over

Thank you to everyone who left constructive comments on my blog last week, and thank you to everyone who has read my blog this week. Good luck, have Kirby (note: explicit lyrics).

-Gamer_152

At the risk of starting an argument, the anti-video game crowd seem very, very similar to the anti-marijuana crowd.

" At the risk of starting an argument, the anti-video game crowd seem very, very similar to the anti-marijuana crowd. "

" @Khann said:

" At the risk of starting an argument, the anti-video game crowd seem very, very similar to the anti-marijuana crowd. "

i agree. they have nothing but bullshit to back up their arguments. absolutely unfounded bullshit."

They made a gay presenter make a reach around joke? REALLY?

" They made a gay presenter make a reach around joke? REALLY? "

Newsflash: cinematic trailers that show no gameplay aren't a "Spike VGA's" problem, they're an industry wide problem in general. Look at Blizzard for a good example of this. Cinematics = epic. Gameplay = not so epic shitty grindfest.

" @Gamer_152: Jesus yeah the VGAs was a fucking joke. I just remember tuning it out until I felt a trailer coming.  Not to mention that they decided to fill the time up with their "hilarious" skits they didn't even announce all the winners.  NPH was awful and I actually like the guy, also the most ironic thing out of that show wasn't NPH doing a gay joke it was Dane fucking Cook presenting a "character of the year" award.  Then you add in Olivia Munn....who I like less and less each time I see her. She really seems to be grasping at straws lately to make sure she isn't saddled as the G4 chick but more of the "nerd culture hostess". Keep in mind she never comes off as liking the "nerd culture" and embracing it, but more along the lines of being more aware of it than the average person and then making fun of the typical "gamer" stereotype. BTW I hate the term "nerd culture", I only use it cause it saves time...oh by the way Olivia isn't even hot... I'm sure it has something to do with G4TV getting dropped from cable providers as it regularly brings in the lowest ratings as re runs of COPS and Cheaters wastes everyone's time so she's trying to jump shit ASAP. "

" Newsflash: cinematic trailers that show no gameplay aren't a "Spike VGA's" problem, they're an industry wide problem in general. Look at Blizzard for a good example of this. Cinematics = epic. Gameplay = not so epic shitty grindfest. "

I came for the announcements, I left with the ignorant filth. T.T 
 
Also I barely watch TV anymore, let alone a short documentary that appears as if gamers need to be captured via a witchhunt. I read the eurogamer summary and it was pretty much what I was expecting.

That show sucked the life right out of me. Award shows in general suck and are over long in their diatribe of non-related material, but this one made me gag a little. Trash, nothing but pure trash. Whiskey Media and Giant Bomb could put on a better show and cheaper too. 
 
As for video game addiction, that's so yesterday. How about social media? That's the new in addiction. Video games are only a small part of that now. Hell, video games are trying to get in on the social media bandwagon. Look at how Whiskey Media works. Look at my addiction to Giant Bomb. There you go.

"I barely watch TV anymore, let alone a short documentary that appears as if gamers need to be captured via a witchhunt. I read the eurogamer summary and it was pretty much what I was expecting. "

" @Tylea002: Oh come on man, you KNOW that they advertise that shit almost acting like it's representative of the game. Hell, Blizz ads don't even bother showing real gameplay at all anymore, they just straight up show the high quality CG cutscenes.  "

" That show sucked the life right out of me. Award shows in general suck and are over long in their diatribe of non-related material, but this one made me gag a little. Trash, nothing but pure trash. Whiskey Media and Giant Bomb could put on a better show and cheaper too. 
 
As for video game addiction, that's so yesterday. How about social media? That's the new in addiction. Video games are only a small part of that now. Hell, video games are trying to get in on the social media bandwagon. Look at how Whiskey Media works. Look at my addiction to Giant Bomb. There you go. "

@RsistncE said:

" @Tylea002: Oh come on man, you KNOW that they advertise that shit almost acting like it's representative of the game. Hell, Blizz ads don't even bother showing real gameplay at all anymore, they just straight up show the high quality CG cutscenes.  "

Almost doing something and actually doing something are two very different things, either they are doing it or they aren't. We know the cinematic trailers aren't representative of these games and whenever they show these things on TV they have to put "not representative of in-game graphics", or something to that effect in the trailer. Like I said cinematics are part of creating games and games themselves and I agree with Tylea that these cinematic trailers could very well have a place at an awards show.

Another good blog.  Fortunately, I didn't watch the VGA's
 
How do they expect the industry to mature if they reinforce the gaming community stereotype? And we wonder why videogames aren't accepted as art, this does us no justice.  

I just watched the trailers on IGN's Youtube, and GiantBomb. In-fact I never really noticed this whole award show. Only now do I realize that it was just on. 
 
Off Topic: 
Watching trailers on GameTrailers sucks balls. I only do it if I have to, and there video players don't stream/load properly for me, even though I can watch higher quality YouTube fine.