I've only watched the VGAs a few times and I get the same feeling from it that I get from the slightly more 'nerdy' kids trying to fit in with the 'popular' kids in high school. What the VGAs and the 'nerdy' kids don't realize is that the popular kids are popular because they don't try to impress anyone. They are what they are and everyone else can either take it or leave it. The VGAs are trying so hard to be that popular kid that it turns everyone off to the show.
If you want a reputable video game awards ceremony, watch the BAFTAs. They are easily head and shoulders above the VGAs. I see them as video game's Oscars, but then again I see the film BAFTAs as the real Oscars. It's sad that their presence isn't more well known.
Had the show on in the back ground last night and only really turned around to watch the new trailers. So I didn't see even half of the show.Yay for me I guess. Also I like how this article is only attached to Will.I.am.
In actuality the host (Zachary Levi) does play a lot of games. I've seen multiple interviews with him digressing about his "adventures" playing games. Does this mean he plays more than everybody here? No, not at all but as a celebrity who plays games he is up at the top.
I think half the problem is that most think that these celebrities are supposed to represent an upper crust of humanity an d of course those elites would not entertain themselves with childish computer games. I think this presumption plays in lots of our minds whether we are conscious of it or not. I, for one, always have this shade of doubt in my mind when a celebrity mentions they play video games. This doubt was present the first time I heard Levi brag about his video game playing but it soon vanished after see tons of interviews with him talking about playing video games even when that was not the goal of the interview.
I mean, yeah they really pour it on sometimes but I think that Levi is completely genuine when he says he plays video games and was really good pick for host. If he was just given some better material, it would have been way more believable.
I agree with Jeff that the only real parts of the show that shine are the exclusive trailers that they show. However, I find it utterly bizarre that the best part of the show are advertisements that they air during the actual show, instead of during the normal slotted commercial breaks. I guess if they didn't do that, it would be more obvious that the VGAs are completely devoid of any kind of substance, other than the industry embarrassing juvenile skits and jokes.
Jeff is also right that most award shows are unwatchable, but they at least attempt to show a little bit of class and genuine appreciation for the artists they are honoring. The VGAs seem to be almost aggressively spiteful of games and their creators.
I dislike all of the complacency I'm hearing towards the VGAs. Following Alex along on twitter while watching the show was the only way it was tolerable.
I feel like the only reason why this gets so much attention and spite is because it's on TV which is wierd since streaming has become such a novelty over the last few years. So why don't everyone just watch and enjoy the GDC awards which are actually good and has a lot of prizes for indie devs also.
It wasn't funny or entertaining in the least. It's the exact type of entertainment that the Giantbomb staff makes fun of off hand in every conversation about pop culture ever. Any attempt at criticism of the VGA's is as valid as any other criticism. From Roger Ebert reviewing films to your buddy telling you over a bear how terrible the finale of Lost was. I watched it and I hated it. What else can be said? I should expect to be shit? Maybe, but that has no bearing on my opinion that it is.
> the industry itself has places like GDC and DICE where the speeches run wonderfully long and the jokes are 100% inside
True, but we're not invited there. Sure, there's GDCVault where most of it is paywalled. DICE is even more closed up unless my googlefu failed me totally. Saw only the odd video of talks out there.
Granted, not really the same genre, but why can't one of these conferences step up and live stream and have complete archives on youtube and so on?
To me, this is a show about trailers. Awards are not the focus at all, so I in no way am going to complain about the lack of time handing out awards. If thats all they were doing, I wouldn't watch it as I never watch any sort of other awards show. They just seem like a flimsy excuse to get publishers to make deals to reveal games, thus give something interesting and new to watch. I think anyone who actually wants to watch the awards get handed out is deluding themselves into thinking that would actually be interesting to watch. I'm not saying that the devs shouldn't be celebrated for their work, far from it, but the way the VGA's are handled is not at all the arena to do that. If they were serious about the awards, and not the spectacle, it wouldnt be on tv
I'm not saying I expected anything better, this years awards were exactly what I expected, but that doesn't mean I had to like them or cut them slack because of that expectedness. I know what to expect from cancer or Aids, but that doesn't mean I should just put up with them and try to enjoy them. Okay, maybe that was a tad bit hyperbolic...
I understand that this was a Spike joint and that your average enthusiast wasn't the target demo here, but who the hell is the target demo anyway? It's not your average high school gamer who only plays mainstream games and makes fun of games that are different and nonaction oriented, it's not the people who normally watch spike since they're definitively not enthusiasts or people who would care about the announcements, and it's definitively not for enthusiasts, obviously.
The VGAs are aimed at such a scattershot audience that I don't see how the Spike VGAs could ever be positively received. To put things into perspective, Half my dorm last night was bitching about the Spike parts while playing WoW, the other halve was bitching about how stupid Fortnite looked, laughing at the tea bagging, and talking about how hot Harley Quinn looked.
I probably could have saved myself some pain and annoyance had I just waited until the show was over and just watched all the trailers at Gametrailers but I was vaguely interested in what game would win GOTY and I was playing Skyrim during most of it so I didn't have to pay much attention to the nonsense surrounding the "big" announcements. Unfortunately some of the trailers were a little disappointing, especially the Bioshock Infinite trailer which didn't seem to show anything new that we haven't already seen in previous trailers or gameplay footage.
Spike TV and G4TV (if that's even still a thing) are both the worst things to happen to television, given that they pretty much took the place of one of my favorite channels, TechTV. It's a shame that any programming that isn't reality television, snarky "meta" humor, or some sort of low-attention-span how-to show or sitcom is never presented anymore.
I can't speak for much of the show, but the few parts I saw consisted of two hosts (who are probably important somewhere, I don't keep up with pop culture very often) asking canned useless questions to lead developers and voice actors. They hit the big issues, such as "Do you think you're going to win?", "Dude aren't those graphics sweet?", and the most important one, "What was it like working on such a highly acclaimed game?".
Every time I see an award show like this, I imagine someone trying to sell people of this era snake-skin oil (and we happen to be the snakes). We're a market, they're an industry trying to grow the market, and 13 year old CoD fans and hipsters are the results of several attempts (everyone loves Mario and GTA, but where's the love for the other dozens of games no casual can name). The problem is, unlike the urban market, the grunge market and even the anime market, we don't want to grow. Gamers want a monopoly on the consumption of games because THAT will lead to leverage over developers, a steady and familiar pattern of gaming trends, and the continuation of those old rivalries we love to hate. From a business perspective diversity in fandom will lead to more creative (albeit easier) games, a surplus in every popular genre and technological growth (the Wii just attempted to perfect ideas birthed from older Nintendo consoles). From a cultural perspective, we will will lose our say in gaming development, become sewn into the fabric of other interest groups and, well, basically end up like humanity in Mass Effect.
It seems like the way they decide who appears on the show is Geoff Keighley sits on his bed with an Us Weekly magazine and looks for who hasn't signed his autograph book yet.
You know, to be honest, I think it's probably exactly what it needs to be(horrible writing aside). Take a close look at what our hobby was and what it is now.
A decade ago video games did not have award shows, but they did have the Oscars. The Oscars is an award show for the laymen, "here's the best picture, we're not going to tell you why it's the best picture but here it is."
That is what the VGA awards are for video games. A place for the laymen to come and enjoy a bit of the stuff that makes their hobby enjoyable.
To put it in more exact terms, the people who really love movies and know a lot about their inner workings, know about the producers and production, they don't watch The Oscars the same way a casual movie goer does. The casual movie goer just doesn't understand all the inside baseball and can't be assed to find out about it.
This is the same for the VGAs, this is for those people who play their xbox360s and PS3s and Wiis and enjoy only the mainstream titles they see on TV, who never look at places like Giant Bomb, never heard of the humble indie bundle.
I think the people behind the scenes really do get closer to finding the right balance every year.
I agree. I also agree that some sort of hyper-reverent, Oscar-style circle-jerk is the wrong way to go with it, but at the same time, I can't help but ask myself the same thing every year:
How did they start so far off the mark, and how is it that there is no one at Spike or GT who can get it closer faster?
I'm not even talking about making it "what I want", I'm just talking about making it more entertaining regardless of the direction they take.
Ryan is host, whitta and jeff are the djs, Sara is award-giver, Alex complains about everything going in the show on twitter as a comedy bit, brad is i'll sleep in the corner guy, vinny and dave award a 1993 PC game of 2012.
Re: The Wire, funny you should mention the lowest common denominator, because it's one of the only shows that says "Nah, fuck those guys. We're not slowing down for them to get what we're doing here."
Well said, Jeff. I can't help but feel that Spike's awards are aimed at that guy we all know, the one who plays nothing but the Madden and the Call of Duty and gets his yuks from other Spike programs. People who actually follow the industry (or, even better, work in it) don't much care for it, but we all understand that it's an important thing in order to keep video games going as strongly as they are. I don't watch the Spike VGAs, and I don't like them, but I am very glad they exist.
The VGAs are about the only award show I watch anymore. I watch them mainly because of the first look at video games and on that front they rarely disappoint. For some reason the teabagging bit ended up being kind of funny to me but mainly because when it was popular I often thought how funny it would be to actually go around and teabag people and now I know.
There is a strange, misguided sentiment that all award shows are bad, so should we really expect anything better?
Come on now. Jeff, do you know why you didn't connect with the Academy Awards? Because you don't like movies or TV shows that much. And do you know why your female roommates absolutely nerded out over it? Because they like movies and TV shows.
So, take that logic to the next plausible step: people who like things want to see an award show about things they like. That's it! That's why people are demanding a better VGA, because god damn, we gamers might not like the Academy Awards or the Grammys or anything else out there, but we fucking LOVE video games, so we want to see a decent award show.
There's another, far more dangerous argument out there that we should just ignore it if we don't like it. You know, like if you shut your eyes you become invisible.
The VGAs sucked, the VGAs have always sucked, and Spike TV is awful. But...the VGAs are what we have. There are lots of internet-based award shows and developer-focused award shows, but they are small fish compared to the VGAs (which is a molecular fish when compared to the other award shows, but whatever). They are the most wide-reaching and well known award show for our medium, and until that changes, they need to be the target of our arguments.
Everything this guy says is what I think, too.
People watch these shows because they want the stuff they love to be given recognition on the highest plain possible. People who support X movie want it to win X amount of awards it's up for and so on.
So if you're not dedicating the show for people to see those games win thosle prizes, you're not really designing a good award show. Hell, the MTV Movie Awards does this better and noone in the film industry cares about getting those. At least compared to an Emmy or Oscar, anyway.
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