The VGAs, once again, makes one embarrassed to be into video games
Matt Hawkins You’d think an entity as big and powerful (and as profitable) as the game industry would have enough clout/better things to do than let its image be dictated by some hack, SpikeTV producer. But nope.
Last night was the Video Game Awards, which I didn’t watch. Mostly because I don’t have cable, and even if I did, I wouldn’t bother anyway. Since year one, it ha been nothing more than an exercise in advertisers shamelessly pandering the lucrative video gaming audience, which in terms of purchasing power, is one of the biggest and healthiest. Which, btw, is not necessarily the worst things in the world.
The real issue is how said audience has its intelligence insulted at every turn, mostly in the form of a cavalcade comprised of B celebs that have zero clue of what video gaming is all about, and lousy jokes by hack writers who find inspiration from Family Guy and that’s it. Still, gamers tune in, year after year. Why?
Because it has become the place to see brand new games being announced or updated footage of titles that we all know is on the way. The awards themselves are practically secondary, but a funny thing has happened along the way: because the VGAs have managed to “stick around”, some view it as a somewhat respected and representative facet of the gaming industry as a whole. And that’s pretty sad.
The truth is, ALL award ceremonies are pretty much bunk, at least the big ones with lots of money involved. But as idiotic as the Oscars can be, at least it’s never as gotten as bad as the following. Courtesy of Kotaku, behold how video game makers are celebrated on national television.
So first off, Charlie Sheen. Seriously people still care about this guy? Next, the real heart of the matter: instead of music playing someone off the stage for taking too long to accept a speech, the producers thought it would be funny to have a guy dressed up a random FPS grunt to “teabag” the person. And how long did the person above speak for? Exactly 30 seconds.
The Academy Award is infamous for cutting short the mic time of someone who nabbed an award that “no one cares about”, in favor of some navel gazing video package or to allow some dopey (but far more famous) actor or actress ramble on like an idiot for 10 minutes during their acceptance. Yet the no name documentary filmmaker at least gets more than half a minute (I think).
Meanwhile the recipients above made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, easily one of the biggest games of the year (which, again, made more money in its first weekend than Star Wars and Harry Potter on its opening weekends). Talk about honoring someone for such an achievement. At an awards ceremony.
Oh, and what did cutting them short help to do? Give more airtime for stupid FarmVille jokes, Alec Baldwin Twitter jokes, and one of dudes from Black Eye Peas. lol.
Whenever folks lament how immature the video game industry is, I always brush them off, but I can’t in this instance. I’m also fairly certain that every game company involved is less than pleased with putting up with such basic cable antics, yet they still play along. Even though they clearly don’t have to.
If this was some crappy award ceremony on MTV or Fox, that would be one thing. But guys, it’s SpikeTV. Unless you enjoy crappy pro-wrestling or MMA (and they’re losing UFC), who the hell watches that channel?
Most curious of all is the lack of response from the rest of the gaming press. Perhaps it’s too early to say this, since today is Sunday and most folks are perhaps enjoying the day off, but I have to wonder if the thing above will get much attention from the same folks who are constantly reporting about how video games doesn’t get enough respect. Who at one point used to criticize the VGAs for being a black eye upon the game industry as a whole.
That was, until they began reaching out to press folks to help judge the games. And now, much of complaints have simply gone quiet. Just saying. BTW, I’ll have a full rundown of the aforementioned debut trailers and the such tomorrow.
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