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SpikeTV "Video Game Awards" Results
Last night SpikeTV aired its second annual Video Game Awards. Commentary is available from the Video Game Ombudsman, who did some live blogging during the event. From his post: "Seven Awards in 50 seconds - And that's including the lame intro. and Bloodrayne's 9 second acceptance "speech" for cyber-vixen of the year. Way to stand there, BloodRayne. The categories and winners aren't even vaguely related. And these are major awards, not the largely immaterial technical awards at the Oscars. Oh well, I guess now they can squeeze in another musical number." Grimwell Online is also available for snarky analysis, as is Buttonmashing.com. For non-flash results, Voodoo Extreme has a list of the winners.
The difference between these award shows and, say, the Oscars is that the actors who are accepting awards at the Oscars are people we know (not personally, for the most part), and also they can actually speak when they get up to the podium.
On the other hand, the chumps that make video games are usually not very well known (outside of a select few, your Carmacks, your Meiers, etc...), and we as a viewing public don't really give a shit about who they are and what they have to say, because chances are they aren't going to be able to say it interestingly anyway. Just like the technical Oscars.
On the other hand, who's the target demo for this sort of thing? Late teens and early 20's males. Let's cram as much crap as we possibly can into a couple of hours! They should just give in and not bother censoring... Anyone who'd be offended by the tripe they'll show probably isn't going to be watching anyway.
/didn't watch it this year//watched it last year, "meh"s all around.
Stuff like this makes me sad. The MTV-ization of gaming culture has begun and it's not pretty. The people Spike, G4, and MTV call "gamers" are not the kids that grew up playing Nintendo; they're the kids that grew up beating up the kids that played Nintendo. This is the demographic whose entire gaming universe consists of Madden, GTA, and Tony Hawk.
It's fake enthusiasm, style over substance, blatant product placement, EXTREME! everything bullcrap. Watch an episode of The Screen Savers on G4 if you want to know what I'm talking about. Now that the pointy-hairs have finished lobotomizing the show, the new hosts haven't figured out that reading the teleprompter VERY! ENTHUSIASTICALLY! is no substitute for knowing about or giving a damn about what they're reading. It's acutely unwatchable.
I think I understand now how the old-school punk rockers felt when their culture got subverted by the unceasing quest for corporate profits.
--riney
Okay, let's discuss.
Where does rap/hip-hop have a place in video gaming? Where is that music heard? IN FOOTBALL GAMES. IN *some* DRIVING GAMES. Surprise, surprise, that's it.
You don't see the Master Chief getting jiggy with it.
You don't see the Price of Persia losin' his mind up in here.
Lara Croft may take off all her clothes when it gets hot in here, but I guarantee you if Nelly tried to party it up in her, she'd embed an ounce of lead in the wall behind Nelly's formerly living body.
Andrew WK was awesome last year. The man performed in a fucking wheelchair. That's just a part of what makes him so kickass.
Don't give me this Snoop Dogg shit, keep him in movies and music where he belongs.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
The only spike show I've ever seen is MXC and it's absolutely hilarious. I don't think it's on anymore, though?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...and I was in the kitchen for most of it.
I realized that Spike TV didn't really care what they were talking about when they announced the best "human female" category, and Brooke Burke won. Now, the clips they showed of every other nominee had gameplay and voiceovers, while Brook was only shown as a sylized photograph on an menu screen - did she actually do anything but pose for the game? They had been hyping her as a guest for about a week though, which is why I'm guessing she won.
Yeah, that and all the rappers. Everyone is trying so hard to nail down the gaming demographic, but I still don't feel included. My guess is that they've decided that since the group of people that play games is so diverse, they'll just stick to the people they've been able to so successfully trick into buying crap in the past: MTV mooks and midrifs.
The Grimwell Online article is the best of the three by the way.