Slashdot Mirror
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.
Word.
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
That network is the only reason I've ever felt ashamed of having a penis. I can now empathize with the African American's feelings about Amos and Andy.
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.
Luckily it was when Brooke Burke was being presented the prize for Best Human Female Performance(?)
::drool:: (At that point in time I was inclined to believe that this was the Best.Awards.Show.Ever) , however as soon as she walked off stage I changed the channel.
wow.
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
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
...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.
Contrary to last years (madden game of the year, matrix goty, yuck!), the results were almost spot on. HL2 as best pc game, and GTA:SA as GOTY (instead of madden or def jaf vendetta) makes sense from a players perspective. It was a good idea to let actual viewers vote.
A couple of surprises though, is curious and sad that Doom 3 and MGS3 didnt won a single award and is kind of cool to know that MK:deception was voted as best fighting game, halo 2 as best fps over doom 3 and hl2 (Well... if you mean by the multiplayer game I think I can agree on that) although hl2 won best pc game and best graphics (to keep balance), burnout 3 beat everyone else as a racing game (is a game about spectacular crashing cars at 200mph you have to admit is tempting). Im kind of unsure about fable but considering it wasnt competing against kotor 2 (which was delivered later in the year) its a lot better than the other nominees.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
It looked to me like it was an ad for a company that creates games out of 100% Human Misery. Just about all of the "segments" had to deal with EA games or people who perform on EA Trax, and even the categories were dominated by EA. (The ones that weren't were thrown into 60 second "and other games receiving awards..." commercial bumpers.) Hell, the Best Racing Game category were three EA games, and that's it.
Sure, other games won some of the categories, but just about all of the "segments" used EA properties or talent that appears in EA games.
Katamari Damacy was way more addictive than the other games in that category, but since it wasn't by EA and didn't have any rap music in it, it didn't stand a chance. (Also, the "Best Soundtrack" category was won by a game that used all licensed tracks from the early 90's...It beat out games that had original soundtracks that were amazing...Great message to send to publishers!)
I can't believe that this year's Spike TV Video Game Awards show was so bad; it came as a complete surprise to me. That's all I have time to say since I'm cooking something; I have to go into the kitchen and touch my stove to make sure it's still hot.
Rob
It's the Game Developers Choice Awards. That's where you DO get to see the industry's best and brightest honor the games, and it's an awesome event. I've been to two; they're every year at the Game Developers Conference.