MTV Nominates Game Tracks, Misses Point

1up.com is reporting that MTV's Video Music Awards has a 'Best Video Game Soundtrack' in the mix this year. However, as usual, MTV misses the point. From the article: "Dance Dance Revolution Extreme, Madden NFL 2005, Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition, Def Jam Fight for NY, and Tony Hawk's Underground 2 have all been nominated. Unsurprisingly, the reason these games have been nominated isn't because they feature charming, interesting, moving symphonic scores." Good job for highlighting more cookie cutter Top 40's crap, MTV. Way to go.

Comments

There's a reason it's top 40

[BlackCobra43]

Some people, brace yourself for this, enjoy it. I hate this illogical "If nobody likes it then it must be good" "underground" mentality shared by "counterculture" advocates. Get your favorites out there instead fo whining how nobody is giving your unpopular tastes the attention you feel they deserve.

Man, this IS going to be a flamewar.

Re:There's a reason it's top 40

[ZephyrXero]

That's not the problem... That music is fine for a "licensed video game music" category...but we'd all much rather see actual video game scores nominated. Nominating those soundtracks is like nominating the NOW CDs and other compilations... When you see best soundtrack at the Oscars, they're talking about original music made specifically for that movie...but then again, Mtv's not that credible of a source for anything these days :P

Re:There's a reason it's top 40

[Iriel]

The most informative sentence in the article is "This is MTV we're talking about, though".The games here are there strictly because of they have the same music you will find on M2 during the two hours a day they play music.

They are not paid to encourage the underground. They aren't trying to expand our minds with anything new or revolutionary. If the candidates in this field were the kinds of scores that most of us would like to see, then the category wouldn't exist next year because the people who vote for anything on MTV wouldn't know the titles.

When I saw the article, I saw an ancient logo for MTV from the days when the M actually stood for something. Given that placement, I can't help but wonder if the the author is a little nostalgic for the old age of Music Television. When they could play almost anything and it was still new. I really can't start a flame war because the title that are on that list are supposed to be on that list. The Source Hip-Hop Awards make no mention of Sarah Brightman, and MTV makes no mention of those that aren't marketed/powerful enough to make it into the mainstream. This isn't to say that everything popular is crap, but pop is what MTV is all about.

Re:There's a reason it's top 40

[EnronHaliburton2004]

1996?

MTV died right after their first Spring Break Special. That's when they discovered that selling TnA to teenagers on MTV was better then selling 'M'usic -- that was probably 1986 or something.

Re:There's a reason it's top 40

[badasscat]

but we'd all much rather see actual video game scores nominated.

Then they need to create a category called "Best Video Game Score".

From what I'm reading here, this is a category for "Best Video Game Soundtrack", which is a completely different animal. Scores and soundtracks are not the same thing.

It's fine if you want to complain about them not having a Best Score category, and if you want to petition them about that, go right ahead. But I don't see the point in complaining that scores aren't included in the soundtrack category - that'd be like complaining Jethro Tull wasn't included in the "Best Heavy Metal Performance" categ... oh, wait.

Don't you get it?

[ivan256]

Good job for highlighting more cookie cutter Top 40's crap, MTV. Way to go.

It's not about whether you like the music or hate it, or if it's popular or original or whatever... They get paid to advertise this music.

Different Meaning

[Nytewynd]

MTV isn't handing out the award for best video game composition or score. They are handing out an award that best represents the types of music that the audience of MTV would like in a video game.

They are essentially awarding the song that is best licensed to be in a game that is already a favorite song of the MTV population. You can't fault them for it either. If this were a video game awards show, it would be different. This is a show about music videos though. People watching want to see Eminem get an award, not some random Japanese dude. You have to play to your target audience.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas?

[Ki Master George]

Why wasn't GTA:SA nominated? It has lots of fun stuff on the radio--suprisingly for a video game, it actually got quite a few good song to put on the rock stations. It's fun listening to the hillbillies on the country stations, too....

And after all, I'd think that MTV would like sex mini-games.

Re:Like the comment or not, it is true

[Momoru]

But the majority of teenagers want crap cuz crap is all that is on the radio. Anything played repeditively will gain people liking it. Even though I've hated Nelly and Killers songs at first, once you hear them enough they catch on...I think if Clear Channel played Badly Drawn Boy and Decemberists they would get on MTV too. (Modest Mouse's recent popularity as an example)

Top 40 crap

[77Punker]

Sure, most of that is boring standard MTV fare. However, some of the songs on the Tony Hawk games are incredibly obscure, although the latest version doesn't include anything that's all that hard to find. Go looking at any top 40 and see if Dead Boys or the Germs ever had a single hit song.

Is this really news?

[Beer Moon]

People still watch MTV? That's news to me!!

Re:Feh?

[Z0mb1eman]

*geek mode on*

Actually, one possible source of its popularity is that it's a favourite saying of Inuyasha, the main character in the anime of the same name, used generally along the same lines as "bah". It's a 3-letter exclamation, I suspect trying to track its many origins would be entirely futile... last time I checked Japanese != Yiddish.

*geek mode off*

(sadly, the above is the most interesting I can post given such an obvious troll of a story...)

I think the poster missed the point a bit

[quantax]

I can give a crap that its Top 40, Top 10 Classic Rock, or whatever; if the music was Led Zeppelin or something else not originally produced for video games, it does not matter: it is not original video game music, so dressing these awards up in this guise is a simple marketing plot. Much like the Oscars publically tries to recognize parts of production that you normally do not see a face for, I feel this should be the same for video games and should attempt to recognize some of those artists out there that are producing an original product for these games but we never get to see outside of perhaps an interview or game credit. Having 'pop' but original video game music would be a vast improvement to this marketing charade as atleast the contestants would be real.