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G-Phoria Awards Out of The Bag
Gamasutra has coverage of the winners of this week's G-Phoria awards. Despite the fact that the show won't be televised until August 9th, they've released the winners via the press. Some of the winners: "Best Adaptation: LEGO Star Wars, Best Action Game: God of War, Best Boss: Halo 2 - Scarab Battle, Best Cinematic: God of War, Best Graphics: Half-Life 2, Best Handheld Game: The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Best Innovation: Katamari Damacy"
This awards ceremony will honor Katamari Damacy, so it is legitimate.
Only if it were awarded game of the year, which is what it was.
"Best Innovation"? Come on - that's a copout category if there ever was one. That's the category where you put the games you know are going to be the ones remembered 15 or 20 years from now, but you can't give them "game of the year" because there's some other hot game of the moment. I mean it would be like the music industry giving a "best innovator" award to Beck or Radiohead or something and then giving "artist of the year" to Britney Spears. It's ridiculous.
I think it's time we realized that, like in all forms of media these days, the most popular games are not necessarily the best ones - in fact, they're almost always not the best ones. This list of winners is really just a popularity contest, so almost inherently meaningless. These are just the games that have the most broadbase appeal, even if that means appealing to the lowest common denominator. With the exception of KD's token entry in a category that was obviously created specifically for street cred appeal, there's nothing on that list that did anything special or that anybody is going to much care about in a few years.
It's also pretty striking how many sequels are on the list.