It’s almost that time, fellow gamers, when a certain Cable TV station hijacks our hobby and makes a complete blubbering mockery of it for two hours and makes us feel nauseous. That’s right, it’s time for the Spike TV VGAs (Video Game Atrocities)!
You can go to Kotaku for the complete press release, but I’ll break it down for you, because that’s what I do. It’s well known that we at buttonmashing.com are not friends of the VGAs. I believe my exact words were, “Hey, Spike TV! I want those two hours of my life back.” So it looks like it’s going to be 2004 all over again.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. What is World of Warcraft doing in the “Game of the Year” Category? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not) but WoW was released LAST YEAR. Shouldn’t that, uhmm, disqualify it from consideration? It’s not like 2005 had a dearth of good games and so they had to hold a carry-over from last year. There’s plenty of great games to choose from. How WoW slipped through the cracks boggles the mind.
Let’s get some obvious out of the way. How is a game (King Kong:Blah Blah Let’s make some money off Peter Jackson’s name!) that isn’t even out nominated for 6 awards? And King Kong is the only suspect. There are others. I can’t list them. My brain hurts. Why do we have an award for “Best Cast”? Why is Advanced Wars: DS not included in the “Best Military Game” but Splinter Cell is? Why is it that the more I think about this, the less I want video games to go “mainstream” (and by mainstream I mean hip-hop and Hollywood)? Arrggh!
I’ll just say this: If Resident Evil 4 comes away winless, I will turn off the TV (after the show airs in December), crawl into bed and weep silent tears for witnessing such a horrible tragedy take place. Yes, I will watch it. I will live-blog it so you, my faithful readers will not have to endure it. I will suffer the pain (and desire to gouge my eyes out) so you don’t have. It won’t be easy, but it’s the sort of thing I would do for you guys (and girls).
More: Oh, I almsot forgot! I’m not sure if I should congratulate the nominees for “Best Gaming Blog” or console them for being recognized by Spike TV period. And where’s the love for buttonmashing.com? This is easily the eighteenth or nineteenth most popular blog people visit, right? It’s worth $41k!
This is what one genious person wrote on Kotaku. There also was not one positive remark said about the spike tv advertisement show. Cough Cough (I mean video game awards show.)
What I would like to see is every single journalist — be he/she mainstream or industry press — and blogger who cares a lick about this industry make a consious effort to NOT write or broadcast a single word about this farce. Nothing. Not a scrap of coverage. Unfortunately, Spike and its sponsors created marketing partnerships with all of the industry media big boys and worked them into the show by creating awards categories for them. No way the suits at Ziff, IGN and the others are going to turn down this type of exposure, so their writers hands are tied.
by Txn_NYC24 on 10/26/05 11:56 AM
This guy was speaking directly to the likes of you. Oh dear Button Masher.
Also Tony I hate the new format for making me imput my name and emai address everytime I want to post a remark.
P.S. I think you should start some informal polls (not an awards show) like top 10 video games of all time. Or best intellivion game of all time. and then you could do every game system after that. By the way the best INTELLIVISION game of all time was Burger Time.
Also get a spell checker on this website so I dont look like such an idiot.
Unfortunately, no spell checker in the world can do that.
As to your other comments, I saw the comment by Txn_NYC24. I agree that if maybe we pretended that the Spike TV show never existed that it would hopefully go away. But it’s so easy and so enjoyable to make fun of their show!
The polls are a good idea. I will have a best of 2005 award piece, but that’s all for now.
And finally I don’t know why you have to reenter your info everytime. I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll get right on it!
jer:
You can get an extension for firefox that allows you to do spell checking in any editbox.
tony:
I don’t have the problem with re-entering the user info everytime, possibly Jer has cookies turned off?
On one hand this is good for the public consciousness of gaming, especially if it’s treated as an adult hobby. Certainly nothing will quell the Jack Thompson’s of this world then realizing that all those M-rated titles actually are being played by adults! *gasp*
On the other hand, the hardcore gamers tend to already be a jaded and cynical lot. I’ve never seen an event that is so effective at being mass market while also alienating their target audience. It seems like the motivation to watch will actually be higher for non-gamers. I didn’t get past the game of the year nominations without going “Wait just a darn minute….”
i’m assuming WoW was released after last years rewards… so, even tho it was released last year, it fits into the cycle between shows… otherwise it would be like it just didn’t exist.
and no, i’m not sticking up for spike tv… i love MXC, but they single handedly make every gamer anywhere look like a fool with this show they keep putting together.
fuckin joke. sad it is.
yep
I dont know, but I like watching that UFC thing on SPIKE TV. If WOW doesn’t win any awards, that would be just wrong.
oh yea, i forgot that ufc show, that is entertaining as well. a winner is you sir! 8)
I don’t think any real gamer would take this sham of an awards show seriously.
The Best Cyber Vixen category is just insulting.