The end of the year is upon us, so you know what that means: every game magazine and website and even non-game magazines and websites are giving out "awards" for the best video games of the year. There are also some award shows done by the industry that give out legitimate awards. But these days when video games have gone mainstream, a couple award shows were done on national television and were voted by the public. Unfortunately, those public award shows sucked so badly it's almost an embarrassment to the industry. This week in Gaming Trends, we look at the two national televised awards for the public, two based on the industry, and what I'd like done for an award show.SPIKE TV VGA'S
This man does not belong on television or in movies. If you want proof, just watch Joe Dirt.
With Grand Theft Auto and Playstation bringing video games into the mainstream, it was only a matter of time that a mainstream award show would take place, hence the Video Game Awards on the newly found network for men, Spike TV. The VGA's are based on public voting and would have a mix of performances, award presentations, and "funny" skits. Basically something like the MTV Music or Movie awards. But many things turned this show into one of the biggest jokes on gamers ever. For one thing, the complete list of winners was given away before the show even aired. Now the people have the perfect excuse to not watch this crap! Another perfect excuse would be the fact that it's hosted by quite possibly the most unfunniest man possible, David Spade. But it gets worse, for before the opening credits even begin, they gave away the award for the Game of the Year. I repeat...
THEY GAVE AWAY WHAT WAS TO BE THE BEST AWARD OF THE SHOW IN THE FIRST TWO MINUTES!
What's worse, Madden 2004 won the award. Definitely based on mainstream popularity. And then there's the presentation, or rather lack thereof, of the awards. After quickly showing some guys who worked on the game in the crowd, they show some footage and that's it. No nominees mentioned, no award speech, nothing. By the way, care to guess what the final award of the night was? A "Most Anticipated" award, or as I'd like to put it, the "The game that's getting so much hype we're giving it an award!" award, which went to Halo 2. With Halo 2 suffering a year-long delay, I was really certain that it would win the hype award in 2004.
With a combination of pointless musical performances, skits about games that insult the intelligence of those that actually know their video game history, and the fact that it turned into a mainstream popularity contest (how else do you explain Enter the Matrix beating Star Wars KoToR for an award?), this award show was one of the biggest insults to video gamers in history. The show has changed somewhat since the first time, but it still isn't much better.
[Credit: A recap done by Matt Paprocki]
G-PHORIA
Believe it or not, G4 was actually a video game network.
With video games now having their own channel (even though that particular channel turned out to suck; just ask Joshua), it was pretty obvious that it was eventually going to have it's own award show. So in 2003 G4 began G-Phoria, which unlike Spike TV's abortion, at least tried to appeal to real gamers.
Because I didn't have G4 back in 2003 I can't say much about the first awards show, but I did watch the 2004 and 2005 versions. It first starts off with a 1-hour red carpet thing about celebrities being there, then the award show itself was an hour and a half long, then the last half-hour was a preview for upcoming games. This awards show basically felt like something MTV would've done if they did an award show, and while G-Phoria wasn't that exciting to watch, it at least didn't insult the intelligence of video gamers. One of the awards given out was the "Legend" award for someone who really meant something to the video industry, which I think was a cool idea to do. Overall, even though it felt very similar to what Spike TV was doing, this was a decent award show. A couple of improvements I would've liked seen was a longer show because an hour and a half seems stupid when you could just round it to 2 hours.
So even though it wasn't that good of an award show either, at least this show was still somewhat focused on the video games rather then celebrities and musical performances. Unfortunately, with G4 now becoming Spike TV-2, it's now basically an hour long X-Play sketch.
[credit: The tapes I had these shows on]
THE ACADEMY OF INTERACTIVE ARTS AND SCIENCE
An industry only event, the AIAS is a non-profit organization that promotes entertainment software and began giving out awards since 1998. Unlike other events though, developers must actually pay this academy in order for their game to receive an entry for one of their awards. The AIAS give out their awards at the annual D.I.C.E. Summit.
Even though they give out many awards, the biggest (and probably only) recognized award by many is the Game of the Year award, which applies to both PC and console games (each also has their own GotY award). They also have an AIAS Hall of Fame to honor those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements. Those in the Hall of Fame include Shingeru Miyamoto, Yu Suzuki, and Will Wright amongst others.
Even though fans don't vote for the awards, they usually go to the right games anyways, and compared to the public votings of Spike TV and G-Phoria, it's definitely better this way.
[credit: Wikipedia]
THE CAEAA'S
Leave it to Canada to once again outdo America. Just recently the country held the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts (CAEAA), an industry award show dedicated to games and game companies from Canada. The awards are split into three categories: Animation, Video Game, and Student. So not only are the awards given to the video games we know and love, but students from animation schools are able to win as well. Celebrities were also to have said to been at the CAEAA, but the only one that really gets mentioned was the host for the evening, Canada's own William Shatner of Star Trek fame. I couldn't find any reviews of this show but based on how it was setup, it looks really good. Students get their chance to earn a name for themselves and it didn't seem to go overboard with celebrities. This is perhaps the way an award show for video games should be like.
[credit: Wikipedia, Official CAEAA site]
Making the perfect awards show...is it possible?
So now we've seen many examples of a video games award show, and what worked or didn't worked and why, especially the ones that try to air on national television. The ones that go on the air turn out to suck (Spike TV especially), which makes me wonder: Can video games get their own national award show that turns out good? Here's how I would try to do it based on several categories of an award show.
Voting: Public or Private?
Do we let the fans vote for all the awards, or do we leave that to the industry experts?
My preference: Private. If there's anything I've learned from Spike TV and the 2004 Presidential election, it's that the general public should not be allowed to vote. Build an organization of sorts with people from the industry and critics for major news and reviews sources (like Gamespot or EGM) and have them vote for best and worst games. As for the public, perhaps doing one or two awards based on public opinion wouldn't hurt so much.
Style: Classy or Casual?
Should it be a classy mostly serious affair like the Oscars or a casual "who cares?" affair like MTV?
My preference: Mix of both. Video games are meant to be fun, so the show should feel that way as well. But don't do it to the point that it's insults the gamers intelligence and makes the awards seem pointless. I guess the best way to put it is make the show fun to watch, but treat the awards serious. If you're going to have celebrities, don't put them in lame skits and make sure they actually understand video games the way we do.
Length of time: How long should this award show be?
My preference: I think 2 hours would be just right for this show. Anything beyond that and it'll probably wind up boring the audience halfway through. A pre-show shouldn't be necessary at all, and as for a post show, I'd either not do one at all or make an hour to interview the winners and show game trailers.
Other stuff I'd like:
1.Show future trailers. The one thing that G-Phoria and Spike TV actually did right was show trailers for upcoming games. This is something I definitely would like to see on a video game awards show.
2.Entertaining skits. If you're going to do skits on a show, could it actually be entertaining? Or better yet, maybe we should just ditch skits all together to avoid any risks of them sucking.
3.Musical performances that actually relate to games. At first I thought to ditch the idea all together, but then figured if they got bands to play music from the games then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Just no dancing cardboard robots please.
So that's how I'd do a video games award show. I can't really say how good it actually would be, but I bet it can't be worse then Spike TV's crap.
Next week, Gaming Trends will take a look at the rise and fall of 2D Fighters.
