The Hall of Shame 09.26.07: SpikeTV's Video Game Awards
Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 09.26.2007
The award show for video games that insults the entire industry, starring overrated unfunny celebrities.
The SpikeTV Video Games Awards suck. They really, really suck. I mean sure, awards show these days are usually bad, but this one is bad on so many levels. Mostly because they insult the intelligence of real gamers. You will never see the Emmies insulting viewers for spending money at the theaters. You will never see the Grammies insult listeners for buying music. But for some reason, the SpikeTV Video Game Awards insult gamers for buying video games, and for that it's inducted into the Hall of Shame.
In 2003, the newly reformed SpikeTV decided to host an awards show for video games. Seeing how the only televised video game awards was G-Phoria on G4, a network with a pretty small audience, it was worth a shot. But all hope for this show was going to be quickly lost. For one thing, they posted all the winners before the show even aired! Now seeing how this was taped it probably would've been leaked on the internet, but the people running the show spoiled it themselves.
But that's nothing compared to what would actually happen. I decided to see this show for myself, and found out how much this show was going to suck in the first two minutes of the show. The show starts innocently enough with Funkmaster Flex introducing himself, then welcoming us to the show, and then announcing the Game of the Year...wait, what?
That's right. The Game of the Year Award, the award that is supposed to be the best award of the show, was given out in the first two minutes of the show, EVEN BEFORE THE OPENING CREDITS BEGAN! Can somebody please explain the logic of this to me?
The way they presented the awards were also terrible. Instead of getting a list of nominations, they just cut straight to a bunch of cheerleaders holding their pom poms on what looked like some kind of cauldron that would reveal the winner. The winner by the way was Madden 2004, a game that sees yearly installations where the changes are little. Of all the games to come out in 2003, THAT was the best? That pretty much confirmed that this show was nothing more then a glorified popularity contest for mainstream games. But if you still want proof how about:
WWE Smackdown winning "Best Fighting Game" over Soul Calibur 2? This was likely because WWE RAW was on SpikeTV.
Spinter Cell for the N-Gage winning "Best Handheld Game" over Final Fantasy: Tactics Advance? Any N-Gage game getting an award that doesn't have the word "worst" in it is blasphemous.
NASCAR Thunder 2004 winning "Best Racing Game" over F-Zero GX? Again, another yearly sports game winning an award. Does this mean NASCAR Thunder 2005 would win next year?
Tony Hawk's Underground winning "Best Sports Game" over Madden? Yes, somehow Madden wins Game of the Year but not Best Sports Game. Was TNA booking the winners?
Or, worst of all, Enter the Matrix winning "Best Movie-based Game", over Star Wars: KoToR? That's right: A game considered to be one of the best games in 2003 lost to what was considered one of the worst games in 2003!
And by the way, the people representing the game that won didn't get to do a speech. The camera just quickly cuts to them before immediately going into a different (and usually unfunny) segment. The worst segment of the night was the fake "Hall of Fame" award, which went to the Dot in Pong, who would nearly lose all fame because of how me multiplied himself and made an unknown janitor named Pac-Man a star, but would then makes millons when Al Gore invented the internet and would have a major role as being the "dot" in "dot com."
I really, really wish I was making this up.
Besides that, there was the celebrities basically insulting us for being gamers. David Spade was calling us nerds and Jenna Jameson was insulting us for being virgins. Seeing how this was supposed to be to the high schoolers due to the incredibly bad humor, insulting them for not being glorified prostitutes like yourself is probably not going to bring in ratings.
Another segment I hated was the wrestling "match" that Jericho and Mysterio had after it was announced Smackdown won an award. After the HORRIBLE announcing by the "Queen of whores", we get about three minutes of action until Trish and Victoria come in to strip each other to their underwear. The match then ends when Trish pins Victoria, so apparently...neither Jericho or Mysterio won. Maybe TNA really was booking the entire show.
See the horror for yourself:
So if they gave away the winner of the Game of the Year award at the very beginning of the show (not reading spoilers), what was the big award that this show gave out? What I like to call the "We're so hyped for this game we're going to give it an award!" award, which went to Halo 2. Since when were games that weren't even released allowed to win awards? Imagine if Halo 2 didn't come out that year or was cancelled. How much of an embarrassment would that be to this already piece of shit of a show?
And yet, for some reason, this piece of shit continues to be done anally. I mean, annually. Damn it, their immature humor is getting to me. After realizing how bad the show was in the first two minutes, I never bothered watching the 2004 or 2005 awards and I haven't read much recaps, but I'm pretty sure it was the same old shit with only minor improvements. At least they gave the name of the nominees during the show this time.
There was one segment I remember watching while I was channel flipping. Apparently there were these two nerds playing Mortal Kombat, and Samuel Jackson was yelling at them about how much they sucked at the game. Now is it me, or wouldn't nerds be the best kind of players at this? I bet either of them could've kicked Jackson's ass at that game. Hell, I haven't played Mortal Kombat in over a decade and even I think I could kick Jackson's ass.
I did watch the 2006 SpikeTV awards because it'd be a neat feature to have in my News Report. At best I thought it was going to be hilariously bad, but instead, it was BAD bad. In fact, I accept full responsibility if anyone felt like their Christmas was ruined when I posted that recap.
The show was better then the 2003 version, but not by much. The winners of the awards actually made sense most of the time, but a lot of the video game jokes were LAME and they continued to bash gamers for being games and claim women have a "boredom oblongata." And then there's Samuel Jackson hosting this show like he did the last three times. To be honest, the only movies I've seen starring Samuel Jackson was Pulp Fiction and Snakes on a Plane. Now, it could be me, but Sam Jackson is quite possibly one of the most overated actors I've seen. The only reason for Jackson's popularity is because he can somehow find a way to drop the F-bomb so many times, which is the only reason he got to host this show along with Stewie Griffin.
Yes, Stewie Griffin the cartoon character. Well technically he was just a voice over but nonetheless.
As the show got worse overtime, we eventually reach the part with Sarah Silverman. When Silverman came on stage, she had advise for any gamers over the age of 14: "Go kill yourselves". I don't know who or what made Sarah Silverman make comments like that, but advising someone to commit suicide is not funny. Think about it: We're supposed to laugh at someone who tells us we should go kill ourselves because we like playing video games? I thought this was supposed to be a show that EMBRACED being a video gamer. But when you've got Sarah Silverman telling us to commit suicide and that cheerleader from Heroes telling us how we can't read, it makes me want to change the channel.
It also pretty much made me never watch The Sarah Silverman Program.
This award show is a fucking abomination to the gamers and the video game industry. This show might as well be hosted by Jack Thompson, with special guest appearances by Dr.Phil, Nancy Grace, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hilary Clinton, and Joseph Lieberman. It can't be any worse then having Sarah Silverman tell us to end our lives and having Samuel "Fucking Overrated" Jackson host.
So, in conclusion...
NEVER, EVER WATCH THIS SHOWAnd now for the lighter side of news. Next week, the Hall of Shame is taking a break, because this weekend I'll be heading to the Digital Life Expo to bring you all the things I come across. Last year I got to see Wii in action for the first time, watched some Mobile or No Mobile, scored some neat free stuff, and got to wear a ridiculous looking Pac-Man hat. What will happen at this years expo? What kind of stupid crap will I be wearing? How much will they jack up the price of a 20oz Coke? Tune in next week to find out.
