On Sunday anyone who an orgy of marketing could do worse than to tune into the 5th annual Spike Video Game Awards. This dubious awards ceremony had various games awarded from such esteemed categories like the Best Independent Game of the Year Fueled by Dew and Big Name in the Game wedged in-between premiere trailers for games next year introduced by C-list celebs and musical performances by acts that had nothing to do with games.
So yeah, it was pretty terrible overall.
The history of videogame awards shows has been a sad one. Until this year the channel G4 also had a similarly embarrassing awards show called G-Phoria which has now transitioned to a smaller, viewer-driven format. Filled with the same celebrity award presenters, upcoming year marketing drivel, and little respect for the games or developers being awarded.
And while Spike and G4 are mostly to blame for these monstrosities, its not a huge surprise why videogame award shows are like this. Unlike the movie or music industry where people will tune in to see the big-name celebs and musicians, there’s little mainstream fandom for game developers. Very few people will tune in to watch David Jaffe come out and present an award. So instead we shoehorn in actors and actresses with no connection to games to make up for the publicity deficit.
The orgy of marketing is also pretty embarrassing where the awards celebrating the past year’s achievements are ignored to masturbate to next year’s latest and greatest thing. It’s tied to the demographic of hardcore gamers who would watch the show and Spike execs and marketing people at the big publishers undoubtedly find it irresistible to push next year’s product and get the hype train going.
Thankfully there is the Game Developers Choice awards which is a little closer to the format followed by the Academy awards were supposedly only industry members are allowed to vote. Additionally, the GDC awards do show care by both rewarding indie games through the IGF and providing innovation and lifetime achievement awards celebrating career accomplishments.
No one in 10 years will care about who won the G-Phoria or Spike VGA game of the year. But maybe someday when games become more mainstream and people know the names of the people behind games we will look back at the GDC like the first Oscars being held for a small audience at a private dinner party. Until then, I’ll keep on mocking the Spike VGA awards for my own amusement.
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