A Look Back at the 2011 VGAs

When the Spike TV VGAs rolled around last year I hadn’t seen the show before and was eager to see what they had to present, little did I know about an hour and a half later I’d be sitting with my head in my hands begging that for the love of all that is good Neil Patrick Harris would stop telling dick jokes. Needless to say my expectations for this year’s awards were low and yet somehow Spike still managed to undercut them. Maybe I’d just forgotten how abysmal things were last year, maybe this year really was that much poorer, but somehow the VGAs seemed just as grating as last year if not worse. Once again these awards weren’t just bad, they were outright offensive to us and to the games industry.

This Year

 Oh good, another one of these.

I don’t think I need any elaborate explanation to convey what was wrong with what we saw. From instance after instance of coma-inducingly poor humour to the depressing parade of B-list celebrities pretending to be interested in video games, the proceedings just felt like one big slap in the face. As Jeff pointed out, the more they try to big someone up as a “huge gamer” the more suspicious you become about why they feel the need to emphasise that so much, and when you’re seeing an actress being described as a “video game superfan” before announcing an award with no impression that they give the slightest fuck about video games, it does more than just raise a few eyebrows.

Once again the running theme seemed to be a vague overtone of video games not being interesting enough by themselves and needing to be propped up by the supposedly superior industries like television and music. During moments like watching Hulk Hogan nodding his head to a Black Keys performance or Charlie Sheen coming out and asking everyone “Where are the chicks?” this video game awards show seemed unnervingly detached from the world of video games.

Excuses

I’ve heard plenty of explanations for why the VGAs are the way they are; TV personalities play better on TV than games industry ones do, they’re trying to appeal to the mainstream, not enough people know many prolific people from the games industry, we shouldn’t be surprised because Spike TV are generally terrible, TV awards shows in general are terrible, the VGAs are just a marketing tool, and so on. I think these are all important things to keep in mind, but I don’t think any of them should be presented as excuses for the way the VGAs are.

Firstly, even for a TV awards show I feel that the VGAs are bad and as I said earlier, even for a Spike TV production I was surprised by how mercilessly terrible it was. I recently saw one discussion of the show that basically came down to the question of whether it was better or worse than the MTV Awards. If that’s where the bar is being set we’re pretty fucked. The natural reaction to the point that all awards shows are lacking in quality seems to be one of relaxing criticism towards the VGAs, but when presented with the fact that “Hey, this isn’t just a video game problem, look at these other entertainment industries with bad awards ceremonies too”, my reaction is “Well that’s much worse!”. 

The Target Audience

" Well the nerds hated us every year before but if we just throw in enough Felicia Day everything will be fine, right?"

Secondly, does this as a whole really appeal to the mainstream? I can see how a lot of elements of it might have played better for a mainstream crowd and I’ll come back to that in a minute, but one of the things that confused me most about the show was seeing about three separate appearances of Felicia Day. Who is well-entrenched enough in nerd culture to appreciate three different Felicia Day appearances (two of them considerably long) and yet is also clamouring for Zachary Levi drinking a “ health potion” and saying “Mmm uriney”? Who is overjoyed to see the (actually genuinely respectful) tribute to Shigeru Miyamoto and yet also wants to see speeches that go on too long being dealt with by an army soldier pulling developers down to the floor and making a teabagging motion over them? Who loves seeing Wheatley make a nomination speech for the best character award and yet also wants to see the cast of Workaholics laugh about how the name Hitchcock has the word “cock” in it?

Perhaps this was genuinely Spike’s effort to try and please everyone at once but it seemed to fall rather flat. As for whether the endless deluge of pitiable humour and pseudo-celebrity appearances does actually appeal to a wide audience of gamers I can’t say, but if it does, well, that’s just depressing. I can’t see the show improving that drastically but my hope is that Spike TV are to some extent misjudging things and the legions of thick-headed brosephs fist-pumping along enthusiastically to the VGAs exist only within the minds of the Spike TV execs.

People Who Aren't Dedicated Gamers

Thirdly, do non-video games industry personalities play better than video game industry people in these shows? Yeah, they do and this is an issue I actually sympathise with Spike on, but I still feel they handled it poorly. It’s debatable that video games having so few notable figureheads is a fundamental problem with the industry, but would someone like Cliffy B really have been that poor a replacement as host? Regardless, if they’re strategy is going to be to throw up recognisable faces from TV, film and music and try to deceive us into thinking they’re passionate about our hobby when they really couldn’t care much less that’s a little insulting.

Of course, even if Spike do have the most notable video game award show this isn’t the end of the world for gaming, by now most of us have forgotten the VGAs and are back to more regular chatter of what we’re working through in our gaming backlog, but I don’t think this has reflected well on us. The night of the VGAs, Twitter was swamped with trending topics full of people who actually seemed to be respecting what Spike TV had to say, who actually seemed to be treating it as a genuine award show. Tens of thousands of people were talking about that show and there are a hell of a lot of people out there who won’t know any better than to treat Spike as a reflection of the games industry and the people who play games. When negative stigma means less people playing games and a more narrow audience of people playing games, and when the audience an entertainment industry has directly affects what they produce, I think it’s worth pondering whether the VGAs could be at least a very small hindrance for the medium.

Spike, the Industry and Us

 Remember, Spike TV aren't the only ones who make this possible.

Whether intentional or not the message from them seemed to be clear; they don’t give a fuck about video games, the industry is lame, and if you play video games you’re ripe for exploitation. We can understand how Spike TV arrived at this result but the fact that the games industry is supporting such an insult to itself and its audience is perhaps the thing that I find most worrying about the VGAs. I don’t genuinely think that people like Miyamoto and Kojima were there under the impression that they were participating in anything insulting to viewers or to their industry, but I think everyone in the industry should have some level of awareness about what they’re participating in.

Are the VGAs just a marketing tool? To a large extent yes, but they’re not masquerading as such. The VGAs come to us every year telling us that they’re a genuine award show, a ceremony interested primarily if not solely in celebrating the best games of the year and when they have no intention of doing so, it feels like they’re lying to the public for their own gain. If they consider the best way of getting people to watch their trailers almost tricking them into doing it, that doesn’t say anything good about anyone involved. However, beyond the people putting games out and Spike TV themselves there is still one last driving force behind this to blame; us.

We can write about what a disgrace the VGAs are, we can moan about the jokes, and we can furrow our brows at some of the award presentations, but an awards show needs an audience, and while I think the criticism of it is entirely merited it seems rather hypocritical when we are part of what makes it possible for the VGAs to go on year after year. It’s often said that the only worth in the VGAs is in their trailers. Can we really not wait the 24 or so hours it would take for these trailers to be put up elsewhere on the net? Are we that short-sighted and impatient? I’m not saying don’t watch the VGAs, but if you are planning to, remember that you’re contributing in some small part to something you probably claim to dislike. Personally I made sure to watch a Justin TV stream of the VGAs as opposed to getting it directly from the source, and I refrained from saying anything praise-worthy about it around the time it went out, but perhaps I’m still part of the problem. Thanks for reading.

-Gamer_152