Spike VGAs

[Gwardinen]

So I'm 11 minutes in to watching the Spike VGAs, and I just find myself frowning and sighing a lot. I know it's almost cheap, it's almost bullying to complain about this event. I knew going in that it was going to be irritating to me, but I just can't shake this one feeling.

It feels condescending. It always feels like that when there's a big event for the games industry, it feels like the people from other entertainment media are humouring us by coming to sit at the little table and talk about how they're gamers too and gaming is really a cool thing these days. Why is it that every one of these events has to be punctuated every couple of minutes by someone seemingly defending the medium? As I said, I'm only 11 minutes in so perhaps it tapers off but there have already been half a dozen references to "real gamers know", "games are selling more than", "we're all gamers here", etc. I don't often watch the Oscars or anything similar but I don't get the impression that half of the event is spent explaining why films are a worthy medium and how popular and important they are these days. As far as I know no Oscar host begins their speech with "we're all filmers here".

Now and then, such as when faced by legal challenges that might curtail the industry's free speech and expression, it is appropriate and important to proselytise the games industry. Most of the rest of the time, I really wish people would just stop acting so defensive. What fraction of the people do you think are going to be watching this show that aren't already at least fond of playing video games? If "we're all gamers here" can we stop calling ourselves gamers and seemingly trying to convince each other that what we enjoy matters? Surely that's a given within this context.

Sorry for this mostly pointless and certainly unoriginal rant.

[elmuerte]

Yes, it's unoriginal, I've seen a lot of others posting similar rants.

But that doesn't make it any less valid.

[circadianwolf]

Also the whole "sexist bro douche" thing (as Leigh Alexander termed it), of course.

Seriously, why are the only video game awards on SpikeTV, the most offensive television channel besides Disney?

[Gwardinen]

Yeah there was certainly a lot of behaviour that I would expect from people that would use the word "bro" a lot. Particularly this Dane Cook guy... I never really knew who he was but now I understand why there seem to be a significant number of people that fervently dislike him. It did get a little better as the show went on, because there were a couple of funny sections with Neil Patrick Harris and Olivia Munn, but overall the show made me feel a little queasy.

I do recommend you guys try to find a clip of Denise Richards introducing an award or whatever it was she was doing, though, as it's baffling and hilarious. Her voice kept rising and falling in a kind of terrifying sine wave, it was like she knew there was meant to be emphasis on some words but didn't know which, so she just modulated her pitch continuously in the hopes that something would sound right. Genuinely what I would imagine early generation sentient robots would sound like.

Somewhat related; I actually rather like a lot of the ancillary GameTrailers stuff these days, I semi-regularly check their reviews, Bonus Round and GameTrailers TV stuff (although GTTV is still sometimes rather annoying). It's sort of weird that the GameTrailers side of Spike's game coverage is gradually improving while the Spike TV side of it is seemingly continuing to degenerate, or at least plateau in some sort of terrible cliché of 18-34 white male interests.

[syntheticgerbil]

I can't stand Spike TV in general. I am not going to watch it to complain, but I'm glad you're complaining even if it's unoriginal or basically what you should expect from a program like this.

I guess it's just another one of the insulting portrayals of the types of people who play video games. It's almost like it's a reaction to the years of pale shivering nerd spending all of his waking hours on single game to instead portray people who like video games and jock meatheads who are all strangely homophobic and homoerotic simultaneously at all times.

[Brannigan]

Spike Tv really went downhill after they stopped showing Star Trek: TNG 12 hours a day.