I Watched A Train Wreck...And I Was Too Stupid To Look Away

Saturday night was quite the learning experience for me, as I gathered with the folks from Character Select and Nerdgasm Noire Network to view the 2011 Spike Video Game Awardshttp://youtu.be/xMV5FiFa1c0. I went in not expecting much, so in preparation of the train wreck to come, I went up to the nearest corner store and bought an alcoholic beverage. I should have bought two. During the course of the 2 hour award show, only five awards were actually given out on screen, with two(character and game of the year) being dragged out during the course of the show. The audience we were able to see was filled with industry folks who seemed to be so disinterested in the idea of being there, celebrity presenters who were only there to tell us that another trailer was about to air, and a host of other issues basically kept the show from being enjoyable. The banter between us over Skype while we watched and the alcohol made it bearable, because I don't think watching alone would be possible. The best part of the entire miserable affair were the trailers and only a scant few of them proved to be worth wasting two hours in front of a television without a controller in hand.

Now you may be saying: "Mr. Animal, how do you propose we fix the problems with the VGAs?" Well, Kahlief Adams said it best in his post http://thespawnpoint.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/un-occupythevgas/#wpl-likebox when he stated that Spike should pay attention to the steep decline in viewership that G4 suffered as a result of them abandoning legitimate video game conversation for low brow, bottom denominator garbage television. G4 has irreparably damaged it's relationship with a lot of gamers, and Gametrailers' involvement with the VGAs will result in the same if changes aren't made. One of those may be to further trim the show if you aren't gonna give the awards out on air. The brief section where they rattled off award winners fired off about 10 to 15 awards so fast that I don't remember who won what. either spend the 2 hours talking about more than trailers and give out some awards or just do a show building hype for upcoming games, because your "awards show" isn't really doing either well.

I don't want to dislike the VGAs, but they make things so easy. The good thing is, they are in a great position, because the show can be tweaked to make it worth watching by more than a few "dude bros" who are killing time before they hop onto Xbox Live or PSN and yell ignorant things at each other over Call Of Duty.