Video Game Award Show Announced

HorrorIsland writes "According to the Boston Globe, Video game industry gets TV award show. Of course, it sounds like the on-screen awards will focus on celebrities both real (Dennis Hopper), artifical (Laura Croft, perhaps), and in-between (Jenna Jameson)... so you can quit trying to hold in your gut, programmers!"

so what...

[eglamkowski]

There are already a ton of awards in the game industry as it is. They're all politically hacked back-scratching non-sense (to put it kindly) and this one won't be any different. Game geeks turned CEOs can be quite petty and vicious...

Cashing in

[LordKronos]

Why do I get the feeling this is just a cheap attempt to cash in on the industry? Of course, what else should I expect?

I would be curious to know if anyone has seen any more details about this even. I wonder if this whole thing is going to be arranged in collaboration with industry professional or if it is all going to be based on the opinions of a few random judges or something.

Re:Cashing in

[swordboy]

Why do I get the feeling this is just a cheap attempt to cash in on the industry?

Ummm... Capitalism is about cashing in.

The video game industry has already 'cashed in', as they rake in more than the domestic box office every year. It is huge. This is the next logical step (the fingers in the pie that are the Xbox was one of the first).

Who will decide...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who will decide who gets the prizes?
The current awards that are given within the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) aren't public prices. They are selected by a jury form within the industry, making those prices more important for your reputation amongst other developers.
Such TV shows only seem to be for commercial endings and only big titles will win I suspect. Settled big name publishers and developers will benefit from such an event.

Will anyone look at this?

[Fulkkari]

Do you really think this will be interesting? Why would anyone want to see never-before seen person like a producer of a game grab an award? Why you actually look at awards on the tv, is not because not the awards itself. It's because of the celebrities.

Been done before.

[Ryokurin]

I remember in the early 90s a so called "Video Game Awards Show" called something on the lines of 'Cybermania' that was shown on TBS one year. It was around 1993 or 1994. Im willing to bet that the TNN version would be pretty much the same thing, and probably will only come around once too.

Re:Cashing in

[LordKronos]

I really meant people *outside* the industry trying to cash in and get a little piece of the video game pie. Thats why I was asking how much collaboration there would be with industry professionals on this.

Maybe it is elitist of me but, as an independant game developer myself, I kind of feel insulted by the prospect of someone else trying to give out awards for my industry. We already have our own awards ceremoney (as the article mentioned). Its the Game Developers Choice Awards at the Game Developers Conference each March. The thing I like about the GDCA is it is the industry giving out awards to their own people, and the winners are quite level headed. There isn't anyone showing up accepting awards drunk, or getting up there saying "I'd like to thank god, and my mom, ....[5 minutes later, stage director cues to wrap it up]...I'm not done yet...I'd also like to thank my dog, and that guy that bought me a hot dog this morning". I feel that at most of the other awards, the winners get caught up in the glammor and how "special" they are. I'm afraid an event like this wouldn't acknowledge the people who actually make these games happen, and instead we would have some big headed CEO's accepting the awards or something.

Will the usual rules apply?

[Washizu]

When I hear the Oscar nominees I typically try to see the movies I haven't heard much about. If I have heard of it already, chances are I've already made my mind up about it by seeing it or watching the trailers. Unlike a book, you can usually judge a movie by it's trailer.

Many times the Best Picture nominees are a lot better than the winner. Just look at 1997's group that lost to Titanic:

As Good As It Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential

Personally I don't think video games need an award show. There is so much gaming press on the Internet that good games rarely fall through the cracks.

misty water-colored memories

[Alric]

There is a significant part of my mind that wishes I were 13 again, with nothing to do on a saturday except play video games all day.

Is it an inherent quality of getting older to feel that all of the coolest shit is marketed at people younger than you?

I would now like to pause my life for several years to read good books, watch good movies, and play all of the RPG's I haven't even heard of.

ARrrrrrr.

Re:Games aren't worthy of this

[eglamkowski]

Uh, what world are you living in? The average game has a typical budget of a few hundred thousand (at MOST), and a small handful of programmers and artists. A big project for a game dev house might run up to a million dollars (at the high end), have a dozen artists, a half dozen programmers, and a designer or two.

The big game companies like EA and Microsoft are the exceptions in the game industry. Next time you go to your local computer game store, take a look at how many hundreds (possibly thousands if you consider consoles) of games there are. Most of them are written by third party development houses on shoestring budgets, not by mega corporations with multimillion dollar budgets.
Yes, many of the most popular games are written by the biggies, but that's a tiny fraction of the total games out there.

Most of the games are *published* by the big guys, but the actual coding and artwork is done externally.

I have no respect...

[The Raven]

... for an awards show that focuses on the personalities and not the people who make it happen. That would be like awards for best movie that included no director awards.

Laura Croft is a fictional entity. It does not deserve an award. You do not give out awards to the character, you give them to the actor.