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VGA Awards Winners and Rant
So the VGA Awards were about as awkward and poorly executed as they have ever been. The jokes fall flat and everyone seems to desperately want to prove themselves. Its fine, it’s a new awards show. Even the Oscars, after years of practice, still fall flat more often than not.
There was no real exceptional surprise this year. You could boil it down to -
- Uncharted 3 will win game of the year when it comes out
- No Enslaved for voice acting?
- Every trailer was CG
- Elder Scrolls will probably excited me for 10 hours, and than bore me for the rest. I will then stop playing, and be told the rest of the year how wrong I am.
- Why did SSX Deadly Descent look like the new Call of Duty? Maybe it will be twisted Metal Black, who knows. The trailer was ridiculous.
- Wait.. did I say Uncharted 3. Maybe Mass Effect 3 will be game of the year (assuming of course that the new Zelda does rock the world, which it will)
- Gears of War 3, where are you?
- Nathan Fillion… sorry.
- Forza will have made 2 games, both better than GT5, in half the time it took to make GT5.
- Why don’t the oscars have a most anticipated film category? Oh wait… cause its idiotic.
I just to take a quick moment to rant about the VGA awards. Its not the presentation, its that the awards seem to have no idea how to represent the industry. Look, the 5 GotY nominations are all fine games. However, when was the last time you saw the Oscars nominate 5 action movies. Or even 5 big budget films.
The VGA may as well just asked Fraternities what their 5 favorite games are. They may as well have ordered them by which games you kill the most people, and then pick the top 5.
While not all may agree with me (though it seems like the entire industry did in Q1 of this year) Super Mario Galaxy 2 was with out a doubt, the single best designed game of the year. Arguably, it is the pixar movie for the industry. Anyone can play it. As for hardcore… Galaxy 2 gets as hard as any game this year, and getting all 242 stars puts hair on any man’s chest. It would be one thing if the game was just good, but the game garnished the best reviews of the year. EASILY. 97 on metacritic from 87 critics, with the lowestr review being a 90. Nothing comes close this year.
Game Trailers said “There is more creativity in some single stages in this game than in entire other games.” That statement is almost recited word for word by every reviewer in the nation, heck the world.
It is one of the best selling games of the year – outselling everything nominated except for Black Ops.
It is on the best selling console, with the largest fanbase.
This is like not nominating the Godfather, if the Godfather made 400 million in theaters. What is up industry? I won’t even complain about games like Super Meat Boy, Bayonetta, or Donkey Kong not getting nominated. That is fine. That is my preference. I am talking about sheer objectivity here.
Awards Shows should, and always are, about how to present the industry. Why would you possibly choose 5 titles that look identical to any non gamer? Do you wish to exclude the 40 million people that own Wiis or play casual games? Anyone who has played Halo Reach will watch your show anyway. You need to reach out to those other games.
Ignoring the fact that you snubbed the best game of the year, you just made the industry look like a bunch of violence loving meat heads. Are you embarrassed to vote for a Nintendo game? Are we still at that spot where every 1st Party Nintendo Game comes out with rave reviews, but when its time to say what is the best, we are scared of looking like babies.
I then watched Gametrailers podcast, where the host said perhaps the reason was that people are looking for the big budget titles…
Mario Galaxy 2 is a big budget title.
He said, perhaps they were looking for a new experience.
4/5 nominations were for sequels. God of War 3 is arguably the worst of the series, and literally, does not have a single new element in the game.
If I thought all 5 games were better than SMG2, I would be just as annoyed. The Oscars, for all their faults, does a good job of getting a group of nominations that represent the industry. Usually an artsy title abut a Queen and a numeral at the end of the title, a big budget success like Avatar, one or two mainstream hollywood art films like Departed and Zodiac. Then usually a wild card, indie title like Little Miss Sunshine.
Out of 5 nominations, they couldn’t pick a single title that wasn’t rated M. Or wasn’t a shooter / hack in slash in some regard.
People wonder why the industry is not taken seriously yet? Theres why.
NOTE: To not take this in any regard that I think those games are not great games, or even mature sophisticated titles that are good examples for our industry. I think God of War 3 and Black Ops are good games (not great) that are probably dumb as a rock with little worth beyond their visceral thrills. However, I think Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead are two of the finest pieces of entertainment this year, in any medium. Mature stories, well told. Halo Reach is a grand title, and actually the first Halo campaign I have loved. It is also sadly, the only title of the 5 with praise worthy mechanics. All the other games survive 100% because of their visuals and story telling, or sheer variety. Halo Reach – like Mario – is so fine tuned, and so fun to play, it could be blocks, and textureless worlds and it would still be fun to play.
Winners of the VGA are listed below.
GAME OF THE YEAR
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games / Rockstar San Diego)
STUDIO OF THE YEAR
BioWare
BEST XBOX 360 GAME
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts / BioWare)
BEST PS3 GAME
God of War III (Sony Computer Entertainment / SCE Studios Santa Monica)
BEST Wii GAME
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo / Nintendo)
BEST PC GAME
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard Entertainment / Blizzard Entertainment)
BEST HANDHELD GAME
God of War: Ghost of Sparta (Sony Computer Entertainment / Ready At Dawn Studios)
BEST SHOOTER
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision / Treyarch)
BEST ACTION ADVENTURE GAME
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft / Ubisoft Montreal)
BEST RPG
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts / BioWare)
BEST MULTI-PLAYER
Halo: Reach (Microsoft / Bungie Studios)
BEST INDIVIDUAL SPORTS GAME
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 (Electronic Arts / EA Tiburon)
BEST TEAM SPORTS GAME
NBA 2K11 (2K Sports / Visual Concepts)
BEST DRIVING GAME
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (Electronic Arts / Criterion Games)
BEST MUSIC GAME
Rock Band 3 (MTV Games / Harmonix)
BEST SOUNDTRACK
DJ Hero 2 (Activision / FreeStyleGames)
BEST SONG IN A GAME
Far Away by José González (Red Dead Redemption)
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games / Rockstar San Diego)
BEST GRAPHICS
God of War III (Sony Computer Entertainment / SCE Studios Santa Monica)
BEST ADAPTED VIDEO GAME
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game (Ubisoft / Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Chengdu)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A HUMAN MALE
Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker / Amazing Spider-Man (Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions / Activision)
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A HUMAN FEMALE
Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrigan (StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty / Blizzard Entertainment)
BEST DOWNLOADABLE GAME
Costume Quest (THQ / Double Fine Productions)
BEST DLC
Red Dead Redemption – Undead Nightmare (Rockstar Games / Rockstar San Diego)
BEST INDEPENDENT GAME
Limbo (PlayDead)
MOST ANTICIPATED GAME
Portal 2 (Valve / Valve)
cool, I agree portal 2 most anticipated, the multiplayer seems awesome
Matt Portal 2 should be your next give away!
I am so pumped to hear it has multiplayer! HUGE HELP THERE! 
Why didn’t Demon Souls get an Acknowledgment. It sold out faster than God of War and one of the hardest RPG for the PS3 this game beat the pants off anybody that played it.
Demon Souls was incredible. It also came out in 2009
I guess it all comes down to the commercial reality that a) SpikeTV needs to sell advertising on their show, b) SMG2 doesn’t fit in with their station’s ‘personality’, and c) The whole exercise is more or less bunk.
That is pretty much my point. The industry is completely wrong in how to present itself commercially.
a) The Wii is the most popular system amongst females and families.
b) Appealing ONLY to those you already have is a way to keep your ratings stagnant.
c) The exercise is not bunk when it is seen as a commercial for you industry – which is what award shows really are. When seen in this light, having all 5 of your best game noms be essentially, the same sort of game, is bad PR.
Actually, Mass Effect 2 is at 96 and God of War 3 is at 92 on Metacritic, with RDR coming in with 95. So there were games that can close to SMG2. Very close.
does anyone else think that it’s bullshit that djhero won best soundtrack? this category should be limited to games that have original scores written for that game.
This.
I hear ya, Freddie. I wrote a whole article about this and what should be done to make a REAL video game awards show. My suggestion for an opening act? Something from the mind of Freddie.
http://pixelatedgeek.com/2010/12/why-video-game-awards-shows-are-not-taken-seriously/
Thanks for the article, Matt, and I appreciate what you’re saying. Another comment mentions that SMB isn’t exactly the sort of game most Spike viewers are going to care about, and I have to agree—it truly is just pandering to their lowest common denominator. As you point out, that’s unfortunate for the industry as a whole.
No disrespect intended towards those who play and enjoy these games—I’m a Reach fan, and I thoroughly enjoyed the near pornographic violence of GoW3—but I wouldn’t present either of those games as representatives of the medium, which is effectively what Spike did with the VGAs.
Mass Effect 3 will be game of the year 2011. I love that series, and at it’s best it can beat the crap out of Uncharted.
“Elder Scrolls will probably excited me for 10 hours, and than bore me for the rest. I will then stop playing, and be told the rest of the year how wrong I am.”
I’m still fighting against crowds of friends that swear to that game.
Totally agree with how awkward the VGA’s were. I can honestly say that it actually DIFFICULT to watch!
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I completely agree with your statment amount galaxy 2. infact, i would go as far as to say that i don’t really like shooters. i don’t like games that only differentiate themselves from being different by having graphics that are more real and so, in turn, are more dull and more brown. i dont like the games that win the big awards. but then i don’t play games because i want to watch them do well at a meaninless awards ceremony, i play them to have fun. galaxy 2 is one of the most fun games i have ever played.