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Spike TV's Video Game Awards to honor exactly the games you'd expect
The nominees have been announced for Spike TV's Video Game Awards, also known as the "Oh God, I Hope No One Who Knows I Play Videogames Accidentally Sees Any of This" Awards. Last year's award winners were announced by being painted onto naked women.
I don't mean to take issue with anyone's personal choices for their favorite games, but Spike TV's nominees are all safe, boring, commercially successful, and limited to a handful of big publishers. Their nominees for game of the year, for instance, are Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout 3, and Metal Gear Solid 4. This year Braid and World of Goo will go head-to-head for the special "Fueled By the Dew" award. Nothing says "clueless" and "crass" like branding an indie games award with a Mountain Dew logo.
You can go here to wade through their nominees. Or you can just wait until after the ceremony on December 14th to hear about whatever tasteless stuff they did this year.
By Troy Goodfellow at 10:20 AM ON 11/14/08
It's a good sign that they want to honor game actors that aren't otherwise movie stars. Breaking up the acting awards into Big Names and "the other guys" was clearly done to get a prize into Niko Bellic's hands but its a tiny recognition of the professionalization on that side of game making.
A tiny recognition fueled by Dew.
By salwon at 12:50 PM ON 11/14/08
But what will win "Best Madden of '08?"
By Rob Zacny at 8:41 PM ON 11/15/08
So basically, Spike's awards have swiftly gone the way of most major awards shows. They celebrate the things that made a lot of money and generated a lot discussion (but mostly the money).
Just like with the Academy Awards, I know this doesn't matter but it still kind of bothers me. At least with the Oscars, there's usually one movie that's nominated for Best Picture that actually seems like it may stand the test of time. It rarely wins, but at least it was acknowledged.
The Spike awards don't have a single dark-horse candidate, and some of the games seem like really baffling choices (MGS4?). Couldn't they throw in something that would let us believe that "merit" is one of the criteria?
Rob Zacny:
So basically, Spike's awards have swiftly gone the way of most major awards shows. They celebrate the things that m...More »