The Big Picture: If the Oscars Were the VGAs

Sir Prize

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If the Oscars were the VGAs, every Media teacher -as well as Drama and Art- would become even more jaded. Also most of the people watching it would be the sort who most sane people would want to kick in the gonads.
 

antipunt

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I can't watch this b/c I'm at work.

But damn, the comments are making me sticky this for later
 

Qitz

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NinjaDC said:
HEY!
Don't make fun of the VGA's for making room for more trailers.
Its the only thing the VGA's are good for.

Like the super bowl
This. I had it on as background noise while playing my 3DS only to close that when a trailer came up.


So long as Spike TV keeps this up that's all it'll be good for. That said though, would a majority of gamers watch an Oscar-esk awards show? Least Joker won Character of the Year though.
 

Gali

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Thank you Bob. You pointed everything out that is wrong with this show. This years VGA was the first and last time I watched it. Usually I don't care about it, since I live in Europe and had no clue about Spike TV anyway, but I was bored so I watched a live stream... shocking.
 

coogs42

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If the Oscars were the VGAs:
1. Best Foreign Language Film would not exist so they could give the Michael Bay Award for Best Arse in a Film
2. Transformers would be named Best Picture in 2007 instead of No Country For Old Men
3. An award would be created for Best 3D. And it would go to Transformers 3 and Hugo would not be nominated.
4. Best Art Direction would be replaced by Best Fight scene in a Film, and it would always be given to a Vin Diesel/The Rock fight
5. The films of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Orson Welles etc would never have even been considered for awards for being too artsy/long/intelligent.
6. Half of the show would be spent performing Eminem songs due to 8 Mile and 50 Cent songs due to Get Rich or Die Trying
7. Norbit would have won the Best Makeup award in 2007, along with Best Actor for Eddie Murphy.
8. Christopher Nolan would be beaten to death by Michael Bay with robo-balls for making intelligent films.

Bob, if you want to see an awards show which treats video games seriously, the Gaming BAFTAs would be the way to go as it is the UK giving gaming its own place in the top media awards in the UK.
 

GamemasterAnthony

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There's going to be an MIB3?!? Whoo boy...why does this bode ill?

Definitely feel for you, Bob. Someone should head over to Spike and slap the CEO over the head. Heck, I ALSO want to apologize to Miyamoto-San.

I NOW understand why the game companies are not willing to localize some of their better titles. The VGA proves...we are not worthy of them.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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As much as I enjoy Bob's work I feel his hatred of jocks and bro culture is getting out of hand.

MovieBob said:
An illustration of how VGAs are ruining our image.
The VGAs don't ruin our image. We ruin our image.

The Escapist is often very idealistic about gaming and gamers, a stance personified by shows like The Big Picture and the former ur-example, Extra Credits. It's a nice stance to take, but it is, deep down and at its worst, as narrow minded as the worst caricature of the online FPS community.

Because it's based on a lie. It's based on the lie that popular franchises from big soulless publishers crush struggling but deserving indies underfoot while drawing in a horde of jocks who ruin our gaming utopia with their crude, uncivilised ways. When I watch Bob sometimes I hear this subtext of "I liked it better when the dudes that bullied me at school didn't like what I like."

Why is it a lie? Because they're not the jocks. They're us.

Nerds/geeks/gamers/whatever used to be a minority, who would have to go out of their way to meet others who shared their interests and would treasure those rare meetings of minds. Then the Internet happened and suddenly we were knee-deep in 'our kind' and we didn't have to be friends with everyone anymore, so we split up into niches and started hating people who were in slightly different niches. You know, just like sports fans do. Just like the jocks do.

The Escapist is not representative of gaming culture. Fucking 4Chan is more representative of that, or would be if there was such a thing.

We became what we hated, and now we get the awards shows we deserve. A shallow, superficial parade of emptiness, hype, stupidity and memes* - just like the rest of the internet, and just like most games.

[sub]*teabagging is no better or worse than spamming FUS RO DAH or arrow jokes in forums, but I'm betting if they'd swapped the FPS references for Skyrim references they'd have got a different write up.[/sub]
 

jackanderson

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Rocklobster99 said:
jackanderson said:
When the people who are attending your awards ceremony are complaining about the ceremony and how you've treated them whilst it's still going on, it is most definitely time to re-evaluate your priorities.

I feel really sorry for Mark Hamill and Tara Strong. Their treatments were unacceptable. And I feel extremely sorry for host Zachary Levi. You could tell he wanted to host a good video game awards show and it killed me to slowly see part of him die as the night went on. With crappy pun after crappy pun and awful skit after awful skit. Internet: The man genuinely loves his games! Honest. He was just dealing with an awful script!

Jeff Gerstmann and Alex Navarro both wrote excellent pieces on the VGAs over at Giant Bomb if anyone's interested.

Great vid, Bob!
What happened to Mark Hamill and Tara Strong?
Shoved up into the bleachers and had the awards in their categories given out in the pre-show. They weren't aware until the internet informed them through Twitter. They mentioned that they didn't win, but they didn't care. They still would've preferred some recognition of their categories.

But yeah, to do that to Hamill and Strong... just disgraceful.
 
May 5, 2010
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Alright, I see the problem here.

Bob, I think there's a really big difference between who Spike TV THINKS makes up the majority of gamers...and who actually does. I'm pretty sure they're marketing to an audience that, rather then being a majority, is actually just a very vocal minority.

Short Version: The people at SpikeTV don't really know a whole lot about videogames or the people who play them, and they don't care. The VGAs are nothing but cash cows, and are not in any way a commentary about the modern gamer.

Wow, that actually wasn't that short. Oh well.
 

RTR

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My thought process while watching the video:
1. "Hmm, didn't care at all about VGA's because I don't watch Spike TV"
2. "Totally agree on that Travis Touchdown comment"
3. "I'm pretty sure Miyamoto was just happy to be there, not really sure about what was going on and just happy to get that award"
4. OMG PINKIE PIE
5. "The horror...."

Anyway, yesterday I read this really good article by Jim Sterling about how maybe the problem with the VGA's is that maybe we should just stop caring about them and leave them to the kind of audience Spike TV is aiming at. Good read, IMO:

http://www.gamefront.com/the-spike-video-game-awards-dont-need-to-change-you-do/
 

Crimsanon

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Feb 11, 2009
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"If the Oscars were the VGAs, Brett Ratner would still be directing"

- This part hurt the most. Casual bigotry is so rampant in the gaming community (at least, the portion of the gaming community that actually watches the VGAs with anticipation). We can be so much better.

Also, if the Oscars became the VGAs, would that make the Golden Globes into whatever award show the bastardized network formerly known as G4 does?
 

Carl The Manicorn

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Bob is totally right. I watched the VGA's last year and and the only moment that made me go, "Wow, I'm glad I watched this garbage," was the Arkham City and Skyrim trailers.

Also, I hope that the VGA's go to G4 at some point. At least they have some gamer cred leftover from when it was Tech TV.
 

Strain42

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Sixcess said:
[sub]*teabagging is no better or worse than spamming FUS RO DAH or arrow jokes in forums, but I'm betting if they'd swapped the FPS references for Skyrim references they'd have got a different write up.[/sub]
This is so true. Have a cookie.

I like to imagine that the writers at Bethesda spent at least a week going "I bet we can come up with something stupid and nonsensical that gamers will yell constantly."

And thus Fus ro Dah was born.