| December 4, 2003 Spike TV Video Game Awards --I couldn’t have said it all better myself (read this article on it, good article). To put it in perspective, do you let garbage men judge and art show? Do you let chess players referee a football game? Do you let women choose an action movie? Shall I go on??? Then why the heck did Spike TV let “casual gamers” judge a video game awards award show?!?! casual gamer- a person who plays video games occasionally mostly on a whim and because “that game looks good”. They have no real appreciation or knowledge of video gaming culture or its heritage other than NES. They do not follow the latest trends or keep up with the latest gaming technologies, whether console, PC, handheld, or arcade. The do not experience video gaming “binges” and are embarrassed to be a known as a video game player in public forums such as school and/or work. They are ignorant of the fact that the average aged gamer today is of 28 years old and they believe Nintendo is still the dominate video game company. They can not name one video game publication or website and rely on ignorant and uneducated Best Buy or Circuit City employees on sucky recommendations and information concerning video games (instead of asking me). They buy crappy games like Enter the Matrix and Superman because they think a game will automatically be good if its tied into a movie franchise which every knowledgable gamer knows to be false 99% of the time (EA’s Lord of the Rings games being one exception) They have no idea what bump mapping of Emotion Engine mean and couldn’t tell you the difference between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII (Huh? You mean there’s more than one?) They think Atari was a Japanese company and that Sega’s only console was the Genesis. They fail to recognize Nintendo’s insanely stupid blunder in maintaining the cartridge storage medium for the N64 and have no idea why Nokia made themselves look like fools for releasing the sucky N-Gage. In the end, casual gamers are like the average American citizen that goes about their simpleton life completely ignorant of the truths of the world and having no dreams or aspirations to change it. Well Spike TV is surrounded by a bunch of casual gamers obviously because they voted craptacular games like Enter the Matrix and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (interesting to note that Tecmo, the makers of the Dead or Alive fighting game series, actually patented their BB {breast bounce} programming technology in the games. Suffice to say the female characters have err....um....good fighting.....attributes...and...um....well I’ll stop there, but you can understand why a testosterone-fueled channel like Spike TV would be all over the Dead or Alive games. Check out Dead or Alive’s offerings right here...available to any kid with a Xbox, PS2, or Dreamcast for under $50!) best in their respective categories. Anyways, Spike TV, while trying to expand video gaming culture into the public’s eye, has made a semi-mockery of the industry by basing their standards and awards on what will please their advertising clients instead of what will increase their gaming respect. Guess we nerds can’t expect a suave and hip awards show showcasing the latest and greatest the gaming industry has to offer in the critical sense. Maybe that’s an oxymoron. Oh well, guess us gamers can’t have our Halo and Halo 2...haha, get it “Halo” and “Halo 2”..."wine and cheese too"??? Haha? Anyone?? Sheesh, you guys/gals are a tough casual gamer crowd... *That Dead or Alive link once again... : ) :O **I hear Pamela Anderson is gonna be on the awards show...maybe I will watch it... ***I gotta admit though, I like all the ads Spike TV had for the awards show. They had cool nostalgia and stuff...so maybe I’m judging the show before I see it. Well the show itself may be cool, but the awards they gave are definitely suspect. A disgruntled forumite from Gamespot.com I think sumed it up best: "Madden as Game of the Year? Hardly. Enter the Matrix better than Return of the King? I don't think so. Halo as the best PC game? Yeah right! It was obvious that SpikeTV was so influenced by advertisers and game sales, that they just decided to throw together some half ***** video game show, so that the 18-49 demo could get them some ratings. I guarantee the show will be more about half naked women and junk than video games. Once again, the video games industry isn't taken seriously, and the popular, big selling games win out over the actual good games." |