Should Videogames have a big official award ceremony?

[Hero in a half shell]

Films have the Oscars and music has the Grammys that meet every year to pay homage to the best in their craft. Should videogames have the same kind of thing?

One night a year where the major developers all gather together, to celebrate all the best things about videogames, the best storylines, musical scores, single-player/multiplayer, indie, best new developer, best AAA title etc. etc.

What do you think, should we have an award ceremony for games? Who should run it, what categories would you choose?

 

[Traun]

Not really, no.

Currently there is this trend that a movie will win an Oscar if it fallows a certain formula, see The King's Speech for reference. The last thing we want right now is for publishers who can't interpret Metacritic data to be influenced by this. Can you imagine how much staler the market will become once every game company tries to shoot at the price by making something extremely by the book?

And let's be honest, this would be a nightmare for the devs. I can assure you that there will be a "win a game-Oscar or you lose royalties" in their contracts. Not what we want right now.

 

[rekabdarb]

Not really, no.

Currently there is this trend that a movie will win an Oscar if it fallows a certain formula, see The King's Speech for reference. The last thing we want right now is for publishers who can't interpret Metacritic data to be influenced by this. Can you imagine how much staler the market will become once every game company tries to shoot at the price by making something extremely by the book?

And let's be honest, this would be a nightmare for the devs. I can assure you that there will be a "win a game-Oscar or you lose royalties" in their contracts. Not what we want right now.

yeah more or less that...

Studios can't do anything original anymore don't want to make a monotonous industry

 

[Ordinaryundone]

It'd be nice to have a definitive measuring stick of quality. Plus those sort of events are usually pretty fun. However, like the above poster said, once the awards start mattering the consequences for not getting awards become real too.

 

[SonicKaos]

As long as it was nothing like Spike's VGA's, because they're absolutely horrible. They set back gaming 2 years in the public's eye every time they air... It's so dumb, it makes me embarassed by association.

So yeah, it could potentially be neat... but so far it hasn't worked out at all.

 

[Swifteye]

I kinda find award shows in general kind of iffy. It just seems like a flawed process. You either let random people vote on something that probably doesn't have the quality it got voted for. Or you let a bunch of elites(they are supposed to be elites I assume) who make it their business to be as picky and as pretentious as possible pick out something that just fits their profile but wasn't really the great movie in comparison to others more deserving.

I honestly would prefer scrapping awards and top lists of stuff and just enjoy things and pretend they earned awards.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

No. I hate those things.

 

[Kurokasumi]

Wouldn't the Spike VGA's be that "official award ceremony"?

 

[Owen Robertson]

Video Games aren't about pageantry and glamour like the films or music of the 40's and 50's. They don't need some flashy, over the top, sellout show. They already have a semi-underground sellout show. The Spike VGA's are all we need. While were on the subject of unnecessary over the top-ness, CoDXP. Sigh. It won't stop there either. We'll have BattleFieldExpo, Fallout: Ground Zero, and Halo-con eventually. Or maybe the shameless self-promoters at Blizzard will move studios and we'll get Acti-con and Beth-con and ElAr-con (because people will mispronounce EAcon as ee-yah-con).

 

[Darks63]

Wouldn't the Spike VGA's be that "official award ceremony"?

As long as you put horrible in front of official yes. Really though the gaming industry is better served not having its own oscars.

 

[Akyho]

Folks? British Acadamy Video Game Awards! I know its British but its taken seriously.

There is the site and also SIR!!! Ben Kingsly gives Peter Molynuex an award. Yes he did the voice for Sabulb in Fable 3. Still Sir Ben Kingsly.
http://www.bafta.org/awards/video-games/

Celebs of all sorts are there. People makeing all games get awards. All the big names are there. Its a seriouse Game awards and not like Spike VGA that is just like the MTV awards.

BAVGA is the BAFTA for games. Its the BAFTA Video Game Awards.

Its been going for 5 years. This is from this year.
Sponsored by Gamespot Uk this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4iJsvkWA7M

Its held by people that know games such as Dara O'Brien.

He put Metal gear solid into his stand up routine.

Dara talking about Wii being shit and crouch buttons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvfZ2kkSSX4&feature=related

Dara O'brien talking about video games in the Apollo theater.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24

 

[Stall]

There are good awards, like Game Developers Choice Awards, but they unfortunately lack the mainstream appeal as well as the glitz really required to mean anything in the widespread general public. That's really our equivalent of the "Academy Awards" in term of concept, so we are half way there...

It'd be nice to have a definitive measuring stick of quality. Plus those sort of events are usually pretty fun. However, like the above poster said, once the awards start mattering the consequences for not getting awards become real too.

And that consequence for not getting an award is what you want. That's a GOOD thing... that's the reason why we need a real, legitimate set of awards. Those consequences will force publishers to start saying: "HOLY SHIT GUYS! We REALLY need to start making our games better since we might not get Super Awesome Award X, and whenever a game gets Super Awesome Award X, it sells like hotcakes!".

Look at the Oscars. Sure, there may or may not be a particular kind of movie that usually gets best picture, but nonetheless, the DRIVE to get best picture alone causes film makers to bring out their A game and really work tirelessly to make a movie worthy enough of such a prestigious award. Just look at all the "Oscar bait" movies that have totally flopped: there is a certain degree of quality required here... you can't just schlock out an "Oscar bait" movie and win. If we are getting publishers afraid of what will happen if they don't win these awards, then the market will improve.

 

[Kurokasumi]

Wouldn't the Spike VGA's be that "official award ceremony"?

As long as you put horrible in front of official yes. Really though the gaming industry is better served not having its own oscars.

Although I admit it can be entertaining to watch, I would agree with the awards themselves being horrible. The last two times I watched it the awards were completely undeserved and just awarded do to fanbase and hype. Not actual game quality.
Not to mention there were no doubt a few deals under the table for certain developers to get there game awarded.

 

[Owen Robertson]

Studios can't do anything original anymore don't want to make a monotonous industry

Don't know if you realized but there hasn't been much originality since 1998. It's already a fairly monotonous industry. I don't really care. It saves me money in the long-run and I end up reading more books. There are FPS, TPS, CombatRPG, AdventureRPG, and Racing cookie-cutters already. Even back in the day, there wasn't much difference between say Call of Duty and Medal of Honour. Weaponry and story differed but the mechanics were similar. Granted it was better than it is now. Maybe we should all just e-mail our ideas to studios and pray they make some of them. Play as the villain (and none of that "tragic villain" horse-shit either. Psychopathic, "need-to-kill" villains) or a proper beat-em-up haven't been made in ages. Walk into a hospital and murder people to fill up your "Kill-o-meter", or walk into a hospital and beat the living shit out of people to rescue your girlfriend. Thats villain and BEU respectively.

 

[Valagetti]

Films have the Oscars and music has the Grammys that meet every year to pay homage to the best in their craft. Should videogames have the same kind of thing?

One night a year where the major developers all gather together, to celebrate all the best things about videogames, the best storylines, musical scores, single-player/multiplayer, indie, best new developer, best AAA title etc. etc.

What do you think, should we have an award ceremony for games? Who should run it, what categories would you choose?

Dude they already exist, its just that is a pile of lies and advertising.
If you mean something that actually deserves respect, then yes.

 

[Akyho]

Films have the Oscars and music has the Grammys that meet every year to pay homage to the best in their craft. Should videogames have the same kind of thing?

One night a year where the major developers all gather together, to celebrate all the best things about videogames, the best storylines, musical scores, single-player/multiplayer, indie, best new developer, best AAA title etc. etc.

What do you think, should we have an award ceremony for games? Who should run it, what categories would you choose?

Dude they already exist, its just that is a pile of lies and advertising.
If you mean something that actually deserves respect, then yes.

No thats the Spike VGA adverting bullshit. There is the BAFTA Video game awards and its very serious and nice.

 

[aashell13]

sure, just don't expect me to watch it.

Perhaps you'd like to get BAFTA on PBS?

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I would not mind at all. At the very least, it would present games in a nice light, give gamers a shared social event the way the Emmys, Globes, and Oscars do for television watchers and moviegoers, and get people a little more familiar with the actual humans involved in producing games they like.

 

[Traun]

And that consequence for not getting an award is what you want. That's a GOOD thing... that's the reason why we need a real, legitimate set of awards. Those consequences will force publishers to start saying: "HOLY SHIT GUYS! We REALLY need to start making our games better since we might not get Super Awesome Award X, and whenever a game gets Super Awesome Award X, it sells like hotcakes!".

Unfortunetly, we do not live in the dream world where such a scenario is possible.

Here's the unfortunet reality of it - publishers are withholding royalties from developers if the game has an average(not a bad) rating with critics or a medicore preformence at the box office. The consequences of an award like that wouldn't be

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! We REALLY need to start making our games better since we might not get Super Awesome Award X, and whenever a game gets Super Awesome Award X, it sells like hotcakes!"

But more in the lines of "Ok, this is what CoD 20 did to win award for best game of the year, if we want to get nominated we should copy this and this and not go too far from the formula, otherwise we won't see a dime from our work".

Why do you think we have this rating inflation in games where everything under 80% is considered bad? It is a common practice for developers to phone reviewers and guilt, beg them if necessary, strongarm them if possible, into increasing the rating, so that big daddy publisher doesn't cut them from the small percent of the money they hoped they'll make. Starling made a video on this site about Metacritics and Publishers and if you're willing to dig you will find reviewers who condemn the practice.

This isn't an industry where you get a bonus for winning an award, here you are penalized for failing to do so.