This is totally true, although if we’re honest with ourselves, the games we release do a pretty good job of reinforcing that stereotype as well.
I have a rant I’m simmering on the back burner that I might give at GDC this year about the “dysfunctional three-way” between game developers, the press, and fans. I figure this way I can piss everybody off simultaneously.
I was actually at the VGAs this year, for the first time, after many years of watching the videos and cringing (and tweeting), and I was pleasantly surprised. It was plenty dumb and stereotype-reinforcing, as you say, but it also came across as a celebration of games as they are right now, and it wasn’t as embarrassingly c-list suckup as it was previously, or at least it didn’t feel that way (it still was, just not as much).
One telling moment for me was when the host dude accidentally said “Arkham Asylum” when he was supposed to say “Arkham City”, and I thought that was pretty interesting, because that’s a mistake only a gamer would make…if the dude never played games he wouldn’t have heard of either of them and would have just read the teleprompter correctly.
Also, LL Cool J has a lot of stage presence, even though he’s an old washed up performer…way more than will.i.am, for example. I find that kind of thing interesting and somewhat magical.
As an attendee, I was pissed that they had Deadmau5 pretend he was going to play the entire commercial breaks but he basically stopped right after the cameras cut away, and they played lame replay videos to show the audience the useless “augmented reality”.
Anyway, my high level take on this is that yes, the awards shows could be a lot better, but until the games are a lot better, it’s not going to matter much.
Chris
