What Gaming Needs In The Future
Welp, now that the New Year has rolled in and we finally have a chance to settle in to the things we are fond of. There has to be a point where we look back and say what part of 2013 we hated. There are a lot of things to love about it. While this may be true for everything else, for gaming there was but one thing that I particularly despised.
It being the game awards ceremonies all one of them. It was really badly handled and should had they been better, no one would have said anything, but there is such a thing as big hype no prize. The VGX's handled by spike TV was flawed in the fact that there were awkward moments and that developers just used the TV medium to half tease audiences with trailers of upcoming games that really shouldn't have been advertised. Then when everyone asked when is it coming out the response was TBA. It sucks to know that now TBA, in the words of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, stands for, “Too Bloody Apathetic.” When will developers learn that your best chance of winning sales is not see who announces first, but rather announce when the game has already is wrapping up or has been approved for shipping. This is because by then there are only a handful of copies around and if a lot of demand comes back then you mass produce for the market. I digress; it just seems silly to advertise something two years in advance; especially in an award ceremony. The host, there was two but one got more attention, also got annoying, why is it that there has to be a gay joke every five seconds. When was it socially acceptable to ad-lib on things, on live and recorded TV, that could indeed get you rubbed off the face of the Earth? Sure he straightened out throughout the show, but annoying is still annoying.
In the totality of it all, I suggest gamers make their own gaming award show. So I propose to anyone reading that we combine forces and make the GIA Awards, (Game and Interactive Arts Awards), a thing. I’ll make the layout of events if it’s too much of a hassle. I feel we needed something that better represented our medium. Yea, there may be some bad things about it at first, but I guarantee I’d make a better show than VGX. I don’t mean to offend either. However, when you have this kind of performance its really loses trust and to be honest a quiet studio is no place for a large award show. It’s also very bad that if we want to measure up to TV or movies, that we have more than one award show, and not rely on the medium that which we are running against. If I ran the GIA Awards I would make a con out of it. That way when the day comes just like in TV on the Kids Choice Awards on Nickelodeon, you sell tickets to get in, or even throughout the con that way you have a crowd. Another thing to note is that these shows need a consensus, or a base that we trust from within the ranks of Reviewers, Lets players, and a general audience, like the guys from YouTube, IGN, Kotaku, RoosterTeeth, Giantbomb, The Escapist, Destructoid, Penny Arcade, etc. This is to give the things we massively endorse get publicity that we know they need. Yea sure invite the developers and people out but don’t let announcement ruin your show because one announcement from each developer is kind of too much. The trick is to show something we know something familiar. That way when you hint your, fine; tease it, sure; DO NOT announce incomplete games and then turn around not tell when the work comes out.
Hopefully this experience teaches us a valuable lesson on how to handle rewarding thing we really enjoy and I hope to work with whomever decides to make this a better reality.
