Am I the only gamer who didn’t realize the Spike Video Game Awards went down over the weekend? I don’t think too highly of game awards shows, and from what I’ve heard, it sounds like this year’s show was the usual gathering of non-celebrities fake acting about liking video games. But the best thing about the VGAs every year is the showcase it provides for ‘world premiere’ reveal trailers, and in that regard this year’s show was a success.
The three headliners are Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 (which will be coming to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 simultaneously for the first time) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, rounded out by a cavalcade of unveil teasers for new games and new trailers for existing games like SSX: Deadly Descents, inSane, Resistance 3, Prototype 2, Portal 2, Forza 4, Batman: Arkham City, Mortal Kombat (Kratos is joining the fight as a PS3-exclusive guest character!) and Thor. The full trailer lineup is embedded below if, like me, you missed (more like avoided) the VGAs telecast over the weekend.
Matt Litten is the full-time editor and owner of VGBlogger.com. He is responsible for maintaining the day to day operation of the site, editing all staff content before it is published, and contributing regular news, reviews, previews and other articles.
Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
Someone said they should just dump the useless ‘awards’ crap and go with the critic-free promos as the full show. But then the fame-whore celebs who line up on any red carpet they can find would miss out on another opportunity, and many folks apparently tune in because this is Spike … which is all about scantily clad females selling their dignity for fifteen minutes of press coverage …
The whole show should be dumped. The trailers and game reveals are the only part of any real substance, and those parts get more run on the Internet in blog posts like this one. But Spike is in the business of making money, and obviously the adolescent male gamer audience tunes in enough to keep these things going.
But places like here are full of critics and lend themselves to scrutiny. Spike offers publishers a captive audience of millions of likely gamers tuned in for ‘Trailers and T&A’ and to cheer on mediocrity like ‘Black Ops’ to win so-called ‘awards’. They get to trot up on stage in a nice ego-stroking non-critical environment and present their non-substantive stuff in order to gain hype without any critique or scrutiny until the next day.
Well, here’s something interesting I just read over at Game Informer. The viewership decreased for the fourth year in a row, with the VGAs only drawing ~600k viewers this year. Only a 3% drop, but still, the event is steadily declining every year. Hopefully more and more people continue to not watch the VGAs and maybe it will go away!
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/12/15/vga-numbers-fall-for-fourth-consecutive-year.aspx
Hilarious! I bet more people have discussed that they are crap than actually watched them!