VGAs (and who the hell is Felicia Day?)

Finally, the most pretentious Gaming-related event of the year is over.
Unlike E3, Gamescom or the Tokyo Game Show, the Spike Video Game Awards are that kind of event that does not contribute anything to Gaming as a whole, but only bloats those already bloated even more.



What have we learned from this year's VGAs?
We've certainly learned that "teabagging" isn't only a Xbox Live Call of Duty thing, but is also popular amongst scripted acts of immaturity at Gaming Awards.
Now we're all a bit smarter since we've learned that rubbing a medikit on your shirt might make you feel less retarded than before - if only for a second.
And who would have thought? Standing around, talking about mostly unrelated crap and unfunny jokes seems to be horribly exhausting, and Charlie Sheen actually got onto the stage mostly sober once again - even though we have no definite proof for that yet.

One thing we definitely should memorize is that the Spike VGAs are one simple thing: Clusterfuck.
The "Host", Sheen, Jimbo and Stifler as well as quite a few others have offered us enough reasons to openly "WTF" and question even our slightest hope that the show would be even mildly entertaining on this very night.

Anyone who's been watching the show via livestream (which, if I might add, was regionally restricted, annoying a myriad of Gamers around the globe) should know by now that we've been fed more commercials, idiocy and, simply put, bullshit than gaming-relevant information.

The few exclusive Debut trailers we've seen were either very short (Command & Conquer: Generals 2), didn't tell anything about the gameplay (Spider-man, Transformers) or were only nice to look at without presenting more than a rather generic basic scenario (Last of Us). The best part of the evening probably was Hideo Kojima, shyly announcing the (already leaked) new Metal Gear Rising trailer, which was actually quite exciting.


So who's got "Game of the Year"?

Well, there's the dragon...

The buggiest and most unpolished game I've seen since the Magicka launch - Skyrim. How else could it have went?
The only nominated game that runs actually worse on PCs and got onto that list was Batman: Arkham City (which celebrates its first patch, which didn't even fix most issues),
and Zelda: Skyward Sword fails brilliantly in the eyes of longtime fans (Nobody plays the Wii these days anyway, from what I've heard).
Uncharted 3, exclusive to the PS3, never even stood a chance - it might be a huge blockbuster and take the console to its maximum, but it simply did not have the amount of media exposure and glorifications since it has been announced that The Elder Scrolls V had.
Last but first on the ladder of objectivity we have Portal 2. A game that excells in testing your braincells, offering snarky humor, accessability and a lot of coop fun as well as free updates and additional content being released over time. Also, Cave Johnson.

Sadly, Portal 2 did not win the GotY award, but to quote good ol' Cave on the topic of metaphorical lemons:

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. GET MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR DAMN LEMONS! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?!

That's to say that the awards have been just as fake as every year, and neither Cave, GLaDOS or Gabe Newell should have even accepted this award in any case.

Speaking of Fake - did you hear about that Youtube-fellow who got so pissed about the VGAs last time? Yeah, he got onto the stage this time, the bribe worked well enough for him to swallow his pride. Also, Jonas Brothers, speeding through most awards to make more room for Kraft: Maccaroni and Cheese and Mission Impossible, a made-up award for Blizzard, who didn't even release a single game, expansion or even Beta this year (nope, closed Diablo 3 beta does not count) and more stupid comments by our dear host.

People who most likely have never even been considered to be somehow "important, "cool" or even "likeable" by the wider gaming community presented video game awards or trailers, took more time looking stupid than doing their job - presenting the games (even though, admittedly, looking stupid IS part of what they signed up for).

B-Bioshock!

One of those people I wondered about ever having held a joystick before was Felicia Day.
Felicia Day. Who was that girl? Is she important? Did she brainstorm some popular games' plot? Did she give birth to a handheld device?

None of the above, it seems. She's an actress, I was told. After she personally replied to me and M0zilla on twitter, I found out about her being somehow involved in Dragon Age 2, which sure is something to be proud of ***.
However, none of the people I've asked who she even was knew an answer, the only one I got was "an actress", but nothing gaming-related at all.

Moral of the story: Don't look at your smartphone's twitter client after having had a more or less embarrassing performance on stage and search for your name. You might find people who didn't like you. This time, we were those people. Get used to it.


So, to round this post up at last,
here's a link to kotaku, who listed all the awards given.
Portal 2 got 5 awards (Best Actors of both genders, Best Multiplayer, Best PC Game, Best DLC), and those were actually quite something.
Bastion got 3 Awards, and thus is amongst the very very few nominees who got what they deserved rather than what bribes could buy.
Minecraft Best Indie Game and the rest was rather dull and for the most part undeserved.
Call of Duty MW3 seems to be this year's Best Shooter, which I have no issue disagreeing with (Played it, was a bad mix of explosions and mindless gunning and bad hollywood scenes), and even though I was glad they didn't pick RAGE, it leaves a sour taste.


Skyrim wouldn't even be able to apply for an event like this in my book, since products that buggy and unpolished shouldn't be allowed to enter. Then again, they even nominated RAGE, and we all know about RAGE...
A game which looks a hundred times better using the Community's mods, all forged in the few weeks since released, looks bad from the angle of a Gamer with standards, especially when its advertised at $60. But oh well, how to defy the brainless gloryfication? We didn't even get to figure that out since christianity came around...


I guess that's it - the 2011 Spike VGAs. An event with Wikipedia coverage since 2003 but still laking a "Criticism"-section like most other things already had in 2005. And believe me, the criticism has landed heavy hits this year once again...

*** I've used italics to mark the part where I broke out in laughter. If you've done the same, facepalmed or otherwise made fun of that point, good job, you won a cookie. Or lemon, in case you want to throw it against EA's heads.