I was so surprised and angered about VGX this year. It is one thing to have just a horrible and awkward award show but it is another to have one that truly doesn’t understand the industry and the audience. The main problem with the award show could be best summed up by the host Joel Mchale.
He basically not only didn’t seem to care about video games but didn’t care about anything at all. I love Community but this made me lose a lot of respect for the man. If you didn’t want to be their then don’t there are plenty of other very capable people that could have been a great host and not waste our time.
Award shows are built for two things, celebrating the developer who create the amazing entertainment, or celebrating the fans that support the creators to make everything possible. VGX this year was able to amazingly insult both groups.
Joel Mchale insistence to ask stupid repetitive questions to developers like when a title was going to released was extremely annoying. These developers took time to showcase and interact with their fans. The fans themselves were insulted by Joel when all they wanted to do was interact with their favorite developers.
In fact Joel has no idea how Twitter even worked. He kept joking like the developers knew who exactly the Twitter user asking the question was. The whole point of Twitter is being able to interact with your fan base regardless of background or location. It would be one thing if he was trying to be funny but you can only make the same joke so many times before it's just insulting.
It sad too considering how big social media has become in our society. Even General Martin Dempsey has a Twitter account. Thats right even the highest ranking military officer of the most powerful military the world has ever seen has a Twitter account. In fact he even had a townhall meeting over Facebook respectfully answering complicated questions such as the budget and China.
There are bigger more important discussions to have without a doubt. The thing is all the more important discussions are actually so complex and complicated. I am more than happy to have those discussion but don't go insulting an industry that provides content for billions of people.
Video games may be an entertainment medium but it still deserves a spot to celebrate like industries in the entertainment world.. Granted I understand this isn’t DICE but something less serious but even MTV awards at least puts on a show that appreciates fans of the music industry.
Granted VGX was also poorly organized with many Twitter questions already being answered during the interview with Geoff. That could have been overlooked if the show treated the audience with respect though. I actually really appreciated the show trying incorporate changes in the industry such as streaming and interactivity too bad it was overshadowed by insults.
It just pains me to see video games insulted like it was when we are seeing such great growth in our industry. We are seeing growth in every type of video game model from mobile to consoles across the globe. The only exception is subscription based mmo's but that is because of the huge growth free-to-play online games have created just a great an experience.
When Grand Theft Auto V becoming the fastest selling entertainment product ever, the entire Staples Center being sold out in less than an hour for an esport event, and 70% of revenue on the Apple App Store driven by games, I see the video game industry as a very serious entertainment platform.