I caught the VGAs this past week, and is it just me, or was that about the lowest-class excuse of an award show ever aired on television?

What a complete waste of time! I just keep telling myself "It's a good thing that video games are going mainstream" and maybe the pain of the experience will go away.

Yeah, it was painful, indeed. It was also pathetic not only because of the unceasing raunch, but also because it seemed to actually have very little to do with video games and more to do with porn stars, rappers, and other assorted pop-culture icons. It was almost like they were saying, "we need these pop-culture celebrities to bring legitimacy to video games". Ray Liota was the only celebrity on there (except maybe Tony Hawk) who actually had some business being on the show, and it was revolting how unsophisticated the rest of the show was. Ray appeared toward the beginning and I almost entertained the notion that this was going to be marginally comparable to an Academy Awards show, but those hopes were quickly dashed.

And what's with the extended WEE/Smackdown sequence!? Was that really necessary as part of a video game awards show? Really sad...

The VGAs were pretty depressing. You're right they were more about every other entertainment industry (porn, sports, music, hollywood, WWE, etc. ) than the game industry. David Spade was a horrible choice of a host and spent as much time panning the game industry and game culture (I remember the Soul Caliber II champs and David Spade saying "These nerds will never get laid.") The wrestling match was ridiculous and pretty sad. I won't even get into the winners\nominees. All the winners were pretty far off (Madden Game of the year? Enter the Matrix the Best game based on a movie?.)

Many of the celebrities had either something to do with Spike TV shows, or have at least been in one game. The list of people featured that have had something to do with a game (their likeness is in the game or they did voice acting) that I can think of off the top of my head is:

Ray Liotta - In Vice City
Jeanna Jameson - In Vice City
DMX - In that Def Jam wrestling game
Tony Hawk (and perhaps some of the other skaters?) - In THPS
Tia Carrere - was in some old ass PC FMV game.
WWE People - In all the WWE games.

Eh, it's still not much, but more than you'd think. Some of the bands could have been featured on game soundtracks as well.

I personally would have liked to see the some of the developers at least get a chance to walk up on stage and receive their awards, even if they didn't allow acceptance speeches. It would be nice to see some industry people get some exposure. G4 does some of this but I think Spike TV would have been a better platform for this. The problem is, do people really want to see game developers up on stage? If you do an analogy with the Oscars, most game developers are basically special effects guys, screen writers, directors, producers, composers. These guys get a lot less screen time on the Oscars than important, pretty actors, although they do more work on the movies than the actors do. The game industry doesn't have celebraties like the movie or music industry.

My ideal mainstream focused game award show would have the following things:

Nominees - This was ridiculous, I'd like to see what games where competiting against each other without having to go to the website thank you.

Game developers get go to the stage - It would be nice to seem teams get to go up to the stage and thank somebody. It also would have been nice to see some of the game industry celebrities (Carmack, Wright, Miyamoto, Dave Perry, Hideo Kojima, hell even Bill Gates), even if people outside of the game industry and hardcore game players have no idea who they are.

Only Celebrities that have been in a game, only bands that have their music in games. And make it CLEARLY apparent what their work has been.

Bands doing songs in games or even better, covers of original game music (and recognition for the composer and game.)

Better winners and nominations.

Less flashy and tacky - I mean, this thing made the MTV music video awards, teen choice awards and billboard awards look classy and mature.

It all sounds like it was perfectly horrible. Sick-making.

But just think, if you weren't indie you might actually be working for "creative" people who are just like the people who devised that programme, right?