That post, and also this slightly more recent one bring us bang up to date with The British Academy Video Games Awards 2006, or the Bafta Video Game Awards, as they were slightly less elegantly called in my listings magazine.
Despite the fact that my previously documented misgivings were actually directed more towards a weekly magazine-type show revolving around games and not a one-off awards ceremony, it nevertheless managed to tick most of the boxes anyway (it even managed to include a short feature on pro-gamers, Jesus God).
It smacked of a programme made and presented by people who clearly have no love for games (and who made no secret of it) - why did someone think it would be a good idea to have Dave Berry make 'hilarious' comments when showing clips of each of the nominated games for example? In fact that rather summed up the attitude of the programme-makers, and given that it was hidden away on E4 at 11.00pm, it was fairly clear that they seemed almost embarrassed to have to televise an awards ceremony for videogames.
Which, actually, is fair enough. But if you're going to do it, do it properly or just don't bother.
Apologists would say that the videogame industry is still in its relative infancy, and therefore any exposure in the mainstream is a good thing, but I would say a bad show is a bad show, and if they think this effort did anything to help the general perception of games and gamers I would suggest they are sorely mistaken.
Let's be honest - all awards shows are embarrassing and shit, so the chances of a ceremony celebrating games bucking the trend was unlikely, but it could have easily been made 1,000 times better by just playing it straight(er).
Some particular lowlights include:
- An audience full of PR nobodies (Miyamoto will never been seen near an event like this) picking up awards for all their sterling work (threatening games mag editors with pulling their exclusivity deal if they don't praise their game to the hilt).
- A potted history of videogames interspersed between awards which was so cursory, it seemed like they'd gotten a runner to spend a hour on Wikipedia researching it.
- The fact that, without exception, every 'celeb' dragged on to present an award had absolutely no affinity with videogames whatsoever. They couldn't even really bring themselves to lie about it either.
- Vernon Kay.
You may notice I've made no comment about the actual winners here, and that's because most of them didn't even register with me. The truth is they're really only of any interest to the people nominated anyway - I'm certainly no more likely to play Ghost Recon because of its win, nor am I about to cast New Super Mario Bros. into the fires of Hades because it lost in its category ('Best Children's Game' of all things - that's really going to help Nintendo with that kiddie image thing).
If anything proves what an immense waste of time the whole affair was, one of the categories called 'The Gamers' Award' (actually best mobile phone game) was voted for by readers of the Sun's 'Something for the Weekend' (whatever that is), and given that mobile phone games are at best regarded as an insult to proper gaming, you could regard your chance to influence the outcome of that category as an insult to yourself. I don't believe any of BAFTA's other glittering ceremonies include a text vote anyway.
Still, some woman who used to be in some pop band got to perform her new single at the end so it wasn't a complete write-off.
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