Cruising around Gamestop today, I noticed an ad promoting Game Informer's win for "best gaming magazine" at the recent Spike TV Video Game Awards adorning nearly every page (here's a more permanent link to the ad in case Gamestop takes it down). Game Informer subscriptions and issues are sold exclusively through Gamestop stores, so it's not really a surprise that an ad like this would show up there. The real signifigance of the ad is that it shows a big organization like GameStop is banking on the influence of Spike's award show to increase their magazine's audience. Is this awful show actually becoming accepted as representative of our industry?
Actually, taking another look at the ad, the "voted by fans #1 best gaming magazine" appears right at the top, while the Spike TV logo appears at the bottom. It's not exactly hard to miss, but it's not exactly the most prominent element either. How much effect do you think the Spike awards nod will have on Game Informer?
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How did Spike T.V. get to be in a place where they could just create their own awards show?? I saw it this year and the presenters were a joke...for the most part. Tara Reed!!! GIVE ME A BREAK!!! She dosen't have any reason to be there!! Where were the developers, programmers, sound guys, writers, producers ect..ect???
ReplyDeleteI for one do not want this to be our video game version of the grammys. Let's do it right!!
G4 does have an awards show. It's called G-Phoria, and it's not much better than the Spike awards. They had their second version of it this past summer, I believe.
ReplyDeleteIt's just promotion. Why wouldn't they use the award, regardless of who awarded it?
ReplyDeleteIt's like movie ads: "Best Movie of the Year," (in small print it's from some guy you've never heard of, from some tiny newspaper).
You take the praise/awards when you can get them. Everyone does this. It doesn't bestow any credibility on the person giving the award; no one really cares, unless they're really credible. (So that "Best Movie of the Year" would change to, "Roger Ebert says it's the best movie of the year.")
Oh dear.
ReplyDeleteI'd completely blocked G-Phoria out of my mind.
*sigh* Never mind. Just, never mind.
- Zonk