Spike TV Video Game Award
The Spike Video Game Awards (VGA) is an award show hosted by Spike TV that recognizes the best computer and video games of the year. The VGAs feature live music performances and appearances by popular performers in music, movies, and television. Additionally, preview trailers for upcoming games are highlighted. The show is produced by "GameTrailers TV's" Geoff Keighley. The event has been held at various locations in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California as well as Las Vegas, Nevada.
The program has encountered criticism for its selection of both nominees and winners by the gaming community. Bias for specific platforms and products has been claimed by critics. Additionally, winners are selected via online polling leading to critics calling the results merely a "popularity contest."
The 2010 "VGAs" were held Saturday, December 11, 2010 in Los Angeles, CA at the L.A. Convention Center and returned to using a host which was Neil Patrick Harris. Unlike previous years, all the awards were not awarded during the show. The 2010 "VGAs" were the world's biggest global gaming event broadcasted in over 175 territories worldwide.
BioWare announced "Mass Effect 3" at the 2010 Awards. "" had another CGI trailer debut at the 2010 awards along with the sequel to "Prototype"with gameplay footage. Acclaimed movie director Guillermo del Toro announced his video game, "inSANE", which is being developed by "Saints Row's" Volition team. Bethesda Softworks also announced their next entry into "The Elder Scrolls" series, "". The first trailer of "" aired during the 2010 awards. Other new games previewed included "Mortal Kombat" featuring Kratos, "Resistance 3", "Portal 2", "", and "Forza Motorsport 4".
With appearances by the cast members of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", Danny Devito, Kaitlin Olson, Rob McElhenney, Academy Award Nominated Director Guillermo Del Toro, "Halo: Reach" star and VGA Nominee Nathan Fillion, "" star Chris Hemsworth, Olivia Munn, AnnaLynne McCord, and Tony Hawk, among others. Including musical performances by award winning violinist Diana Yukawa, My Chemical Romance and José González.
The 2009 "VGAs" were held on December 12, 2009 at the Nokia Event Deck in Los Angeles, California and were the first and only VGAs to have a number of differnt host.(Jake Gyllenhaal)(Kristen Bell), (Felicia Day),(Tony Hawk), (Tricia Helfer),(Alyssa Milano), (Zachary Quinto),(Mike Tyson), (Olivia Wilde)., It opened with a trailer announcing the to "Batman Arkham Asylum". There were other exclusive looks at "", "UFC 2010 Undisputed", "", and others. Samuel L. Jackson previewed LucasArts newest upcoming "Star Wars" game, "". In addition, "" was announced and accompanied with a trailer.
The 2008 "VGAs" were held on December 14, 2008. The show, hosted by Jack Black, featured ten previews of upcoming games. Musical performances included 50 Cent, The All-American Rejects, Weezer, and LL Cool J.
The 2007 "VGAs" aired December 9, 2007. Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, the winners were announced ahead of the event which was held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The show featured performances by Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, and exclusive world videogame premieres of "Borderlands", "Gran Turismo 5 Prologue", "" and "TNA iMPACT!"
The 2006 "VGAs" featured musical performances by Tenacious D and AFI and show appearances by 50 Cent, Eva Mendes, Sarah Silverman, Seth Green, Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, Brandon Routh, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tony Hawk, Michael Irvin, Method Man, Maria Menounos, Tyrese, Xzibit, James Gandolfini, Kurt Angle, among others. In character as Stewie Griffin and Tom Tucker from Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane served as the voice of the VGAs. The awards aired December 13, 2006 and were hosted by Samuel L. Jackson.
The 2004 "VGAs" were held in Santa Monica, California at the Barker Hangar. They were hosted by Snoop Dogg. The event featured musical performances including Sum 41, Ludacris and a special live performance by Snoop Dogg and the remaining members of The Doors performing "Riders on the Storm".
The 2003 "VGAs" were the first VGAs to be hosted by Spike TV. They were held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 2, 2003 and aired on December 4, 2003. The event was hosted by David Spade and featured appearances by Lil' Kim, Jaime Pressly, DMX, P.O.D., Orlando Jones, and Cedric the Entertainer. The event also featured a WWE tag team wrestling match with the superstars Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Trish Stratus, and Victoria.
The "Video Game Awards" have been heavily criticized since its inception (the first one in particular was universally panned for numerous reasons). One common criticism is that the "VGAs" are merely a popularity contest. This means that console games are more likely to win or be nominated over PC games. The show has also shown a lack of Japanese gaming in the later years of the show as less Japanese games are nominated or win each year.
In the very first "VGAs", "" on the PC won the best shooter category when it was technically a two year old game ported to another system by this point and should have been an invalid choice. A similar situation arose the next year when Samuel L. Jackson repeatedly referred to "" as "Grand Theft Auto 2", though "San Andreas" is the fifth game in the series. The game was also shown as "Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas" when displayed. Also at the first "VGAs", "Madden NFL 2004" took Game of the Year, though up against titles such as "" and "".
The 2005 awards had also received criticism for having nominations for Peter Jackson's "" and "" (the latter of which was nominated for game of the year, despite being panned by critics and gamers alike). Both games had just been released when the special had aired, but after the filming, citing the possibility that the show was merely used as an advertising campaign for both games. The same could likely go for letting the "TNA iMPACT!" video game having a sneak peak at the awards, and possibly not letting WWE video games get nominated, since "TNA iMPACT!" is a Spike show, in hopes of avoiding more competition.
For the 2010 awards, "Super Mario Galaxy 2" failed to earn a nomination for Game of the Year despite being the highest rated game of the year and one of the highest rated games of all time (ranked 3rd according to Game Rankings). "", "Bayonetta", "Vanquish" and a few others, even though rated higher than several of the other titles put up for selection for the Game of the Year nominations. For Best Performance by a Human Male category, Nathan Fillion was nominated for his voiceover role as Sergeant Edward Buck in "", even though he did little voice work and was only for firefight mode if the player chooses Sergeant Edward Buck's voice. Winning the catergory was Neil Patrick Harris for his voice work as Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man in "".