When I finished watching the second annual Game Awards the other night, I was surprised to find that just about no one else thought anything of them; the general consensus seems to be that they sit anywhere between "meh" and bad.  I feel that most people are letting the lack of a Nintendo announcement and their own lack of care for anything but megaton news cloud their vision, because I felt that the event was awesome and important for a number of reasons.

I made a video explaining my stance, if you're interested in checking it out.  Tl;dr though, most of the show felt more genuine than pretty much every other gaming show, and it heavily emphasized community and creativity.

https://youtu.be/_I79PTls-xc

I would love to hear what you guys thought about it.  Meh?  Bad?  Something else?

The reason people do not care is because the awards are little more than the AAA devs with the most money jerking each other off and giving each other medals. They already earn most of the money in the industry and now they get the awards too.

Fuck em.

The problem is that it's not just an award show but made by the same corporations that give each other the awards. So to the natural cheese and circle jerking you'll get added corporate marketing bullshit. Some parts may have been genuine but it's just all drained in a bunch of bullshit.

OH LOOK! IT'S STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT EVERYBODY!!! AREN'T WE HAVING SO MUCH FUN TODAY!

I liked it, but I haven't said much about it because I've been busy and haven't had much times to make threads I want. Hopefully that changes soon.
Most people that were dissapointed were expecting a mini E3 and Nintendo direct.
I'll have a listen.

EDIT: I have disagree with it feeling like a mini E3. It didn't showcase enough new games to feel as such. It did show enough new content though. I don't exactly agree with some of what you said, but I didn't completely disagree either and overall I liked your take on things

Yeah, if the awards show would stick to being an awards show with an open and transparent process for determining the winners (something like the Oscars and Emmys for instance) and did not double as a vehicle for publishers to market their new or upcoming games I might consider them to be a somewhat singularly important set of video game awards. The fact that the time the spent promoting Star Wars Battlefront was probably enough to actually televise giving out several more awards shows that the VGAs are not truly dedicated to awards and are as much a marketing exercise as an awards event. After just 2 years the VGAs need yet another rethink and reimaging.

In the movie industry there are lots of awards events all over the world and several in the USA. But only the movie that wins the best picture Oscar is regarded as the "global movie of the year". If the VGAs aspire to be the first, most significant and most prestigious award for GOTY then it has a lot of work to do to establish itself as such.

It doesn't even have the full suite of category awards. Then there are ccomplete bullshit awards that have no place in a true awards event, like "most anticipated game" What the hell is that as an award? All it amounts to is "game most likely to be a major let down because of too much hype." Trending gamer is what exactly? What is even the criteria for being up for consideration? Is it # of Youtube / Twitch subscribers, because I don't know how PewDiePie got nominated otherwise. And aside from popularity contest what was the Best eSports team based on? How do you chose between teams competing in completely different games? I like that eSports are getting recognition, but I'm not sure how that particular award can operate as a purtely fan-based choice being that it is solely a popularity contest,if team of the year just means team with a fanbase that is most motivated to vote then it loses all meaning and significance? If they were the most dominant team with the biggest winning streak and very high win rate and winning the most major competitions during the year then sure, that's a meaningful award.

There's too much wrong with these awards for them to be any more important that the GOY+TYs given out by the major gaming publications / websites.

If they need all that paid marketing stuff like the SWBF booth, then perhaps there just isn't the market for this kind of awards show, and perhaps it should therefore not exist.

I'm sorry but that award show was just bad. Blatant advertising and the fact that a chunk of the awards given weren't even shown was enough to make me dislike it. Plus many of the "world premieres" were things we already knew about or would have had just enough impact if they were told about in a press release.
The only thing positive that seemed to come out of it was that people started hating Konami more I guess.

I could be wrong, but I feel like most people chiming in didn't watch the actual show or hear any of my arguments. Buuuuut whaddayagonnado.

I just like how they exposed Konami. :P

I don't know if I would call it a mini E3. Sure, it does have some game reveals and all, but they felt a bit lacking. Though I feel for the show to be legitimized, they need to drop the world premieres. I am sure many people, including myself, tuned in for those, rather for the show itself. And when they aren't great, it becomes a disappointment for that group who watched it for that reason. That shouldn't be the crutch needed to catch people's interest. The show needs to draw in people for the purpose of giving awards. When they are able to do that, I think the show will get better. There were indeed some great moments, like the Iwata tribute, the part about Waywest, and Geoff revealing the truth about Kojima and Konami. Celebrating the hard work and efforts of game devs and their games should be enough for this show, haha.

Also, gotta say I love the main character of the show. Good work with the puppet too x )

Definitely should keep the game awards, as they are a nice thing to have

That said, I really didn't find anything interesting for this year's game awards unfortunately..
Nothing really stood out and there were a lot of advertising. Game related, but still did not interest me. I'm a huge fan of video game music but even I thought there was a bit too much music as well :/

I speak for myself but that's my overall feeling of the entire awards event