On Deliverance Through an Eyeful of Mario Ass

I'm getting too old for this shit.

Once, maybe twice in a guy’s life, most likely when he is young, he will go to a strip club and get a lap dance and, for some strange reason, will believe that this particular lap dance was performed for more than mere transactional purposes that somehow, despite the money exchanged at the outset for a predetermined period of entertainment; the grinding in one’s face and crotch with your hands firmly and plainly planted on armrests, this particular dance transcends the normal drudgery of day-to-day employment and clock watching, this dance was special and for you, because she likes you. 

This, of course, is bullshit. It’s not that the dancer necessarily dislikes the client but the fact that the client; most likely inebriated and certainly stimulated in the centers of the brain that treat reason like a lecherous cousin, is not in any position to determine if the professional in this business arrangement is belying anything other than absolute competency. Regardless, this hypothetical young man will, in most cases pick up a couple more dances that evening and more than likely, return again in the coming weeks and when he sits down, he might notice how she doesn’t really remember him and how the whole routine feels...familiar. 

I always think of this scenario when award season rolls around. 

God, I hate awards season, not as much as when I was a part of it but still enough to see it as yet another example of the decline of society into a mass of simpering donkeys out of Pinocchio. I get the fundamental value of awards: Extremely insecure people who ply a trade that is grossly difficult to value with consensus outside of revenue and mindshare seek approbation from their equally insecure peers. It’s an extremely masturbatory practice of celebrating the exclusionary collective and, like all good circle jerks, was supposed to be kept behind closed doors; the Oscars were originally held in the ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel. Then an actual genius thought to broadcast it and suddenly the ephemera of temporal success and acclaim became everybody’s business and, as time went on the “Awards Show” aesthetic became so ubiquitous that even a shitty little cable show about videogames felt obliged to ape the format when it rolled out “Best of the Year” like grandma getting furloughed from the home for Thanksgiving dinner so everybody doesn’t feel as bad the other 51 weeks. 

It’s a shameless charade where the signifier has so totally consumed the signified that no one is actually embarrassed anymore. I wore a tuxedo and they put miniature klieg lights on the set to grant importance to what amounted to the business end of a bunch of highly opinionated people who play way too many games yelling at each other and then compromising out of exhaustion because the majority want to go home. This strange, narcissistic ballet where the fairies of Completely Out of Touch with Reality bless the Cultural Product for Being a Good Boy. And everyone ate it up. 

Why? Why does the audience think it's such a big deal what a small bunch of people think is important? Because they consume the same culture? Hopefully you are a little in touch with what you like and don’t like so why size it up against a group of people you don’t know who have a multitude of other agendas in making their decision? Why grant them that much authority? This is the very reason that the #OscarsSoWhite campaign confounded me. It was 100% spot on, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences is overwhelmingly white and male and it’s evident in their typically conservative selections but by forcing the organization to alter its selection and composition is to grant that very organization a significance they neither have nor deserve. It’s asking for a seat at the table of a restaurant that still serves Chicken a la King, puts those chef hats on rib roasts and smells of decay and death. You’re feeding oxygen to a well past prime Jerry Lewis in the hopes he might say “Hey Laydeee!” so you have a story to tell.  

(There’s an elaborate story behind that analogy but that’s for a different essay) 

But that’s what’s wrong with awards shows under the best of circumstances. Then there’s Gaming Awards Shows, which is an experience that can best be described as unarticulated generational trauma putting on community theater production of Gypsy. The institutionalized insecurity of an entire industry that never feels respected parades its ass and provides the microscope. I believe one of these “ceremonies” was already held this week. It’s not even December. Video games is a medium that actually takes time to consume but nonetheless celebrates its cultural significance of the past year with the chill of a teenager in heat and a mild breeze.  

There are a couple of award ceremonies, the Game Developer Choice awards at GDC and the AIAS at DICE that, while far from perfect, feel appropriate and genuine because they maintain the tradition of creatives rewarding themselves with a night to feel special and in the current world of video game development those nights are few and far between. The rest of the bunch, spearheaded by the modestly titled The Game Awards are in a category of their own making: The Awards Show As Proof That We Merit Awards Shows.  

I’m not 100% when it all started but the eponymously titled The Game Awards has become the leading indicator of what was good in the past year. It’s covered in the gaming press with the same sobriety as the Emmys, Tonys and Oscars. It attracts yearly controversy, (I count 5 at this writing) in its selections. When working at The G4 Resurrection it was spoken of with perfunctory reverence throughout the year in regard to any game of quality that entered the conversation. Like The Return of Martin Guerre, The Game Awards showed up one day said, “I’m the one” everyone said “Yes, share my bed” and here we are. 

I don’t want to cast aspersions on the integrity of the awards; I’ve never been on one of the juries so there’s nothing I can speak to (I did vote with the ancient Game Critics Association). Looking at the website the logic of selection seems to be a clever mixture of Populism and Star Chamber reminiscent of a Democratic National Convention in the first half of the 20^th century. For the life of me I can’t truly understand how the nominations, nor the winners are arrived at, which furthers this sense of Delphic authority on the whole affair. It is The Game Awards because it truly does come from upon a high that we mortals can’t begin to understand. 

Like MTV, though, The Game Awards have, over the years, shifted their focus from enthusiasm over the current year’s releases to enthusiasm over the promise of better things to come in the future with oblique game announcements that are analyzed over the next week with the gravity of a papal encyclical. Additionally, awards are given to things that veer pretty far from notions of creativity, Best Esports Athlete? (um, doesn’t winning shit determine this?), Best Community Support (best martyr served up to the heathens)? Best Content Creator? (don’t even get me started there) one can only surmise that Best Social Media Post Casually Alerting Followers that You Have A Hotly Anticipated Game In Your Possession Because the NDA Now Allows It to Be Shared is just around the corner. The Game Awards, in an effort to be all-inclusive and touch all parts of gaming becomes a postmodern Yggdrasil with no branch left unpromoted.  

These awards are demonstratively popular, the current tally is 103 million humans, (so the Coca-Cola underwriting should be forthcoming any day now). Additionally, the positioning of The Game Awards as the gravity center of the industry is further demonstrated by the endless expectations that it become something even more than the marketing bonanza that it is. Social media is endlessly aflame with directives that TGA address this or that issue currently plaguing the industry. Recently the social account for TGA happily announced a partnership for an AI tool for game narrative, coming at a time when game companies are shedding employees en masse now that money isn’t being lent for free. It wasn’t a great look but it's equally weird to demand that time on stage be spent articulating painful hardships alongside Warframe’s 32^nd expansion as a salve. At what point to we set a wicker man aflame at the Nokia theater to rid our demons in the hopes that next year’s industry harvest is bountiful?  

Going back to my original concern (I think) why do we need this ceremonial Atlas of The Game Awards to support such a complex and multivariate medium? Just because everyone else, does it? Yes, it’s great marketing; anyone in PR or selling games should flock to it like leftists to kidnapped posters. For the majority of viewers who merely play games? Is this validation really necessary? Top ten lists and fake brackets are the lifeblood of gaming media already. It’s a bellwether of industry growth and turmoil? Can we really talk in Serious Voice when we argue that Microsoft is the new Marvel which is the New DCU because Starfield didn’t make the shortlist?  

I could give a rat’s ass that The Game Awards exists, but I do have this problem with this need for it and the ritualistic behavior that surrounds it. No one can articulate what purpose it serves yet we expect everything from it. At best it’s some primal scream for paternalism in an industry that thrives on chaos. For one night we want to know what is best, who is best and what will come and save us soon. We keep telling ourselves that gaming is “here” that is the vanguard of art and technology, “making more than music and movies combined,” and for one night we want to believe it’s true and to believe it, it has to look like all those other successful endeavors when they want to believe in themselves. Happy, special and the envy of everyone else.  

Because tonight the stripper really loves me. 

Things of Interest Last Week: 

Pale Fire 

Chicken Mandu in Dashi Broth at Lord Stanley 

Slicing My Index Finger While Cutting Kale into Ribbons 

Grant Morrison’s Batman Run 

David Fincher’s Extremely Funny Film That Updates Fight Club