Liveblogging the 2006 Video Game Awards [update 13]

We survived the yellow carpet (yellow? really?) and we're inside the show bringing you some hot, sexy liveblogging action. Awards drop on Spike TV next Wednesday, but get the goods here early. These prestigious awards are presided over by a huge team of monkeys, three junior kids, and the Duke Nukem Forever development team. We'll be bringing you the hard-hitting questions from the red carpet in a video over the weekend. For now just sit back and read the show, nullifying your need for TiVo.
9:19: It's showtime, Sam Jackson comes out onstage and kicks some ass, killing Guitar Heroes left and right. No love for the music? Holy cow, he just dropped a big ol' f-bomb. He gets intro'ed onstage by Stewie, and we're off.
9:21: Sam has his hands on PlayStation 4 -- it's high def, wireless, and his has a vagina. RequisiteWii-mote joke here: "Wii-off! Instead of game elbow, we got beat-off elbow." Nice.
9:22: Sam riffs on Rockstar and wants to know where his hot coffee is. Heyooooo. "They got a game with two guys kissin? Damn, Rockstar takes controversy and gives it to you right up the ass!"
9:24: Jokes about gamers having sex with hot girls. It goes over like a lead ballon. Speaking of balloons, check out the massive amount of L.A. chestage going on.
9:25: 50 Cent intros the "Best Human Female in a Video Game in a sort of slurred "here's my drink" English. We'll have what he's having. It's unsure if he even knows what he's talking about.
9:26: Vida Guerra takes it all home for her role in Scarface, and the jokes about introducing her to your little friend commence.
9:35: Stewie whizzes all over Snakes on Plane, FTW. Sam Jackson ain't above hittin' a baby.
9:36: Rachael Leigh Cook and Seth Green present the award for the Best Game Based on a TV Show of a Movie. But our audio is being trumped by Vida Guerra in the next room talking about winning. FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, GIVE US SOME JACKSON AND SHUSH UP OVER THERE! Someone won, but hey, these game developers all look a lot alike. We'll find out who and plug it in here later. We're sure you can't wait.
9:40: Daniel Dae Kim ain't Lost, he's here introducing the World Premiere of some Bioshock action. This looks pretty darned familiar, Kim. Get back to your island.
9:42: Mocap skit with balls. A chubby dude in a blue suit covered in giant balls plays "the bitch" in Saint's Row. Nice.
9:46: Seth Macfarlane and Tila Tequila present for best wireless game. Rather than wireless, we're wondering why Tila Tequila is so famous, other than the fact that she's pretty hot. Although, in this day and age that's about all it takes, right?
9:47: Of course, right when the winner is about to be announced, they march Maria Menounos in. Okay, we ain't complainin' too loud. She's smokin' hot. But dammit, we can't really report that, or can we? Exclusive: you read it here first -- Maria Menounos is hot.
9:54: Best Performance by a Male Human in a Video Game. James Gandolfini wins for The Sopranos, and we fall asleep. *thud*
10:01: Gears of War wins for ... something, and we decide to take a wrench to the sound system and a sound engineer somewhere so we can actually see and hear what's going on. A novel concept, yes but hey, Joystiq bring it to you in the face.
10:02: Joe Rogan introduces the World Premiere video for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (cripes, can the box fit the title onto it?) Guess what? People get shot, things blow up, and missiles shoot across the screen. It's all cinematics that look like the original GRAW, so of course it looks good, but we want some gameplay.
10:04: Two dudes from Reno 911 bring tight-pants wearing action and announce the previously awarded, er ... awards. They pimp their game where your drive the speed limit, don't rob the local convenience store, and call the police if you see hookers getting beat down with baseball bats. "This game f*ckin' sucks!"
10:07: Best role playing game is about to be announced, and they kill our feed, FTW! That power switch flipping action pretty much is the most powerful move yet. There's no way to defend against it.
10:11: Mass hysteria backstage is about the only way we can describe what's happening. Celebrities colliding with each other. Joe Rogan snarling at the Reno 911 cops. Tila Tequila taking her top off. Okay, that last one we may have imagined because of the sheer amount of insanity happening back here. Joe Rogan appears to have had a plate full of bull testicle and a quart of goat semen before appearing.
10:18: We were given some crackers and a bottle of water and told they are "working on things" or in other words "issuing an update to be downloaded at a later time.
10:19: Michael Irvin presents the Best Individual Sports Game (Without Cocaine). The winnah is ... Tony Hawk's Project 8. Although he keeps looking over his shoulder for EA's Skate.
10:21: Sam Jackson shows off some scenes from his upcoming Afro Samurai upcoming cartoon. Sword wieldin', mutha f*ckin', butt kickin' goodness.
10:28: Sam introduces AFI (or is it afi? Capitalization be damned). They rock out the stage, and we decide to take a power nap next to Tila Tequila's discarded panties.
10:32: [update 1] Check it out, we're using the [update] system to see if this goes a bit smoother.
10:33: [update 2] A slew of awards fly by so quickly that we blink and they're gone. Dead Rising wins best action game, and Guitar Hero 2 wins best soundtrack. That's all we managed to catch. We swear to god we'd love to have Hiro's time-stopping ability from Heroes right now.
10:37: [update 3] We've been moved into the photographer's tent where the audio and video problems claim to be fixed. We can tell you this for sure: photographers are whores. Whenever anyone walks through the tent flaps, they start screaming for blood. "LOOK OVER HERE! RACHAEL LEIGH COOK! BIG SMILE! AIIIIIEEEEEE!" Where is this photography gameplay in Dead Rising, dammit? It's much more bloodthirsty and realistic.
10:39: [update 4] Sam Jackson tells you what to do with your old consoles. Mark Ecko runs onstage with an envelope addressed to Jack Thompson and exchanges some sort of verbiage with Sam. Then a girl walks onstage dressed in a PlayStation 2 bikini. F. T. W. We highly recommend this recycling of old consoles. It benefits everyone, especially the starving children around the world.
10:42: [update 5] Method Man and Tyrese come on to announce the winner for Best Song. However, before it happens they rap to the Mario Brothers theme song. That's an album we'd buy. Rap stars covering the classics. The winner? Yellowcard takes it home, and they just happen to be in attendance. Hmmm.
10:45: [update 6] Hayden Panettone, Patiessiere, what-have-you, otherwise known as Claire Bennett the indestrucible cheerleader from Heroes announces the Most Addictive Game. Is there any doubt who is going to take this award home? Seriously, Brain Age was nominated. Thereby proving that Brain Age was used to compute these awards. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion wins. We're throwing in the towel here on predictions. Oh, wait ... World of Warcraft wasn't nominated. Although Gears of War was. Who ain't addicted to the chainsawing and curb-stomping in that?
10:53: [update 7] More motion capture skit action. This stuff has been the best of the show so far, by far. Someone might be pitching Mocap: The Show to Fox already. Sarah Silverman comes out and announces how happy she is to be at the 4th Annual Nerd Awards, booyah. "Let me introduce myself ... I'm a real live woman!" She tells all the gamers over the age of 15 to kill themselves, woot! Besides the mocap dude, she's the funniest thing in the show so far as well. Forget Tila Tequila, give us some Silverman. Oh snap, she recants and says that all the gamers should receive an award for AIDS prevention. She encourages everyone to masturbate to her tonight, zowie.
10:58: [update 8] Stewie asks Sam what the L in Samuel L. Jackson for you. "None of your damn bidness!" Stewie: "Oh yeah? Well, I think it stands for "Loves to kiss dudes." Same: "I'm gonna f*ck your baby ass up!" Booyah.
10:59: [update 9] Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes) comes out, and his jokes fall a bit flat. In some weird parallel mirror universe, he's announcing the Best Team Sports Game. Seriously? Masi Oka is announcing this? See what Brain Age computed? The producers are backstage at this thing swapping show tips on PictoChat. The winner, NBA 2K7. And you can hear the crickets in the background.
11:02: [update 10] Brandon Routh comes out and talks about his love of Warcraft. Kudos to this guy, because he really plays the game. Seriously. He surely must be one hell of an actor, because he manages to make WoW sound ... boring. He introduces a World Premiere of the new Burning Crusade video, accompanied by a choir of people wearing hoodies singing the soundtrack along with the video. This has to be the single weirdest moment of the show. It looks like a group of cult members on stage, or else a frat going through some sort of a hazing. The BC footage looks swanky, though. Still mind-boggling about that choir, though.
11:08 [update 11] Okay, Brandon Routh came backstage and chatted with us, so we feel slightly bad about saying he's boring. We asked him if he pre-ordered Burning Crusade, and he said he's hoping Blizzard sends him a free copy. We imagine they will. Blizzard, any love over here?
11:11: [update 12] Game of the Year Award. You're on the edge of your seats, we know it. Sam runs through some extremely witty (we're sure) banter about the nominees, and winner is -- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. People are still playing this game? Gears of War was robbed. ROBBED!
11:18: [update 13] Lucky 13. That's it folks, it's over and done with. We were just handed a list of all of the winners, so we'll post that up soon. Right now, our bladder is about to explode. Thanks to Spike TV for inviting us, and next time we're going to just commandeer the a/v system all to ourselves. Thanks for playing, and drive safe.





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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pyronite @ Dec 9th 2006 1:26AM
An hour later and no comments. This show must be very popular.
FernandoRocker @ Dec 9th 2006 1:33AM
Hi... who else thinks that Reggie (Reggienator) is the coolest person? =)
Matt @ Dec 9th 2006 1:40AM
Tila Tequila... can you say over-played skank? And sorry, but she's not that hot... nobody with such an overabundance of herpes is. ;)
ManekiNeko @ Dec 9th 2006 2:06AM
That's... horrible. I am SO glad I'm not watching this crap.
JR
iocomposer @ Dec 9th 2006 2:19AM
Elder Scrolls over Gears???? are these mofos on CRACK???
As though it ever had any credibility in the first place...
kraoro @ Dec 9th 2006 2:21AM
Video game awards on Spike TV. I couldn't imagine anything I'd care less about.
ZS @ Dec 9th 2006 3:14AM
Oblivion over Gears isn't exactly a big shock, they are both extremely popular and critically acclaimed games. Now WoW not winning most addictive game is a shocker, that should've been an obvious pick.
NotAnElitistPrick @ Dec 9th 2006 3:13AM
I wouldn't have imagined that EA would have gotten their ass kicked in so many categories this year.
It was like they even split up best "team" and best "individual" sports games just so EA could win two awards, and they lost them both...
This was crazy. The games that won weren't critical faves, and they weren't the sponsored winners like they have been. I'm not exactly sure how they got divvied up. It's basically like these are the awards everyone can agree that aren't right.
Nmaster @ Dec 9th 2006 3:15AM
Is this for real? You didn't make that stuff up? I've never heard such trash in my life. It's an absolute insult to gaming and everything it truly stands for! They really lowered themselves to a vagina in the PS4 joke? PLEASE tell me you made that up!
I f'ing hate the human race...
Pince @ Dec 9th 2006 3:19AM
Who the hell are they marketing this crap to?
Gamers?
Most gamers I know would be embarassed to know that their culture is represented, on national television, in such an outright crappy way. God damn, I hate award shows so much.
Rasgueado @ Dec 9th 2006 4:02AM
Yeah... I think I'm with a lot of people here already. The award selection process seems somewhat suspect, but I don't think that matters as much as the fact that this show sounded awful. People actually watch this eh? Color bars wouldn't be more entertaining and less strange?
Kibbles @ Dec 9th 2006 4:21AM
Christ you people, fucking awards were basically from gamers (they had an online voting site)
No fucking conspiracy to rip your stupid wittle GoWaahr away from the grand prize.
Jesus.
DJTyrant @ Dec 9th 2006 5:27AM
I was there tonight and pretty much heckled the whole night. Sarah Silverman was pretty awful in my opinion, you don't just put down the AUDIENCE from the moment you start. I was glad to boo her, 50 cent, and Yellowcard.
Hopefully you guys can hear my on the feed when it airs.
bearattack79 @ Dec 9th 2006 5:28AM
Kibbles,
I am not a religious person but wow your bad.
Joystiq should dock you a star or something sheesh.
sexysatin @ Dec 9th 2006 5:39AM
Just like last year the awards this year where horrible as well. Now why wasn't someone really involved in the gaming industry (ie. Cliffy B) hosting the awards? It would make more sense to add someone who is really involved in the gaming industry to host this type of show. Leave Samuel L Jackson to host other non-gaming related awards.
Dan @ Dec 9th 2006 6:10AM
It seems like any category Oblivion was in, it won by default. GoW after that. Where was the Okami love, people? It was nominated 3 or 4 times and lost them all.
Sean @ Dec 9th 2006 6:28AM
I love how every year there are fewer and fewer people involved in the game industry at the Spike awards.
It is most definitely the most retarded thing I've ever seen. Why was Joystiq even there? Why are you guys encouraging them?
"Video Game" shouldn't even be in the name of the show, they give much more airtime to random has-nothing-to-do-with-gaming rappers than the games themselves.
mindg4m3 @ Dec 9th 2006 7:09AM
How many gamers actually stop playing on a friday or saturday night to watch an award show about games? Zero.
It seems to me that having an award show about games on nation television is probably one of the worst ideas you could think of. It has nothing to do with gamer culture. I think if tv shows really want to break into the culture they should just look at G4. Then they can say, "yup, that is probably a bad idea." Unless they want to play star trek all day. Why would you watch a show about video games when you can use that same TV to actually play them?
aldo @ Dec 9th 2006 7:18AM
this beats the shit outta g-phoria or w/e its called
Rask @ Dec 9th 2006 7:19AM
This type of classless shit that gives gaming and gamers a bad name.
Shit even the porn industry does things with more class than what was presented here.
I'd rather have no representation in the media at all than having what was presented here. This wasn't "cool", is was borderline retarded.
lol @ Dec 9th 2006 8:08AM
lol he sed vujyna
Axel @ Dec 9th 2006 9:16AM
I'm a gamer. I always have been since I can remember, but for some reason, these award shows just don't seem to excite me. I find myself more interested in playing games.
The ZeroCorpse @ Dec 9th 2006 9:58AM
The VGAs are like a badly-edited issue of MAXIM mixed with an afternoon of MTV programming.
in other words, they SUCK ASS. None of the people on the damned shows EVER has ANYTHING to do with the industry, and the results are clearly fixed and "sponsored" rather than legitimate awards for creativity, design, etc.
And the categories-- Best voice actor? (Which really means big name actor, not the non-celebrity ones who do this all the time) What about best 3D modeller? What about best physics engine designer?
These aren't awards for the video game industry; They're awards for 2nd-tier Hollywood.
The ZeroCorpse @ Dec 9th 2006 10:08AM
One more thing. Why did that silly skeezer change her surname name from "Nguyen" to "Tequila", anyway? Her image wasn't cheap enough already?
I'd have respected Nguyen; I have zero respect for someone who alliteratively names themselves after an alcoholic beverage.
"HEY! I'm Bobby Beer! Woooo!"
"Check it out everybody! Vanna Vodka is in the hizzouse!"
"Everybody has seen Rhona Rum naked!"
Ugh. You get the picture.
32_Footsteps @ Dec 9th 2006 10:22AM
First off - for those wondering why nobody was watching - it's because they're not even airing it until Wednesday. Which is conveniently the day before my column usually goes up, allowing me to perfectly time my recap of the broadcast version. It's like Spike is begging me to rip them apart with little disruption to my schedule.
Second, my apologies to Kevin for forcing himself to actually try and do running updates and commentary. I've done it for two straight years on this damn show, and it's hard as all hell. Easily the second-hardest thing for me to cover all year (E3 was first; I wonder if something will take its place in my schedule). But yet worth it in its own way - seldom do I get to be as hateful as I do when talking about this show.
"They really lowered themselves to a vagina in the PS4 joke?"
Bad choice of there. I mean, when you're already at the bottom, there's no place left to go. Vaguely racist jokes, blatantly sexist jokes, jokes about how every single gamer in the world is a virgin (and the requisite masturbation jokes)... all these and more are stock-in-trade of the Spike TV VGAs. I'm not even remotely surprised at all.
Sigh... maybe I can make my running diary more bearable if I have some others over to "help me out" on it.
BklynKid @ Dec 9th 2006 11:04AM
Yea I'm really not even gonna bother watching this. Hell, I'd rather watch 3 hours of G4.
nick @ Dec 9th 2006 11:12AM
Award shows are boring, there's too many of them, and I can't think of anything worse than a televised awards show for video games. Outside of the major games, do any of us really know who's developing the games? Do we care? Thankfully I know ahead of time how crappy the show will be so I can completely avoid any curiousity I may have had about it.
At least with E3, you're waiting to hear about something new.
This is just a congratulatory pat on the back for those in the industry. ***YAWN***
AJ @ Dec 10th 2006 2:30PM
Um...Twilight Princess wasn't even nominated. So you can shut your mouth about GoW not winning, especially when Elder Scrolls is the superior game.
Kyouryuu @ Dec 9th 2006 11:43AM
Play the games you like to play. It doesn't matter what some B-list celebrity or D-list rapper thinks.
Spike TV makes a mockery of video game culture by framing it as nothing more than testosterone-driven jocks. You know - the same people who lambasted video games when they first emerged. No matter if it's the VGA show or Game Head, bikini-clad females are the order of the day. It's especially funny to see how Game Head handles any kind of "exclusive." As if people are actually lining up to watch this show just to see some random EA game trailer. Yeah. Right.
some person @ Dec 9th 2006 1:49PM
PS4? already?
honkyjesus @ Dec 9th 2006 5:46PM
i loved oblivion, too bad it was only about the third or fourth best game on 360 for 2006
question - are all these ppl making plugs for things like wow burning crusade and graw 2 - do they pay for this? usually at awards shows they give awards and have performances, from the looks of it it was mainly game and celebrity PR, can't wait to probably not watch
Mr. Khan @ Dec 9th 2006 3:21PM
I think the ESA should be convinced to run their own awards, run an Awards show like you ran E3 (that festival atmosphere is perfect for an awards show)
and the ESA would give credit where credit is due, as well as give awards for real achievement (best Developer, best Artist, best Producer)
They should also give one award for each of the Genres Action, Adventure, FPS, RPG, Party, Racing, Fighting, Sim, Strategy, Puzzle, Arcade (arcade as a genre, not literal arcade games)
Jonah Falcon @ Dec 9th 2006 5:05PM
Personally, I preferred Oblivion over Gears of War. I had more fun. Still a shocker.
Brian Irelan @ Dec 10th 2006 6:12AM
Still playing Oblivion? Heck, I'm still playing Morrowind! You can't finish these games...
Tacoman @ Dec 11th 2006 12:42AM
Wow, that seriously sounded boring as hell. I didn't even realize Spike TV was still on the air until my friend reminded me that they show Bond movies occasionally. Aren't they pretty much competing with G4 for the 18-34 year old as-much-shitty-programming-as-we-can-shove-down-your-throat demographic? At least G4 has (beyond logical reason) syndication rights to Arrested Development.
sexysatin @ Dec 21st 2006 7:53PM
I laugh at the G4 Hosts, you can tell they are all reading a script when they are doing their "so-called" reporting of games. And "The Man Show", what the hell is that garbage doing there? What does that have to do with technology? ZERO!!! I guess men like getting pointers from a couple unattractive men that paid hot girls to appear on their show. I swear all these people start up good things and as soon as they get companies toss up money in their face they sell out. Perfect example MTV, before it turned to garbage.
At least SpikeTV really knows what men like. Wow, you guys are really easy to please.
xBDx SURESHOT @ Dec 13th 2006 11:16PM
6. Video game awards on Spike TV. I couldn't imagine anything I'd care less about.
Posted at 2:21AM on Dec 9th 2006 by kraoro 0 stars
You are making a post about something you dont care about now thats funny..
back the vga graw 2 looks sweet but come on we need more for graw some new maps all the old/hardcore gamer know what i mean how many dlc did GRIT have before the next release? come on ubi make us proud.
Patrick @ Dec 14th 2006 7:43PM
I heard that clip of Silverman last night she had no right to say what she said.
Senor Hola @ Dec 18th 2006 3:09AM
I was at the show also and am suprised by some of the things omitted. Were you really there?
For example, after Tenacious D played the crew the show was delayed because the guy in the giant heavy metal suit broke platform. the director said over the mic "Tenacious D rocker so hard they broke the stage."
What about the opening video with the guy in the pink costume and the guy in the warcraft costume, who again did bits throughout the show.
Also, Sarah Silverman was viciously booed at the end of her set. You can't really hear it in when they played it, but you can tell by the way she runs offstage how much the audience was against her.
also, you mess up sam's Wii joke. it goes "now gamers are getting Wii elbow instead of beat-off elbow"
you write:
"Wii-off! Instead of game elbow, we got beat-off
elbow."
That makes no sense. And even weirder you write "Nice" about that joke.
were you really at the show?
t
Kanakotka @ Dec 20th 2006 12:11AM
I think they completely lost credibility at update 6.
There is not one game more addictive than WoW that i have played, and there's literally thousands, if not tens of thousands games under my belt :P