VGA ratings fall for fourth year, but rise among younger and male viewers

Maybe they should stop being so shit.

281,100 to 251,000 seems like a drop to me.

Partly due to the availabilty of up-to-the-minute information on the Internet and, more precisely, smartphones.

Maybe they should have it some other time during the year when people aren't busy with finals, traveling and the holidays... There's a reason you don't see a lot of high-profile shows during December.

NEEDS MORE D-LIST CELEBRITIES, OBVIOUSLY

Increase in males? That's Olivia Munn for ya

Neal Patrick Harris was the only thing good on that show, and even he couldn't get the out of place game industry audience to laugh. The only laughter comes from the fans that are sitting way in the back, but of course, that only happens when the joke involves boobies, farts and jokes involving homosexuality.

The VGA's make gaming look absolutely asinine to the non-gaming world and it's gotta stop. The Hollywood D-list wanna-bes who make that show need to be replaced by people who understand both games and TV shows. Whenever I tell people my favorite pastime is gaming I'm always hoping they haven't seen that travesty.

YAY! Maybe now they will stop doing a shit show.

I mean I appreciate them doing premieres but when they are all CG it's pointless. I don't know what is worse the fact that the awards are jokes or the crappy celebrities claiming to be gamers and also have said crappy celebrities try and be funny.

I still say the game industry needs a real award show and not this frat boy crap Spike puts out every year.

WHAT ! Lifting women in short dresses high off the ground so their Vagina get's show on LIVE TV didn't help ratings ?


WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TOO !!!! 11 1 11 11 11 11 !!!!!!!!!

Tip for next year: NPH sandwiched between titties.

The VGAs are a joke. Red Dead Redemption as GOTY?

Yeah, it was a fun game. But you shot people with revolvers for 30 hours, no story, no development. There's a reason Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2 and AC Brotherhood took GOTY everywhere else.

Oh, and giving a character from the horrible Black Ops singleplayer an award? What the hell did "Woods" even do? I played the campaign like two weeks ago and can't even remember which one he was. Nothing memorable like Captain Price from COD4.

You went from 921,000 viewers in 2007 to 627,000 viewers this year. Your viewership dropped 32% over the span of four years.

I'd either call it quits, or just turn it into an hour long, game-announcement special of GTTV.

Nothing against the VGAs, but I'm pretty much done with award shows in general. There's too many anymore. Oscars. Grammys. Golden Globes. People's Choice. MTV Video Music awards. MTV Movie awards. Nickelodean Kid's Choice. It just never seems to end. I'd much rather read about the winners online, than watch a TV show with a bunch of stupid bantar, speeches and musical numbers.

The question is - why watch a show like the VGAs when I can get the important bits on websites like this one?

What else is there to watch? What's the point exactly?

This is certainly no surprise considering the broader use of the internet and the almost unanimous consensus that the VGA mean nothing to real gaming enthusiasts.

I'd like to see the numbers of the VGA compared to the numbers of the people that just watched all the VGA trailers 10 minutes later on Gametrailers.com

no boobies, no view

It did indeed suck, just good announcements. Jimmy Fallon does a much better service to gamers with his show.

Wasn't the one with the highest ratings the one where they debuted WoW: Burning Crusade trailer? I remember watching the whole damn thing because they said before every commercial break "And coming up.... THE DEBUT TRAILER FOR BURNING CRUSADE!"

I'd be more forgiving of a yearly show without the awards: announce new games, show the audience stuff, like a mini-E3 event.

have never watched the vgas, will never watch the vgas. everything that premiers on that program shows up on the Stiq 20min later; why bother

It's a terrible award show, representing games and the people who play them in the most stereotypical, ridiculous way possible.

Nintendo has proved that a gaming console can appeal to absolutely any age, so why is this show so ridiculously immature?

Here's hoping that they do better. It is nice to have a show where popular games actually have a chance of winning instead of only the most obscure niche titles getting praise only because they're not popular.

The VGAs just need to be moved to a different network. Spike is already known to appeal to males between 16 & 25. If it's trying to be "star studded" then they should have it on MTV or VH1 or even USA or any other network other than spike. The VGAs are supposed to be a special event but it gets shot down be gaming websites for being boring & unfair. Yes in the past, they have been those things but last year & this year I think were one of their best so far. You have to realize that not every game is known by everyone & if they really had to input every video game released this year on all consoles, PC & handhelds, they'd take forever to rate them. & it also depends on who chooses the nominees. What I'm trying to say, don't bash the VGAs for not being completely souped for gamers as their trying to please other people too. If they appealed to just gamers, they're going to end up like G4. It's hard to admit it but us gamers are not the majority anymore

@Mr Esc is the namesarcasm is my

Thing is with award shows, most of the time, everyone agrees on what the nominees are whether it be about music, movies etc. But with video games, there's so much tension between what is a good game & what is a bad game. Especially with the console wars (AKA the asshole wars), being on the rise, there's a very thin line between being a gamer & a fanboy. Not everyone owns all all three consoles & not everyone has a beefed up computer to play games on. So there are always going to be debate after debate on what should have one in each category. Now, on the subject on how it was presented, I agree with you. But like I said in another comment, the gaming community is minority. It's a fact. If they tried to appeal solely to gamers, it would have even lower views that it already has. Everybody complains that it's too generic but if it was more specific then 1)there would be lesser crowds & will end up like G4oria. 2) Only a handful of people will actually enjoy it. Video games is hard subject to televise since there's so many types of gamers out there that you can't appeal to all of them. The only reason why E3 is so successful it's straight from the developers.

i think that the gaming industry needs these types of award shows. although the hosting needs to be rethinked and tweaked. the simple fact that the writers had Neal Patrick Harris say those ridiculess lines is terable. the production value was better than last. i felt like some of the winners were taking the show seriously, witch was refreshing, wayne

Craptacular craptical crapped itself.

I could only stomach a few minutes of this show. This kind of production does nothing to legitimize the gaming industry. In fact it does just the opposite by turning it into a juvenile, sophomoric, escapade with no real point.

If I where a developer I'd be disgusted by how my hard work and creativity is being mocked and marginalized. The VGAs does not help advance gaming in the mainstream whatsoever. I'd much rather watch a more traditional awards show that is heavy on acknowledgement of creativity and performance with a little mature humor mixed in than the travesty that is the 'VGAs'.

I just hate to see my lifelong hobby being portrayed in this manner...

Wait? What other demographics were watching this?

Total viewers don't matter to TV, it's all about the demo numbers, and these ticked upwards. Are those numbers any good? I'm not sure because I can't find the Saturday cable numbers to compare them to.

I thought some commity killed off VGA? Oh! That VGA! Yeah, I tried watching once, and I couldn't even see how most of the games could get nominated, let alone win. I couldn't even get through it one year, before giving up on it.