NEWS: World’s Most Ironic Videogame Awards Announced

CULTURE: World’s Most Ironic Videogame Awards Announced

These days it takes a certain something to make an awards show stand out.



This is true when the awards are being given out for movies, television, music, and even videogames. Faced with what can only be described as a shit-ton of videogame awards to compete with, the fine folks at the UK-based Develop Magazine came up with their own unique spin on the tired awards show formula.



Irony.



Yes, when Develop assembled a panel of "industry experts" for it's Develop Industry Excellence Awards, they must have taken them aside and advised them that the reaction they were hoping for was not just the usual fanboy ranting, but a slack-jawed look of absolute incomprehension from the gamers across the globe.



First stop on the Irony Express is the award for innovation.



The winner?



Crackdown.



Yes, the Xbox 360 game you got for free when you paid $60 for the Halo 3 Beta was apparently the most "thrillingly original" thing in videogames this past year.



For those of you who might not have played Crackdown, the main character is a bad-ass police officer looking to bring order to a dystopian city of the near future that's been overrun with crime and gangs. The gameplay involves you roaming around the city, completing missions, collecting power-ups, competing in car races, or just blowing shit up.



You know, things that no videogame has ever featured before.



That dull roaring noise you're hearing is the sound of every Nintendo fan reacting to this award by clutching their Wiimotes in their white-knuckled hands and gnashing their teeth in rage. Sorry, Wii Sports fans, no rocket launcher means no innovation. Better luck next year.



Then there's their choice for "Publishing Hero."



Sega.



The word "hero" is overused these days, but if cranking out endless, ever-crappier sequels to Sonic The Hedgehog isn't heroic, what is? Sure, you may have rescued some orphans from a burning building, but did you publish Virtua Fighter 5 and Medieval 2?



On a side note, I'm starting a petition to have Activision create a game called "Publishing Hero," in which gamers can use a manuscript-shaped controller to experience the thrilling world of professional book publishing. You thought playing "Freebird" on Expert was hard? Try proofreading the latest Thomas Pynchon novel on Erudite. It'll be eye-straining fun for the whole family!



Since the videogame industry, unlike other forms of entertainment, is dominated with sequels and remakes, it's good that Develop set aside an award for "Best New Intellectual Property" to help celebrate and encourage those brave developers who bring fresh, new ideas to gaming rather than repeating tired old formulas.



The winner?



The PlayStation 3 game MotorStorm.



Take a moment to join with me in saluting the sheer creative genius required to develop a videogame about off-road racing, not to mention the steely determination it must have taken the developers to convince Sony's marketing team to approve such a radical new gaming concept.



Develop dropped the biggest irony bomb with their "Grand Prix" award for overall excellence.



The winner?



Sony.



Just in case you thought the last year has been a dismal parade of endless fuckups and missteps for Sony and their PlayStation 3, you obviously didn't get the news that it's really been

Quick, someone tell Sony to re-hire Ken Kutaragi!



What makes this even more ironic is that we're talking about a bunch of European videogame experts touting how awesome Sony and the PlayStation 3 are. This is, of course, the same Sony that delayed the European launch of the PS3 after promising a world-wide launch. And the same Sony that removed the PS2 "Emotion Engine" chip from European launch PS3's so that unlike North American and Japanese launch PS3's they would lack 100% backwards compatibility with PS2 games, without reducing the price of the PS3 in Europe. And yes, the same Sony that recently announced that an upcoming version of the PS3 with a roomier 80GB hard drive would be sold pretty much everywhere but Europe.



So why would anyone in Europe think that Sony was overall the most excellent videogame company of last year?



I'm sure it has to do with Develop wanting to stand out from the videogame awards crowd by flaunting it's new-found sense of irony, and nothing at all whatsoever with the fact that Sony was the "Platinum Sponsor" for the lavish conference during which Develop announced these awards.



Not to imply that money could influence something as sacrosanct as videogame awards, of course. I mean, if Sony sent me a free PlayStation 3, it would have absolutely no influence on my objective journalistic opinion of their creative or financial efforts.



Hint, hint.

I have only one response to this:

Is anyone surprised? Sorry to say, but it seems that, contrary to my fanboyisms, I have become jaded enough to not find this surprising.

Goodbye, naive childhood where I simply enjoyed games and turned a blind eye to the politics.

Goodbye.

As far as PC games go...this has been a very dull year for releases. Console has had some good ones...but not many. Those guys have no fucking clue for sure when it comes to those awards..pretty funny.

Irony, or sarcasm?

Are you sure this wasn't originally an Onion article?

Hey, you know, Crackdown was a lot of fun... Albeit a little limited in what you could do, but I spent hours tracking down orbs and jumping from rooftop to rooftop after I had finished the game. And the new downloadable content is great stuff.

Now, do I think it was the most innovative and original thing out this year? No, not by quite a bit, but to refer to it as the "Xbox 360 game you got for free when you paid $60 for the Halo 3 Beta" isn't giving it a whole lot of credit. I know I definitely didn't buy my copy for the beta, and I had loads more fun with Crackdown than I did with the brief time I spent playing Halo 3.

As my AP British Lit. teacher used to say in high school, "Sarcasm is the simplest form of irony."

Medieval 2 wasnt that bad.....

Meh most games now a days suck but i guess you have to make it have tons of explosions for the A.D.D ridden children.

Medieval 2 is potentially wonderful. It however does sit on my shelf awaiting another 2 years or so of patches so that it at least equals RTW in play balance and functionality.

those money hats must have weighed a ton!
video game journalism can never be taken seriously with this kind of bs going on.

...I like Crackdown.

Everyone saying how much they liked Crackdown needs to re-read this article. The writer isn't disputing whether or not it's a good game, and the award it was given has nothing to do with how good the game was. It was given an award for innovation, and it sure as shit didn't reinvent the wheel or even provide a substantially different interpretation of its design. And while you may have liked it, you have to admit that the main reason most people bought it was the Halo 3 Beta, that there was a decent game along with it was an added bonus.

I bought Crackdown for Crackdown. Because Crackdown is a really damn well made game. Sure, the inclusion of the Halo 3 Beta does nothing but help sales, but I honestly believe a lot of people bought the game because the game was good and got solid reviews, and a lot of doubters were put to rest when the demo was made public on Xbox Live.

As for innovative, well, we can focus all we want on the fact that it has shooting in it and go "Ha ha, not innovative at all." The big difference, though, is the gameplay structure is actually quite a bit different from a lot of other action titles out there. It actually takes the idea of "open world" action games and actually, truly allowed the player to control the mission structure instead of being forced to complete the game under pre-determined circumstances, which is actually pretty different from other games. Most wildly original game ever, hardly. But it does actually bring something a bit different to the table as well.

As for the Wii Sports thing. Wii Sports is three mini-games of sports games that have been made over and over again since the Atari days. Sure, the motion movement is new for a home console, but arcade games have been using that technology for years, too (games like MoCap Boxing). So while it also brings something new to the table, it's also not massively innovative in it's own right. Making it really no better of a choice then Crackdown, really.

As for the rest of their choices, I've got nothing.

When, as a game developer, I don't even hear about something like this until the postmortem... thats a telling sign.

Honestly, the worst videogame awards thing I've ever seen was hardly this, but the first Spike TV Video Game Awards that gave True Crime best game of the year, despite the fact that it was out for all of two weeks and was most definitely not one of the best games of the year, either.

I didn't really play any games last year that I would call "innovative," so Crackdown seems as good of a choice as any to me. It did add some fun elements to the GTA-style game, was pretty addictive, and is a lot of fun in co-op...but on the other hand, there was shit for a storyline and some things that other GTA-style games do really well were fucked up in Crackdown.

I agree with the previous post about Wii sports not really bringing anything new to the table. While I think the Wii itself is pretty innovative, I certainly wouldn't call Wii Sports innovative. I thought Wii Sports was more of a throw away to get people used to the new controller.

I didn't even know Crackdown had the Halo 3 beta when I got it; I thought it just said to download the beta on the box. Crackdown was tons of fun, even though it wasn't anything new.

As for nintendrones shaking their wiimotes in rage...fuck 'em. Waggle on with your collection of minigames and Gamecube ports.

Oh, and, the PS3 is pretty nice, thank you very much.

"the Xbox 360 game you got for free when you paid $60 for the Halo 3 Beta"

Got it in one. I never even played the game. Probably should do that one of these days, but all the poor reviews make me keep reaching for my copy of "oddworld: stranger"

i played crackdown for like 10 minutes and gave up

AH screw these lowlife brown nosed sycophantic shitstain critics.

ALL of them.

I know gaming. I BLEED pixels.

Most all of this is ass.

Even though I cared not for the eyepopping difficulty at times, gta was awesomesauce to the maximum. (+1)

Furthermore... chyeah... so depressing, corporations, and just urgh.

I WOULD give Sega props... but not for the shit main line games and their sequels.

also.

Someone REALLY needs to simply say Hi. We are paying you to re-release SEGAGA.

Uncensored and fully translated.
That would be the mostbomb ass rpg-sim game in ages.
If not ever (go look up segaga ifyou know not to what I refer.)

<3

I'm so confused. They knew about Crush (on PSP), and even awarded it best new property (I guess in the handheld division or something), but fucking CRACKDOWN got most innovative? Other possible candidates: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., for one. Probably half a dozen DS games, although I'm drawing a blank on specifics 'cause I can't remember what came out when. Raw Danger could probably take a stab at it if it weren't fairly closely modeled on the previous game in the series, Disaster Report.

I demand "Publishing Hero" be made into a real game! That is too perfect!

Wii Sports is innovative because of the way it uses motion sensing to play it, which has not been available to home systems in such an open and actually working way before - half of those old mo-cap games were either plain bad or the mo-cap didn't work properly. Crackdown is not innovative because it is a hugely derivative action game (sorry, but I've played it, and it bloody well is) so I think Wii Sports is enormously more deserving of the award than Crackdown ever would be. Its free roaming world, which is the pivot for its supposed originality, has been used hundreds of times: In the GTA games, in Just Cause, Oblivion, Morrowind, True Crime, Bad Day LA...sorry, but doing a free roaming game requires a hell of a lot extra to impress on that level these days. So sadly, yes, I think the decision is a travesty.

at least SOMEBODY gives Sega props