jrobinow / Member

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Trying to Watch the IAA Awards

So last night I dutifully tuned in to the IAA awards show. Even though my wife said that watching a gaming awards show on the internet was lame (I'd use a different word here but it might get me in trouble), I love Jay Mohr and I was interested to see how my favorite games would stack up. The show itself was not bad, Mohr was a little more irreverant than the audience seemed to expect, maybe the NyQuil really had fried his brain, but I thought he was funny. The production wasn't stellar, but I wasn't really expecting it to be; it would have been nice if people were a little more organized, but what can you do? The acceptance speeches were short and to the point (memo to Hollywood) and even Ken Kutaragi managed to keep it under 10 minutes despite his difficulty with the language.

I was a bit disappointed Bioshock didn't win either best game overall or at least best console game, but COD is an amazing game so I don't feel like my favorite was robbed of anything (plus it won all the little awards no one outside the industry cares about). Again, a little disappointing, but not tragic.

No, the real debacle to the whole evening was the Red Carpet show put on by Gamespot. Now I know that the Live team isn't used to doing a red carpet show, but honestly people, it looked worse than amatuer hour. Neither of the hosts looked or sounded very comfortable on camera (kind of important since they are the ones driving the bus), neither of the hosts asked interesting questions (or even seemed to know anything about gaming for that matter), the camera work was awful and poorly lit (let's spring for a light or two), and I'm not sure who was in charge of operating the sound board, but listening to two interviews at once or at Laura trying to position the next guest just reeked of unprofessionalism.

In light of all of that I have a few tips for Gamespot for the next time around:

1) Get people who know how to behave in front of the camera and who know something about games and game developers to host the Red Carpet

2) Use steady cams and have the area properly lit (a tripod and a lamp outta do it)

3) Don't throw back and forth between the two hosts after every interview, get someone off camera to line up the next interview so the same host can have 2 interviews in a row

4) Get someone who understands what an off switch is to operate your sound board

I know Gamespot is not in the video production business and I was not expecting to see Ryan Secrest host the Red Carpet, but it looked bad and it looked half-assed, and it made me feel like maybe my wife was right and watching the award show on the internet was kinda lame.