While the game industry continue to increase in revenue and controversy, there is one area it continues to fall behind other media-self congratulation. While music has the Grammys and movies the Oscars, video games do not have a defined top award show. Instead, it has a lot of small Blockbuster Movie Awards. Well, GameStop is hoping to help change that.
GameStop and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences are teaming up to label award winners in stores. Titles will bare a sticker announcing their Interactive Achievement Awards won. In turn, GameStop obviously hopes this will help drive sales.
Do awards matter? Well, yes and no. No, in that winning an Oscar is essentially the equivalent of winning student body president. There’s lots of campaigning and people voting for what will make them look smart. On the other hand, the Oscars do lend certain credibility to the film industry. There’s still quite the cache attached to a film that wins five Academy Awards, even if most of the public may never see the film in a theatre.
There’s also the prestige factor that winning such awards bring to movie studios, or even record labels. Each fall films are rushed into theatres to beat the cutoff date for that year’s awards. Many of those films would never get made if it weren’t for the hope of winning awards with them. While some may argue games don’t need to follow suit and be made simply for awards, there is the possibility this is exactly what the industry needs.
Right now the gaming industry is almost entirely profit driven. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some titles made now and then simply for the art? Simply to wow and impress people, with sales a secondary thought? It’s a diversification of the industry that needs to occur if games hope to ever be taken seriously as art.
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