{"id":3276,"date":"2009-05-06T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3276"},"modified":"2009-05-06T07:06:05","modified_gmt":"2009-05-06T11:06:05","slug":"webby-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3276","title":{"rendered":"Webby Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congrats to the crew at The Escapist for winning another Webby award<\/a>. Sadly, they lost the “people’s choice” award. They were ahead until the final day, when an abrupt surge of votes put Gamespot<\/strong> out in front. Although, as Spinwiz put it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What about the People’s Voice Award you ask? Well, unfortunately we were edged out at the last minute, but that is okay. We showed a CBS-owned site that is 7 times our size just who The Escapist is, taking the fight to the end. So, please look at it this way: 300. If the award were given out on the basis of the percentage of site size to actual votes, we would have won by a landslide.<\/div>\n

My warm relationship with The Escapist aside, I really hated to see GameSpot win. Gamespot personifies everything I hate (and have ranted about over the last four years) about gaming media. Their hype-focused tone. Their bland reviews with the soulless numeric score punchline. Their faceless writers. Their agonizingly ad-soaked bandwidth-choking wallpaper of visual spam they call a front page. Their apathy towards the indie scene. Their spamming<\/a>. And let’s not forget what they did to Jeff Gerstman<\/a>. In short, their site is ugly, shallow, and blurs the line between journalism and prostitution.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Destructoid<\/a> is a worthy site. I hadn’t taken an interest in the place before I saw them as a rival in the Webby awards. (I think their tagline does them a disservice. “The hardcore gamer’s community” does not sound intriguing to me.) The site is fast, fun, and (as I mentioned in last week’s<\/a> column) personality-driven. The fact that they got less votes than Gamespot is a crime. This should have been Destructiod vs. The Escapist, with Gamespot ranking just below this one<\/a> in terms of community and entertainment value. <\/p>\n

Sorry to get all bitter, but it’s disappointing to see that Gamespot is what people really want. I think the site has a negative impact on gaming as a hobby, and seeing it defeat Destructiod and The Escapist is like seeing people demand yet another<\/em> reality show instead of a second season of Firefly. <\/p>\n

On the upside, The Escapist won, and my work<\/a> was a small part of that. That’s pretty gratifying. <\/p>\n

Congratulations again to the crew at The Escapist. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congrats to the crew at The Escapist for winning another Webby award. Sadly, they lost the “people’s choice” award. They were ahead until the final day, when an abrupt surge of votes put Gamespot out in front. Although, as Spinwiz put it: What about the People’s Voice Award you ask? Well, unfortunately we were edged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}