If you have any self-respect at all, as a gamer or a general human being, you didn’t watch the Spike Video Game Awards (I have none of that, so I witnessed it all go down). The show is an infantile, 2-hour extravaganza of middle fingers to all of us who love games, and we put ourselves through the shame every year just so we can get a first look at some exclusive reveals and trailers. Essentially it’s one big commercial that insults its target market. For two hours. And we subject ourselves to it. “You want to see Mass Effect 3? Do you?! Fine, but first we’re going to make you watch us shove a man’s balls in a game dev’s mouth during his acceptance speech.”
Despite the insulting pandering, the awful jokes and worthless pseudo-celebrity appearances, the nominations and winners were pretty on point – if you managed not to blink and catch any of them. I barely noticed during the show because Zachary Levi was on screen making FarmVille jokes (LOL he referenced a thing that exists! That’s what comedy is!), but Batman: Arkham City deservedly won a handful of awards.
One them was Character of the Year for Mark Hamill’s Joker, and while The Joker wasn’t particularly better than ever before, dammit Hamill deserves some kind of recognition for being the best Joker, and one of the best villains of all time. Okay, deep breath, enough ranting, here’s the point: Rocksteady put together a virtual acceptance speech from Mr. J, and in it he holds up and references a script for “Batman: Arkham World.”
Here’s the video:
Sites like Comic Book Resources and IGN have begun speculating whether there’s any truth to it, but the whole thing is kind of ridiculous to me. Rocksteady would have to be insane not to make a third Batman game, I think it’s expected that there will be another. The games industry is one driven by sequels. I mean, ask yourself – when was the last time a successful franchise stopped at number 2?
There’s nothing else in The Joker’s quip to talk about unless it’s the title that has people riled up, and I can guarantee you we won’t see Batman fighting crime across an entire Arkham planet. That would be crazy. Let’s all calm down for a minute and focus on this:
Mark Hamill and fellow Arkham City voice actor Tara Strong (Harley Quinn), took to Twitter after the VGAs to voice their disapproval of the award show’s handling of their nominations. From Kotaku:
“Strong slammed Spike on Twitter for putting her and Hamill in the bleacher seats and for announcing the Voice Acting winners in passing, with no presentation and no mention of the nominees: “if you weren’t going 2 announce the nominees, y have us come 2 the show? VO may not matter 2 u, but it sure does to us.“
I completely agree with Strong and Hamill. The VGAs don’t even try to hide the fact that they don’t care about the industry talent, the content, or the fans. It’s pretty disgusting and I’m not at all surprised.
Grizzly Bomb 