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Walking in to the Rain Nightclub at the Palms Hotel, my first question, of course,

was where I should sit. After finding an attendant to assist me and waiting for

him to ask around, I was informed to go up to the center bar. I got up there and

was told that I could sit anywhere, including the sky boxes, but it was easily the

worst place to put media. The "center bar" area was directly above and behind

the stage, and although you could see the ceremony from the sky boxes, there

was no way I was going to stand up there and take pictures of the tops of

people's heads. The club was nice, but it clearly was not designed for this type

of event because there were plenty of other areas with views that were just as

bad.

So, I sat up there for a minute, thinking that perhaps this was a mistake, and I ate

some of the sushi and shrimp that was set out for dinner. I walked around to ask

another attendant about a better place when I spotted some other members of the press up there

eating as well. It was for real; this is where they wanted the media to be, so of

course I decided to find my own way to cover this event. There were a few couches near

the stage, and I found myself a decent spot, without getting spoken to about it for

the rest of the night (there were even women happily offering me cheesecake). I

had a good view, except there was another camera man standing in front of the

stage that I had to wait to finish before I could take any pictures of my own,

which should be up early next week.

Last year's awards tried to be a big gala event like the Oscars, and they crashed and

burned in the attempt with poor jokes and random celebrities, so I was very

curious to see how this year's presentation would turn out. In comparison, it was

very low-key. Diane Mizota (of G4 fame) hosted the event, but it seems each

presenter wrote his own introductions to the categories, resulting in some

similar comments made by different people. The choice of presenters seemed

odd as well, since rather than being winners from prior years, they seemed to be

randomly chosen from different parts of the industry, the most surprising of

which was Infinium Labs' Kevin Bacchus. The nominees were presented with

little fanfare. Only the box art was shown on the screen; not a single clip from

gameplay or cut-scenes was shown the entire evening. Another issue was that

you never knew just who was receiving the award. I understand that entire

development teams worked on these games, but I'd still like to know who the person accepting the award is, even if it's only for photo captions.

The Prince of Persia team won award after award much to their own surprise,

and they were clearly embarrassed, but they always managed to find someone

to thank each time. At one point they even thanked the bar down the road from

their office where many of the ideas for the game were born.

A two-man band, consisting of a guitarist and a DJ armed with 8-bit samples,

performed between awards, but at times the samples were screechingly painful

over the PA system, and sometimes ill-timing had samples drowning out

presenters just as they began to speak.

Overall, being low-key kept the show from being an embarrassment, but there is

still a long way to go before the show can garner the same kind of prestige as

the Grammys or Oscars.