What is the value of a commercial award?

Is there still a need for commercial/industry awards? Catching the very end of the Baftas ’08, I couldn’t help thinking, what are commercial/industry awards really for? I came to two conclusions: firstly, as a means to celebrate the achievements of a group of people for doing something outstanding in their medium. Secondly, as a means of promotion I.e. ‘that film has got three more shiny gold stickers than the other one, I’m gonna get this one, errrrr.’

Adulation and recognition: If you’ve worked on something whether it be a film, game, online media etc Providing your not an egomaniac and manage to keep a level head, you should be fully aware if the end product is any good. Working on something for a long time can begin to warp your mind, this is always a danger but regardless, you should still be able to say, ‘well, we had good intentions but clients, investors, time, technology, were against us.’



Scratch the first off then. The second reason for there existence is as a sort of aggregate or filter for the general populace, but this is simply not necessary anymore. I’ve talked about StumbleUpon or Current TV as filters for content that are ‘people powered’ or software like Amazon’s profiler, that learns your likes and dislikes.

I used to be a bit of an anime philistine, apart from the Miyazaki films and some other well knowns but joining a forum of intelligible people and not just adolescents and fanboys screaming across the virtual airwaves, ‘fuckin n00b, Guyver owns all youz.' A quick glance and I got three or four series titles that have turned out to be very good indeed. Maybe I'm just jealous, after all, the only award I've ever one was a plastic medal for a year nine swimming gala.

Regardless, lets get rid of commercial awards, for as Dave Birss once said, “We’re not curing cancer, we’re just coming up with ideas.”