VGX attracts 1.1 million viewers, producers prep for next year's show

Spike TV plans on doing another VGX next year, thanks to the success of this year's revamped show.

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Spike TV plans on doing another VGX next year, thanks to the success of this year's revamped show. 1.1 million viewers spent an average of 32 minutes watching the show (across multiple streams). The fact that #VGX was able to trend on Twitter is considered a success--even if those messages weren't particularly flattering of the show.

"Death to us would have been apathy," Viacom's Erik Flannigan said. "Death would have been no one talking, no one caring, no one having an opinion about it." And people were at least talking about it.

According to Flannigan, VGX "exceeded our expectations." He told Polygon that the 32 minute session time "was way beyond our wildest dreams," in spite of the show's three hour running time. One of the reasons for the excitement is that in TV land, a Nielsen rating is counted after just six minutes of watching. "So in our world, the idea that someone watched 32 minutes ... well we can't do the Nielsen math for you, but it would be a giant factor of what the rating was for that show."

With VGX being pegged as a success, the producers are already thinking up how to make next year's show. "Yes, we would love to do this show again and those are the discussions we are having right now," producer Casey Patterson said. "And we'll produce that show, that stream in the same way we produced this year's which is to take the feedback of the gamers, good and bad."

"The only thing we can do is assure gamers that we are listening," she added. "They can tell from the show we built this year that we like them talking to us. Good, bad, ugly, we want to them to continue to talk to us at the decibel that they have been."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    December 17, 2013 4:00 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, VGX attracts 1.1 million viewers, producers prep for next year's show.

    Spike TV plans on doing another VGX next year, thanks to the success of this year's revamped show.

    • reply
      December 17, 2013 4:14 PM

      i must have missed it and all the resulting trailers

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      December 17, 2013 4:16 PM

      One million people saw that disaster, live? That's fantastic.

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        December 17, 2013 4:23 PM

        [deleted]

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          December 17, 2013 4:28 PM

          apparently thats all you need to plan another show!

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        December 17, 2013 4:30 PM

        It wasn't as bad as 2011's developer-teabagging extravaganza, was it? I didn't see the 2013 VGX's, but I also didn't see tons of articles lambasting how it was bad for public perception of gamer culture, as was the case for the 2011 VGAs.

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      December 17, 2013 4:41 PM

      Was there more to this thing that I missed?
      I DVR'd it because my company christmas party coincided, but the DVR had a 1 hour show that only had 1 award given out for GOTY.
      The entire rest of the show was jokes by the hosts sandwiched in between ads for games and then a couple of musical performances that I didn't give two shits about. (Okay Tyler the Creator is cool.. but that's not what I tuned in for)

      Anyway... this was apparently an awards show with about 4 minutes dedicated to a single award? Was there more?

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        December 17, 2013 4:45 PM

        [deleted]

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        December 17, 2013 4:53 PM

        It was a 3 hour livestream on Saturday night, which was heavily promoted (lots of different sites carried it). Then they cut that down for a TV airing a few days later. From what I've heard there still weren't many awards handed out live, but definitely more than one. It was a lot of developer interviews and trailers and promotional stuff.

        The 1.1 million figure was just for the streams it sounds like.

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      December 17, 2013 6:46 PM

      What was horrible about it btw? I didn't watch, just curious...

      If it's bad choices for the awards, it sounds like they just need better judges, which is *technically* easy to fix, but I don't know how many good judges would be interested in doing that. Who knows though, maybe people would be interested in 'fixing' the show...

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