Our very own media darlings

Just like every year at the MCV Industry Excellence Awards, various people involved in the organisation of the

GMA

s were pinned against walls and asked to explain why X, Y or Z didn’t win. It’s pretty simple: because people voted for who they thought was best.

This outcry at not having won is a potent symbol of what the awards meant to the assembled crowd. Most of the many winners were explicit in their appreciation of their award; others were muted. Some were just plain shitfaced.

But whatever your thoughts on the winners and the event itself, the

GMA

s gave us the chance to raise a glass and say well done to some of the hardest working and – until now – largely under-appreciated voices in our industry. Putting great gaming achievements on a pedestal while steering people clear of total stinkers is a vital part of how this industry works.

It is, in a larger sense, a kind of quality control. LazySoft makes Shoddy Generic Fantasy/Sci-Fi Cash-in 6, the critics pan it, word spreads and gamers refuse to buy it. LazySoft loses money, and tries much harder next time.

Credible critics are especially important at this time of year. Given the choice between hundreds of games set for release in the run-up to Christmas, it is vital for the man on the street to fathom which of the bewildering number of shooters, racing, sports and action games they should buy.

This is what the games media should be like – respected critics that the public and the industry can trust. So hats off to those proclaimed the best of the current crop last week. You deserve it.

Special thanks must also go to bloggers Destructoid for living up to all the games journalist stereotypes. If future generations

head to YouTube to see what went on at the GMAs

, what they’ll find is a long, incoherent video in which a sweaty, obese gamer with a monocle pretends to wank himself off as he ogles the dancing girls on stage.

Media Legend Gary Penn and all of games journalism’s founding fathers must be very proud.