It's Okay Joel McHale Made Fun of Gamers

As gamers, we're now cool.

That may seem odd to those of us who grew up in a time when playing n64 on the weekends was something only losers did, according to the "cool" kids in school. But as gamers, we're now cool, and have been for awhile. The reason I'm bringing this up is because a large population on the internet is taking great offense to Joel McHale's incessant dissing of the gaming population during today/tonight's (depending where you live) otherwise disastrous VGA (or VGX, whatever) display. I on the other hand think Joel McHale is the best thing that happened during that show. That's because, as gamers, we're now cool, and because of that, we should be able to laugh at ourselves.

I really want to punch whatever Spike executive who thinks World Premiere means games we saw displayed at last year's e3. I think this was some desperate grab to get people's attention, when they knew their show was going to be a disaster. Plus, anytime you have to listen to Geoff Keighley, God punches an angel in the balls. But there to save the day was Joel McHale, the popular actor on the not-so-popular show Community (which everyone should watch, but that's beside the point). At first, I'll admit, he was rather off putting with his seemingly mean-spirited jabs (watching him interact with Tim Schaeffer was a kind of awkward I haven't seen since Steve Carrell left the Office), but then it hit me: Joel's not the one being insensitive, I'm the one being over-sensitive.

Remembering the days when gaming was seen as the forever-a-virgin taboo, my natural instinct is defend the hobby I love with my nerd shield and cry foul anytime someone says I'm wrong. But something's happened since those days. Now, everybody, and I mean everybody plays video games. Everybody, their uncle, and their four year old kid is playing Call of Duty, five year olds are playing games on their mom's smart phones (and probably deleted important emails in the process, while mommy's not paying attention), and then there's us. The diehards, the lifers, the in-it-from-the-beginning's. While we've consistently stayed true to what we love, the rest of the world has jumped on board. Now that we're more than a niche in the community, isn't it about time we can actually laugh at ourselves? Just a little bit? Because, honestly, we can be kind of silly people at times.

Here we are on the very message board where we can argue with strangers about which half-thousand dollar box is better than the other almost half-thousand dollar box. We get invested in fictional worlds, populated by computer-controlled creatures/people/humanoids/etc... We're silly people, just like jocks who deteriorate their bodies for a few years of glory are silly, just like girls who think slutting it up in a frat house in college is fun are silly, just like just about everybody in the world is ridiculously preposterous in their own ways. But now, we're not being patronized for the ways that we're silly. We're gamers. We're nerds. But that's not such a horrible thing anymore. It's just part of the world. So, why can't Joel McHale take jabs at how silly we are? He takes crap for being on E! entertainment and having a forehead the size of Pandora. He can laugh at himself for that, so why can't he laugh at us too? And better yet, why can't we laugh at ourselves?

But, seriously Spike, learn what a f**** World Premiere means.

I don't mind Joel's comedic style, I just found his delivery disruptive in this instance and completely out of place. I think we are past the snark attitude humor that the supposed "gamer" enjoys.

What's amusing is that the VGA's or X's or whatever try to take video games "seriously" yet Joel McHale knows that everything in the world exists to be mocked and when you get all bent out of shape about it, it just makes you look like an idiot.

I found it funny when someone complained The Big Bang Theory was "insulting" to nerds namely because they show poked fun at the clichés associated with geeks. I recall someone going so far as to call it "nerd blackface." The complained about the guys playing "mainstream" games like Wii Sports and Halo as opposed to lesser known games even though a flashback episode showed them playing a Gamecube (I assume they were playing SSBM) and Sheldon likes the old PC text based adventure Zork. Seriously anyone here ever play Zork?

The ones who get insulted by the portrayal of the nerds in TBBT clearly missed the point of the sitcom. A sitcom exists to hold a mirror up to a facet of society for us to laugh at. Big Bang pokes fun at nerd culture the way Frasier poked fun at the upper class. You don't hear any high class rich people complaining that Frasier made fun of them. Then again they were probably too busy attending art gallery openings and Yachting. My husband and I love geeky stuff but always laugh at Big Bang. Sheldon reminds us of a friend we have who's uptight and always thinks he's right about everything. My husband loves toy trains so we really laugh at Sheldon when his toy train hobby comes up because everyone knows liking toy trains is waaaaay deep in the geek forest. I'm talking you have to go deep into the nerds woods beyond the gamers, the Bronies, the Trekkies, the LARPers to find the toy train fans. So if my husband the toy train enthusiast can find humor in that, I think the rest of us can at least not be so uptight about it. Not saying you have to like or watch the show. Just making a point.

Even Gamespot started that Feedbackula show as a way to poke fun at some of the idiotic things that people post in comments. I love how they read it exactly as it's typed. If it's an emoticon they say "colon P" and read the misspelled words.

So I agree, we need to lighten up and laugh at ourselves. It's not like anyone's stuffing us in a locker or giving us a swirlie.

I tuned in to see Tim Schafer talk. Not to hear Joel McHale interrupt a veteran of the industry with stupid unfunny jabs.

I'm happy to laugh at myself. I love "too soon" humor. And I truly feel that nothing is off limits in comedy. But comedy needs to know when to shut it's mouth. That, I believe, is what people are truly upset about. They finally managed to get some interesting people to come on their show and the Community guy wouldn't shut his big stupid face long enough for anyone to complete a sentence.

And Geoff Keighley isn't a bad guy. I believe he is genuinely trying to put on the best show he can with what he has to work with. I'll take his genuine enthusiasm over McHale's snarky "above-it-all" detachment any day of the week.

Honestly I don't give a **** what Joel Mchael thinks of gamers, but I found it irritating when he interrupted the devs when they were talking, at one point it became cringe worthy even Geoff looked uncomfortable at times .

@kbaily: Less than half of that aimless rambling rant even had anything to do with the topic of this thread. I have no problem laughing at myself, and I appreciate a good comedic performance. Unfortunately the bulk of this guy's contributions to the show were very poorly timed, disruptive, and genuinely not very funny at all. Their is a difference between good comedy and bad comedy. You would have figured that out if you had taken the time to actually think about it, instead of pouncing on what you saw as another opportunity to keep us informed of how much better you are than the rest of us.

I like Joel McHale, and from the last hour of the show that I saw, he did okay. Some of it was poorly timed and some was poorly written. But it was obvious that he didn't really care all that much and didn't want to be hosting the show anyway.

So my problem isn't with Joel McHale, it's with the idea of Spike needing a celebrity to host a show they don't give a shit about. It always comes off as amateurish and embarassing, especially when it's done at E3. We all the know the celebrity probably doesn't care.

As Twisted noted, he wasn't quite as bad during the last bit of the show. I'm definitely in agreement that some of it was out of place, but at the same time, so was he. The sad thing about the entertainment industry is that far too often, people are placed in the wrong situations. Joel's agent undoubtedly wanted a little extra commission off his client, which is why it was even brought to him in the first place, and with Community in such limbo all the time (it's scheduled start date was delayed until NBC knew what shows were being cancelled, so Community could fill the void. Not exactly great when you're the lead), actors have empty slots in their schedules, which is something they don't like having.

I don't really think you can fault Joel McHale for being Joel McHale, rather the blame should go to bad casting for the co-host. In saying that, I think the last hour-plus, he found a somewhat decent rhythm and adapted. And when push comes to shove, at least he wasn't Jamie Kennedy.

This is the biggest internet overreaction I've seen in a while. I sat down to watch the stream excited because I thought I'd see some Ricky Gervais-level shit after seeing Twitter angst, but I didn't think Joel threw any curveballs. Some jabs, but every dev just laughed it off if they didn't know how to deflect it. Joel was doing what any *good* talkshow host does. If you tune into watch Craig Ferguson with a guest, be surprised if they actually get around to talking about whatever they came onto the show to plug.

The worst thing about watching G4/Gametrailers streams during E3 is how the interviewers don't even really ask questions. They lead with "Tell us about..." and roll into surface-level questions and get PR-approved half-answers in response. They have no control of the interview. They're just getting quotes that every other outlet is getting. This was the first time I've seen anyone actually try to have a conversation with game developers as people.

Who is Joel McHale again? I've never heard of him before

Who is he? Never heard of him

I don't mind that he was joking on gamers but he just came across as a bitter douchebag. He just added nothing to the conversation and his questions were not the least bit intelligent.

Before last night, I'd never heard of him either, to be honest. :)

show was terrible all around.. the only highlight to come out of it was the Joel Banderas gif from Naughty Dog

They could have just shown that and No Man's Sky and called it a night.

i don't mind trying to be funny at an awards show, but the guy was stupid. If you're going to host something in music perhaps, don't insult everyone watching and likes the thing you are watching it for. I haven't seen the whole thing yet, but from what i have seen him mentioning diapers and other stuff is plain stupid. If we gamers are going to be taken seriously, do a freaking worthy awards show like the Oscars always manage to pull off. Yeah it's perhaps a little tacky, but they have style and substance. Don't make the entire award show look like we are fat, single virgins living in the basement of our parents just to look cool

They were both being irritating and disruptive. The whole show was just a who can talk over who.

Anyone who says this is awesome is stupid

It's not his first boat ride doing this kinda thing. He was probably picked because he's a somewhat familiar face that has presented for gaming events in the past, and, maybe most of all because he said yes.

Wherever gaming is with respect to public perception, it's still a young hobby lacking its own celebrities. When you see co-hosts in movie awards, you see people from film and TV and you don't see critics (which is basically what Keighley is). I think what Spike should have been looking for is a charismatic host from within the industry, not from another industry and not from shows or websites about games. But like I said, we have no celebrities. Nolan North is like gaming's Ben Kingsley (decent actor that seems to star in everything), yet would anyone recognize him on the streets? it's a faceless industry, and that makes it hard to pick your prototypical awards host.

Joel Mchale is a nobody actor who gained a bit of hype because he was on Community the tv-show on NBC which hopefully this time will stay cancelled.

And it was insane to see him on VGx , they are only devs but they deserved better than some 5th rate comedian who are trying to find a new gig after his show got cancelled.

@Jacanuk: "they are only devs..."

Care to clarify what you mean by this? They are only devs? These devs are video game's version of actors and directors. The creative force behind what you and I indulge in. I'm not trying to be a jerk here but the beginning of your statement initially downplays their contributions.

Those devs are just the guys in the spotlight. Anyone know how much a AAA game takes to develop today and its not just those 2-3-4 who made the game what it is.

So pointing 2 or 3 our like they are something special is just stupid.

@Jacanuk: That doesn't make sense. You say on one hand they deserve better than a 5th rate comedian and then on the other you state they are just the guys in the spotlight. Which is it?

Also, on my viewing of the show I saw many times that the development companies themselves recognized the efforts of the entire team involved in the game that won an award. Naughty Dog being just one example. The guys that appeared on VGX were the brains behind many of the creations currently in production and therefore were being asked about the progress of said projects, although with Joel McHale's interruptions it was difficult to deduce much of anything.

You missed the "Even" meaning that on one hand yes they are just one of many, but they are still a part of making something great and that is enjoyed by a lot of gamers, so they still deserve better than Joel Mchale.

And i didn´t say anything about the companies themselves didn´t recognize the team behind.

@Jacanuk: The "Even"?

I suppose I'm missing the entire context of your post then because I'm not understanding what you are implying now.

Perhaps if you elaborated on who the guys are in the spotlight then it would clear things up. I'm sincerely trying to follow what you are saying but the grammar you are using is a bit off so that might be where I'm misinterpreting.

Just look at the Naughty Dog video, they had the whole team in that video