Continue reading »]]> The Game Developers Choice Awards are the premier accolades for peer-recognition in the digital games industry, celebrating creativity, artistry and technological genius. Industry professionals from around the world nominate for the awards, free of charge, ensuring that the recipients reflect the community’s opinions.

Awards in thirteen categories will be given at a ceremony produced by the Think Services Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by Gamasutra.com and Game Developer Magazine, on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at GDC. The gala event, held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival, will be hosted in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. For further details about the Choice Awards, visit www.gamechoiceawards.com.

The Game Developers Choice Awards recognize excellence in the art of game creation regardless of genre or platform. 2008′s award categories are:Game Developers Choice Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the career and achievements of a developer who has made an indelible impact on the craft of game development and games as a whole.

Pioneer Award

The Pioneer Award (formerly known as the First Penguin Award) celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history – paving the way for the myriads who followed them.

• Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy

Ambassador Award

The Ambassador Award honors an individual or individuals who have helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art.

• Tommy Tallarico

Game of the Year

The Game of the Year Award recognizes the choice of game developers for the overall best game release during 2008.

• Fable II (Lionhead Studios)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)

Innovation Award

The Innovation Award recognizes the single game that demonstrates true innovation, advances the state of the art, and pushes the boundaries of games as an expressive medium.

• SPORE (Maxis)
• World Of Goo (2D Boy)
• Boom Blox (EA Los Angeles)
• Braid (Number None)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Debut Game

The Best Debut Game Award recognizes the best game from any development studio which released its first publicly available title in the year 2008.

• Braid (Number None)
• Sins of a Solar Empire (Ironclad Games)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• World of Goo (2D Boy)
• Soul Bubbles (Mekensleep)

Best Audio

The Best Audio Award recognizes the overall excellence of audio in a game – including, but not limited to, sound effects, musical composition, sound design, orchestration, etc.

• Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Game Design

The Best Game Design Award recognizes the overall excellence of design in a game – including, but not limited to, gameplay mechanics, playability, play balancing, and level design.

• Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
• Braid (Number None)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Technology

The Best Technology Award recognizes the overall excellence of technology in a game – including, but not limited to, graphics programming, artificial intelligence, networking, and physics.

• SPORE (Maxis)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Visual Arts

The Best Visual Arts Award recognizes the overall excellence of visual art in a game – including, but not limited to, art direction, animation, modeling, character design, texture creation, and so on.

• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
• Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Writing

The Best Writing Award recognizes the overall excellence of storytelling in a game – including, but not limited to, scenario, plot construction, story, dialogue, and other major factors.

• Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
• Braid (Number None)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)

Best Downloadable Game

Best Downloadable Game Award recognizes the overall best game released on console or PC platforms specifically and solely for digital download – with an emphasis on smaller, more ‘casual’-friendly titles.

• Castle Crashers (The Behemoth)
• Braid (Number None)
• World Of Goo (2D Boy)
• N+ (Metanet/Slick Entertainment)
• PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)

Best Handheld Game

Best Handheld Game Award recognizes the overall best game commercially released on any handheld platform during 2008.

• Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin (Intelligent Systems)
• God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (Ready At Dawn Studios)
• Echochrome (SCE Japan)
• Patapon (Pyramid/SCE Japan)
• The World Ends With You (Jupiter/Square Enix)

Game Developers Conference 2009: March 23-27, San Francisco – Game Developer Choice Awards

Continue reading »]]> Its about the shift from teamwork to individuals’ goals and the third-person camera.

Battlefield Heroes: Better than Team Fortress 2?

Work continues on Battlefield Heroes despite the recent closure of the game’s beta, and producer Aleksander Grondal recently talked it up with Gamasutra. Grondal isn’t a Battlefield developer veteran, instead having previously worked on Anarchy Online and Dreamfall at Funcom. As such, he brings a different mentality to the team working on Heroes, which he claims is a mixture of half newcomers to the series and half previous Battlefield developers.

The different mentality is largely an MMO mentality – which is most immediately apparent in the game’s new third-person camera which has been one of the main attention-getters ever since Heroes was first shown. Grondal said of the new view:

• The main thing about the third person: It’s about seeing your character. I don’t think many people are interested in investing in their physical, visual appearance of the characters when they never can see them.
• Seeing your character, and seeing that the new item that you have is actually on your character, adds a feeling of attachment to him, from a visual standpoint.
• The other thing is, we tried to make this more accessible, and I think that seeing your character in the world next to a barrel makes him more connected to the world.
• For new players, it might be more accessible, seeing your character – if I run up to something, and suddenly it stops in first-person, it’s, “Oh! I need to look down; there’s something there!” But when you’re in third-person, you actually see a bit more of the world, and your character’s relation to the world.
• Initially there, were some concerns, with Heroes, that third-person was wrong for a Battlefield game, but I think that once you actually try to play around with it, it feels pretty much the same. Once you actually get the hang of it, it won’t be such an issue anymore.

Another of the major changes to the game’s formula is the focus on individual goals rather than previous Battlefield’s focus on working as a team towards a singular goal. While the one current game mode in Heroes does involve capping points as a team and eliminating enemies, that’s pushed towards the wayside by the mission system, which is ever so faintly reminiscent of Quake Wars. You now select goals before you start playing and then set out to accomplish them by the end of that game. Goals range from getting a certain number of kills on a particular class or running over a certain number of enemies. Grondal explained, “It’s like, ‘Why is this guy always trying to drive over people?’ So I think that creates cool moments that aren’t just getting the best kill-to-death ratio; I think it’s about cool experiences.”

Following the delay that was announced in November, Heroes is now expected to have a proper release in 2009. We’ll see then if Electronic Arts’ gamble will have been worth it.

Continue reading »]]> Gamasutra’s comprehensive new U.S. sales analysis following October NPD results, we’ve extrapolated the top 5 selling video games of 2008 so far in the region, from Smash Bros through GTA IV.

YLD Top 5 Games of 2008

1. Wii
2. Mario Cart
3. Grand Theft Auto 4
4. Wii Play
5. Wii Fit

YLD Top Earners

1. Wii Fit
2. Grand Theft Auto 4
3. Super Smash Bros Brawl Wii
4. Mario Cart
5. Wii Play

Gamasutra