aias posts

If you always wanted to see what the Interactive Achievement Awards were all about but couldn't afford to go to Las Vegas to attend the event, the event will be coming to you soon. Today the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences announced it has struck a deal with the IFC (Indepdendent Film Channel) cable TV network. IFC will show a half-hour version of the awards ceremony sometime in April.

A couple of years ago the AIAS inked a deal with Dick Clark Productions to broadcast the award ceremony but apparently that deal fell through. The awards will be held during the DICE Summit in Vegas on Feb. 19. You can check out the nominees for the various catagories right here.

Yep, we can't seem to get away from 2008, especially when it comes to awards. This week the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for its 12th annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The awards themselves will be given out during the DICE Summit in Las Vegas on Feb. 19.

The awards were very good for Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3; both games got a number of nominations in various categories, including both PC game of the year and overall game of the year. We are curious as to why Spore was named as a nominee for best PC game of the year and not Sins of a Solar Empire, but you can't have everything. Check out the full nominee list after the jump.

Microsoft may have shut down the development studio that he co-founded but his peers have decided to give him a major honor. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences have announced that Bruce Shelley, the founder of Ensemble Studios, will be the latest person inducted in the organization's Hall of Fame.

Shelley will be the 12th person named to the AIAS Hall of Fame by its members with the official ceremony to be held at the organization's annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas on Feb. 19. Shelley first gained fame by working with fellow Hall of Fame inductee Sid Meier on the classic Civilization and other titles at Microprose. Shelley then went out on his own and co-formed Dallas-based Ensemble in 1995. Their Age of Empires series of RTS games were both critical and sales hits. Recently Ensemble's owners Microsoft announced they would be shutting down Ensemble after the team completes their work on the Xbox 360 title Halo Wars. It's currently unknown what Shelley has planned next in the business.

There have been two major industry-based award competitions in the video/PC game industry. One has been the Interactive Achievement Awards which were organized by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. These awards are given out at the annual D.I.C.E. Summit but many have been critical that only publishers that are paid members of the AIAS could submit games to be nominated.

The other major industry awards have been the Game Developers Choice Awards. These awards, which have no such restrictions, were for several years voted on by members of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and are presented at the annual Game Developers Conference. However as of this year's GDC, the awards ceremony are fully owned by GDC's parent company Think Services with no involvement with the IGDA.

Today it was announced that IGDA members would be able to vote for games in the Interactive Achievement Awards alongside AIAS members. IGDA members hey can also nominate games, even those of none-AIAS members, in the crafts awards categories. The 2009 awards ceremony will once again be held at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas on Feb. 18.

Though every E3 is always the subject of conversation due to the games and platforms being shown, this year's event has come under fire from many developers for being too small, as well as too late in the year to announce any new titles. Some industry analysts have gone so far as to state that E3 will soon be extinct if its current format doesn't undergo a metamorphosis, one that Ed Boon feels could stand to be a bit more excting.

Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences president Joseph Olin stands on the other side of the line. In a recent interview with Shacknews, Olin said that E3 2008 was "fabulous from the perspective of the games, the software and the titles that are being shown." Olin admits that in terms of the show itself, E3 isn't "as exciting as the products that are within it," but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The emphasis should be on the show, he believes, not the glitz, glamour and noise that surrounded E3s of old.

Olin also feels that E3 could revert to its traditional use as an announcement stage, rather than being used to show games that were announced months in advance. "You're new once," said Olin. "Why not use new as an advantage, as a point of difference, and be able to promote when it is fresh."

Despite claims from influential outlets such as Game Politics that E3 is a thing of the past, the Entertainment Software Association has promised that E3 2009 will occur as planned.