game-developers-choice-awards posts

After winning two awards, including the Grand Prize, at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, the hit sandbox game Minecraft turned around and took on the big game developers at the Game Developers Choices Awards during GDC 2011 on Wednesday night.

Minecraft managed to win three awards last night, according to Game Informer, making the game the only PC title to actually win any awards during the ceremony. It won the Innovation Award, beating out big budget console exclusive titles like Heavy Rain and Dance Central. Minecraft also won for Best Downloadable Game and also for Best Debut Game, winning against titles like Super Meat Boy and Monday Night Combat, among others.

The 2011 edition of the Game Developers Choice Awards has just announced the finalists for the award's various categories and as usual a number of PC games found their way to being nominated. The PC game with the most nominations was BioWare's RPG Mass Effect 2 which received five nods, including Game of the Year. The indie game hit Minecraft got three nominations in the Innovation, Best Debut Game and Best Downoadable game categories.

Call of Duty Black Ops also got a Game of the Year nomination as did Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (due out for the PC later this year). StarCraft II also got a nod for Best Technology. You can check out the entire list of nominees at Gamasutra's web site. The winner's will be announced on March 2 during the Game Developers Conference.

League of Legends was by far the big winner in Thursday night's first annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards. Developer Riot Games' free-to-play RTS-action game won five awards during the ceremony held in Austin Texas as part of GDC Online.

The game won for Best Online Game Design, Best Online Visual Arts, Best Online Technology, Best New Online Game, and the Audience Award voted on by the public. Other winners included World of Warcraft which won the Best Community Relations award and Aion which won for Best Audio for an Online Game. Also, Social City got the Best Social Network Game award, and EVE Online got the nod for Best Live Game.

The folks behind the Game Developers Conference recently renamed the GDC Austin event to GDC Online in order to reflect the conference's emphasis on online and MMO-based gaming. Today it was announced that GDC Online will also get its own award ceremony when it hosts the first annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards on October 7.

An offshoot of the long running Game Developers Choice Awards that are held every year at GDC in San Fransisco, this new ceremony will honor games and developers specifically in the online game industry. MMO games, free-to-play titles and social networking games will all be eligible to win in a number of different categories. In addition there will be special awards naming one game to the GDC Online Games Hall of Fame as well as naming a developer to win the Online Game Legend Award. Nominations for the various categories are being taken at the awards' official web site.

Last night the annual Game Developers Choice Awards were given out during GDC 2010 and, sad to say, there was very little for PC gamers to be happy about when it came to the winners. Most of the catagories were won by console exclusive titles. Batman: Arkham Asylum did manage to win for Best Game Design and Runic Games' action-RPG Torchlight won for Best Debut Game. The PS3 exclusive title Uncharted 2 won five of the 10 awards given out on Thursday.

Previously announced awards went to id Software founder John Carmack (Lifetime Achievement Award) Valve founder Gabe Newell (Pioneer Award) and the Penny Arcade team of Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik and Robert Khoo (Ambassador Award).

The man who helped to create the first person shooter genre is now being honored for his many accomplishments by his peers. id Software co-founder John Carmack will be given the annual Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. The award will be given out in San Fransisco during the Game Developers Conference on March 11.

Carmack co-founded id Software back in 1991 and his graphics engine technology was the basis behind the launch of the first person shooter genre with id's games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. He's also been a highly influential person in the development of PC graphics technology, particularly the hardware 3D acceleration trend that began in the late 1990s. Carmack is working on id's latest graphics engine, id tech 5, that will be used in id's two upcoming games; Rage and the next Doom game.

In related news, it was announced that the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony will see Junction Point Studios founder Warren Spector as its host.

They are some of the most powerful people in the game industry but for the most part they are still more like fans than professional game creators. They are the folks behind the web comic strip Penny Arcade and its many different side projects. Today the Game Developers Choice Awards announced that the web comic strip's team of Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, along with their business head Robert Khoo, will receive their Ambassador Award during their ceremonies at the Game Developers Conference in March.

The Ambassador Award goes to a person or group of people who "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." The Penny Arcade web comic strip began in 1998 and started a massive sub-industry that has including forming the popular Penny Arcade Expo, the hugely successful Child's Play charity drive and most recently the development of the episodic Penny Arcade Adventures game (and how about that Episode 3, guys)?

Yep, we've got another set of awards to tell you about today. It's the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards which are voted on by over 3,000 professional game developers. The winners will be announced at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco on March 11.

Three PC games have been nominated for Game of the Year including Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed 2. In addition a number of PC game developers were nominated for Best Debut, including Runic Games (Torchlight) Riot Games (League of Legends), and ACE Team (Zeno Clash). The full list of nominees can be read after the jump.

He's the co-founder and head of one of the most influential game developers of all time and now Valve's Gabe Newell is being honored for his many achievements. The Game Developers Choices Awards have announced that Newell will be the 2010 recipient of their Pioneer Award.

Newell, who becomes the third winner of the Pioneer Award, is being honored not just for his achievements in game development with the Half-Life series, the Left 4 Dead series and more but also with Valve's creation of the Steam download service. He will receive the Pioneer Award at ceremonies at the the Game Developers Conference on March 11.

On Wednesday night the annual Game Developers Choice Awards were given out during the Game Developers Conference. While quite a few of the catagories this year had a number of console only winners, Bethesda Softworks RPG' Fallout 3 managed to win Game of the Year honors. The same game also won for Best Writing.

Other PC games that won awards this year included 2D Boy's puzzle World of Goo for Best Downloadable Game, EA's survival horror game Dead Space for Best Audio and Ubisoft's action/adventure title Prince of Persia for Best Visual Art. You can check out all of the winners and nominees at the award's official web site.