News - GDC 2009

0 comments by stenchy on Mar 16th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet leads the nominees for the ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards with seven nominations, organizers have revealed. Number None’s Braid follows closely with five nominations. Among the nominations for LittleBigPlanet is the coveted Game of the Year award.

Other nominees for that category include Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead, which each received a total of four award nominations, Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto IV, which earned a total of three nominations, and Lionhead Studios’ Fable 2. Winners will be honored at an awards show taking place during the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

The two leading nominees are celebrating a homecoming of sorts with their nominations for the Choice Awards. Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet, made its debut during a keynote lecture at the 2007 Game Developers Conference, while Number None’s Braid was winner of the Innovation in Game Design award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival (IGF), which is also part of the Game Developers Conference.

Produced and hosted by Think Services’ Game Developers Conference and presented by Gamasutra.com and Game Developer Magazine, the Game Developers Choice Awards honors the developers of the best video games released during the previous calendar year, as well as awarding key figures from the video game community. Other multiple nominees for this year’s event include such diverse and notable titles as Maxis’ Spore, 2D Boy’s World of Goo, Kojima Productions’ Metal Gear Solid 4, Epic Games’ Gears of War 2, and Ubisoft Montreal’s Far Cry 2.

In addition, Special Award recipients already confirmed for this year’s Choice Awards, to be honored in person during the ceremony, include Harmonix Music Systems co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy (Pioneers) and game audio advocate Tommy Tallarico (Ambassador).

Winners in all major categories will be honored at an awards show taking place Wednesday, March 25th in the Esplanade Ballroom of the Moscone Center’s South Hall, during the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival (IGF), will be hosted by Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer, mastermind behind the critically-acclaimed Full Throttle and Psychonauts .

In addition, organizers are announcing that long-time Game Developers Choice Awards contributors Mega64 will once again produce exclusive video skits to accompany the evening’s entertainment.

"Truly great games are the product of years of hard work by teams of incredibly dedicated and talented developers. It's an underlying principle of GDC that we recognize these talents and honor their achievements." says Meggan Scavio, director of Game Developers Conference. "The awards given out at the Game Developers Choice Awards are more than just trophies; they are recognition of great work by the developer community. The open peer-based selection process ensures that the people with the final say are the people who work within the craft of game development, and we can't wait to see who they choose. Best of luck to all the teams who have gotten this far!"

For more information about the Game Developers Choice Awards, check out www.gamechoiceawards.com.

The complete list of nominees is:

Best Game Design

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

Best Visual Art

• 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 Technology

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

Best Writing

• 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 Audio

• 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 Debut

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

Innovation

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

Best Handheld

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

Best Downloadable Game

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

Game of the Year

• Fable 2 (Lionhead Studios)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)

0 comments by stenchy on Mar 16th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

The 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards, the highest honors in game development acknowledging excellence in game creation, have named the recipients of two of its special awards, while also revealing that popular host of the 2007 Awards and Double Fine founder Tim Schafer is returning to present this year's Choice Awards.

Harmonix co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, co-developers of a groundbreaking decade-plus long line of music games culminating in the Rock Band franchise, will receive the Pioneer Award for their work; and Tommy Tallarico, co-founder of the Video Games Live concert series and founder of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), will receive the Ambassador Award for helping to advance the game audio community.

Presented by Think Services' Game Developers Conference (GDC), Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine, this year's awards ceremony, held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival, will be hosted on Wednesday, March 25th, during GDC 2009 in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco's Moscone Center. For complete details, please visit www.gamechoiceawards.com.

The Pioneer Award celebrates those individuals responsible for developing a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history, paving the way for the many developers who followed them. Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy have been chosen by the Choice Awards Advisory Committee for their role in pioneering and popularizing music games, a vitally important genre for widening the appeal of games.

The duo created Harmonix Music Systems in 1995 after graduating from MIT, and the Boston-area company experimented with early music games such as The Axe, before developing electronic-based rhythm games Frequency and Amplitude for the PlayStation 2.

Beginning in 2005, Harmonix developed Guitar Hero, and followed that up with Guitar Hero II, Rock Band, and Rock Band 2, fueling the explosive growth of the music games category to over $1 billion in sales. In 2006, Harmonix was acquired by MTV/Viacom. In 2008, Eran and fellow co-founder Alex Rigopulos were named to the Time 100 -- Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

"With the music game genre exploding into a true phenomenon in recent years, we wanted to honor the key developers behind its rise to power," said Meggan Scavio, event director of the Game Developers Conference. "Alex and Eran's dedication to both music and gaming has helped to entwine the two in ways that have truly advanced the art form, and they are worthy Pioneers."

The Ambassador Award honors an individual who has 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 to help further the art.

This year, the Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notables such as Doug Lombardi (Valve), John Vechey (PopCap), Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), has voted to give the Ambassador Award to tireless game audio advocate Tommy Tallarico.

Tommy is the founder of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), which is a non-profit organization formed in 2002, and tasked with educating on interactive audio by providing information, instruction, resources, guidance and enlightenment not only to its members, but to content providers and listeners throughout the world.

In addition, Tallarico, who has created music for games over the past 18 years. from Earthworm Jim through Sonic & The Black Knight, co-founded Video Games Live, a public concert series started in 2005 which features music from notable video games performed by top orchestras and choirs around the world. The concert show has been performed worldwide to hundreds of thousands of people, from the Hollywood Bowl to major venues in Europe, Asia and South America, and continues to raise the profile of game music as an art form in its own right.

"We're delighted to honor Tommy Tallarico for his work advocating for game audio creators worldwide," said Simon Carless, chair of the Game Developers Choice Awards Committee. "He's a true Ambassador for the game musician, and his larger than life persona includes a heart of gold when it comes to caring about the entire video game industry."

Finally, Double Fine founder and general roustabout Tim Schafer has been confirmed as the host for this year's awards, following his well-received appearance as presenter in 2007. Schafer, the LucasArts veteran designer known for critically acclaimed games such as Full Throttle, Psychonauts, and the upcoming Brütal Legend, sees the awards as an opportunity to, “No way. I'm not writing my own quote. I already have to write my own script for the show! It's not like you guys are paying me by the word!” Schafer added that this year will surely be, “Actually, you guys aren't paying me at all. That does it--This year, I'm keeping the tux.”