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Watch the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards right here!
They may not be of the same magnitude as the Oscars, but the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival Awards are happening tonight in San Francisco. The events are going to be hosted by Double Fine CEO Tim Schaefer and Tacoma Games' Nina Freeman, respectively, in an evening where the best AAA and indie developers will be recognized for their work. Will Super Mario Run win the award for Best Mobile/Handheld Game? Tune in to find out at 6:30PM PT/9:30PM ET; there's a livestream below, and you can also go to the GDC's Twitch and YouTube pages.
Backstage with the winners of the IGF and GDC Awards
The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards are the highlight of GDC week. They both honor the best games of the past year in two glamorous, back-to-back ceremonies in downtown San Francisco. This time around, Her Story took home the IGF's $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and The Witcher 3 nabbed the coveted Game of the Year prize during the GDC Awards. Other winners across a range of categories include Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, Rocket League and Life is Strange. Nine members of the Girls Make Games program, which offers summer camps designed to encourage young women to break into game creation, walked away with the ID@Xbox Rising Star award for their project, The Hole Story. We spoke with some of the big winners on-camera directly after they received their awards, and they had plenty to say (and celebrate).
Watch the 2016 IGF and GDC Awards live right here!
Now that the GDC show floor is officially open to attendees, it's time for the routine trophy ceremonies. It all starts with the Independent Games Festival Awards at 6:30PM PT/9:30PM ET tonight, followed directly by the Game Developers Choice Awards. And because we care deeply about you, our readers, we're embedding a livestream of the back-to-back events in this post. We'll also be talking to the 2016 winners as they come off the stage -- more on that soon.
Rock the vote for your favorite game in the GDC awards
Want to make your voice heard in this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards? How about doing the same for the Independent Game Festival's accolades? Boy howdy, you're covered in both cases. Once again, the GDCA and IGF are opening up the floor for audience votes ahead of the 30th annual Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco this year. Winners will be revealed on March 16th and the awards will stream on Twitch starting at 6:30 PM Pacific that day.
GDCA 2015 finalists led by Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
The finalists for the 2015 Game Developers Choice Awards were revealed today, led by Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which received five nominations. Monolith's third-person action game was nominated for Game of the Year, Innovation, Best Design, Best Narrative and Best Technology awards at the ceremony (on top of also being Joystiq's favorite game of 2014). The other nominees for the 15th annual GDCA's Game of the Year award are Bayonetta 2, Alien: Isolation, Destiny and Hearthstone. Blizzard's collectible card game received three nominations in total, the other two for Best Design and Best Handheld/Mobile Game. Destiny also received two other nominations for Best Audio and Best Technology. The ceremony for this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards will be held during the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday, March 4 at 9:30 p.m. ET (6:30 p.m. PT) at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. Head past the break to see the full list of nominees.
Game Developers Choice Awards honor Anita Sarkeesian, Riot founders
Organizers of the 14th annual Game Developers Choice Awards have named this year's Special Award winners, honoring Riot Games founders Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill alongside Feminist Frequency creator Anita Sarkeesian at an upcoming ceremony event. The event's Pioneer Award will go to Beck and Merrill for their work on the genre-defining League of Legends, an online multiplayer game that reports 27 million players daily. League of Legends has spurred exponential growth within the eSports arena, and attracts a dedicated viewership on streaming services like Twitch. Sarkeesian will receive the GDCA's Ambassador Award, a prize honoring individuals who help the video games industry "advance to a better place" through advocacy or action. Sarkeesian promoted widespread discussion regarding video game gender roles in her Kickstarter-funded Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video series, and regularly addresses related social issues within gaming communities. The Game Developers Choice Awards will be held on March 19 at the San Francisco Moscone Center, as part of the upcoming Game Developers Conference. [Image: Riot Games]
Journey sweeps Game Developers Choice Awards, wins 6 of 11
Journey and thatgamecompany claimed six of the 11 total prizes at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony during GDC 2013 tonight: the Game of the Year Award, Best Audio, Best Game Design, Best Visual Arts, Best Downloadable Game and the Innovation Award. We have to say, the GDCA has good taste.The first-ever GDCA Audience Award prize went to Arkane Studios' Dishonored. FTL: Faster Than Light picked up the award for Best Debut, and Telltale's The Walking Dead walked away with the Best Narrative award. Take a peek at the complete list of winners below.
Game Developers Choice Awards nod to Journey, Dishonored, FTL
Finalists for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards represent the broad swath of modern game development, featuring indie and mainstream games side-by-side and in perfect, competitive harmony. Journey, a game that we thoroughly enjoyed, leads the pack with six nominations in Best Design, Best Downloadable Game, Best Audio, Best Visual, Innovation and Game of the Year. Dishonored follows with four nominations in Best Narrative, Best Visual, Best Design and Game of the Year.The Walking Dead gets three nods, for Best Downloadable Game, Best Narrative and Game of the Year. Rounding out the Game of the Year category is Mass Effect 3 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Mark of the Ninja, FTL: Faster Than Light, The Unfinished Swan and ZombiU join Journey in the Innovation category. The Best Debut category features Polytron Corporation with Fez, Fireproof Games with The Room, Humble Hearts and Dust: An Elysian Tail, Giant Sparrow and The Unfinished Swan, and Subset Games with FTL.Take a peek at the entire GDCA lineup in the press release below, featuring finalists in 10 categories. The awards ceremony is scheduled for March 27 in San Francisco, during GDC 2013.
The GDCA 2011 nominations look strangely familiar
Lads, get your polite-clapping gloves ready, and shine your pearls, ladies -- finalists have been named for the Game Developers Choice Awards, and this year boasts quite the lineup. Valve, Bethesda and Supergiant Games have five nominations each for Portal 2, Skyrim and Bastion, respectively (and respectfully). Supergiant is nominated for Best Debut, alongside Team Bondi for L.A. Noire and BioWare Austin for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Portal 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dark Souls are nominated for Game of the Year. The awards ceremony will be held on March 7. We're not going to say that the GDCA stole their entire list of nominees from a super-cool and highly regarded gaming website, but it does look familiar:
Live from the IGF/GDC Awards 2011
We're here, live from the IGF slash GDC Awards, and things are just getting underway. We promise laughs, tears, and maybe even some expletives. Join us after the break. Unless you're scared.
Game Developers Choice Awards shooting John Carmack a Lifetime Achievement Award, Warren Spector hosting
This year's Game Developers Choice Awards will honor id Software's John Carmack with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Although certainly well deserved for his (continuing) contributions to the technical side of the industry, it's got to be weird to receive such an honor at the cusp of turning 40. We certainly hope Carmack still has plenty of years in the industry ahead of him. Former winners of the award include Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright ... which got us wondering: could Carmack (or any of the above!) grab another Lifetime Achievement Award in the actual twilight of their career or does a single award preclude you from future awards, regardless of the achievement? Hosting the GDCA's this year is Warren Spector, who'd better be on his game following Tim Schafer's stellar performance as emcee last year. Spector is currently working on the (currently) Wii-exclusive Disney Epic Mickey, but is best known for his work on Deus Ex. The award ceremony will take place on Thursday, March 11, during GDC 2010 in San Francisco.
Reminder: G4 airing the GDCAs tonight
Sure, it can't compare with the excitement of our liveblog of the event, but we figured you might like to know that G4 will be broadcasting highlights from the Game Developers Choice Awards tonight at 6:30 Pacific / Eastern time with a rebroadcast at 8:00. The highlights will be shown as a special episode of X-Play, meaning you'll also get your daily dose of vitamin Sessler.Sure, it's over two weeks after the fact, but how many times do you get to see Tim Schafer cracking wise in a tuxedo? Not enough, that's how many.
Mega64 and special guest use CQC on Metal Gear Solid 4
No matter how many times the Mega64 guys dress as beloved video game characters and go into public, we never fail to be entertained. But their take on Metal Gear Solid 4, which debuted at the GDCAs last week, takes a turn towards the surreal and becomes something far more epic than simple spoof.We want to tell you more, but, frankly, we've said too much already. You should probably just watch the whole thing for yourself right after the break.
Overheard@GDC09: Tim makes a good point
"No one's ever made a bong in the shape of a game designer." -Tim Schafer We could give you some more context here, but we're pretty sure it speaks for itself.
GDC09: Joystiq live at the IGF and GDCA awards
We're live at the IGF slash GDCA awards, from the very same Moscone Center room that housed this morning's Nintendo keynote. Andy Schatz from Pocket Watch reprises his role as IGF host, with Tim "Freaking" Schafer taking host duties for the Game Developer Conference Awards. Check out the whole liveblog, updating from bottom to top, after the break.
G4 belatedly broadcasting 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards
Are you bummed that you'll be stuck at home over the next week, far away from the action and excitement of the 2009 Game Developers Conference? Fret not -- we've got your back as far as GDC-related news is concerned, but if you want to see footage of the glitzy, glamorous Game Developers Choice Awards (which will take place this Wednesday), you can fulfill your peculiar desire by flipping your teevee-box to G4, where X-Play will be airing the ceremony in its entirety.Bizarrely, they'll be broadcasting the event on April 10, more than two weeks after the awards will be handed out. The program might be a bit too tardy to be worth watching, but since we'll have told you all the winners by that point, you could easily score a few bucks from some unaware acquaintances in a GDCA prediction pool.
Game Developers Choice Awards on G4 tonight
In case our live coverage of the Game Developer Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival Awards wasn't enough to sate your appetite for GDC's prestigious ceremony, G4TV will be showing coverage of the event tonight.A 30-minute recap of the two-hour event will air tonight at 8:00 PM EST (5:00 PM PST), as part of a special episode of G4's X-Play program. If you miss it, the episode will re-air several times on Saturday, March 1, Sunday, March 2 and Monday, March 3. Check out the episode guide for the full list of times.For those with a distaste for digests, the award shows' organizers will be hosting full-length streaming video coverage of both events on their respective websites sometime in the next week. We'll keep an eye out for when those streams become available.
GDC08 Highlights: Baldur, Big Daddy and cake
Playing (and being) Too Human Elsewhere that day, Silicon Knights' boastful Denis Dyack held a press conference showing off the latest build of Too Human (photos) and, lo and behold, the framerate was consistent and the game looked much improved from previous demonstrations. Our hands-on impressions were decidedly mixed, however; as one commenter aptly put it, "the controls hindered Baldur's gait." Besides Microsoft, the other keynote of the conference was futurist Ray Kurzweil who, among other mind-blowing points, confirmed that by 2023 we will be injecting ourselves with plasmids. Speaking of which ... BioShockTacular! One of the Big Daddies of the conference (yes folks, plenty more puns to come!) was BioShock, with total rock star Ken Levine drawing quite a crowd. Levine et al. showed off early footage of the game, advised to keep story simple, talked Steamworks and even sent a splicer to check up on us. GDCA and IGF Awards BioShock was a major winner at the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA), walking away with honors for audio, visuals and writing (Ayn Rand woke from the dead to claim the writing award). Also announced that night were the Independent Games Festival awards, with World of Goo winning three nods and Crayon Physics Deluxe earning the Seamus McNally award. Cheer up, World of Goo fans, they already have a distribution deal for the Nintendo Wii. The best part of the award presentations were probably Mega64 and Zero Punctuation's hilarious videos. Despite three accolades, BioShock didn't win Best Game. That award went to Portal along with design and innovation nods. Portal: This was a Triumph Remember last year when Portal was just a bullet point during the Experimental Games session? A lot has changed since GDC 2007, with almost everyone singing the game's praises. The night of their GDCA win, Valve revealed that Jonathan Coulton's Portal song "Still Alive" would be featured in Rock Band. Though we missed that performance (Coulton only hit 95% on vocals), we did happen to catch his concert on Friday where he, along with Leo LaPorte and Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont, managed to fail the song live on stage (video). As one of the last sessions of the conference, designer Kim Swift and writer Erik Wolpaw delivered a Portal post-mortem (photos) for an overpacked crowd (did you see the line to get in?). Among other little details, the duo talked about the origins of the Weighted Companion Cube and the various final levels they tested. Next: Spore, Street Fighter and Nintendo
GDC08: Jonathan Coulton scores 95% vocals on Rock Band's Still Alive
It's hard not to love Jonathan Coulton (or JoCo), especially if you're a fan of Valve's Portal. The recent news that Still Alive will be coming to Rock Band as downloadable content was accompanied by JoCo's appearance at Valve's party on Wednesday. Mr. Coulton posted to his personal blog about the experience yesterday, noting that he 'only' got 95% vocals on the song he created. The question we've been asking ourselves is: who is singing the song on the track - Coulton or GLaDOS?He also noted that Portal snagged the Game of the Year, Best Game Design, and the Innovation Award nods from the GDCAs. Coulton observed that BioShock had won the GDCA award for Best Writing, a merit he thinks should have gone to Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw's work on that quirky game about tests, thinking, and cake. Luckily for Wolpaw and Faliszek, they're the first winners of the (soon to be coveted) Jonathan Coulton award; maybe the GDCAs should rename the prize for Best Audio?
GDC08: Joystiq live at the IGF and GDCA awards
6:34 pm PT -- We've arrived at the GDC's annual IGF and GDCA award show. This year we've moved up to the the tables in the front Very snazzy. So far, we've heard Pixies and Muse play overhead. We think we're hearing right now a very trance remix of the Wii Shop Channel music ... and it's wonderful.6:37 pm PT -- Lights fade, clouded scene gets up. Someone from Mega64 thanks everyone for attending IGF until it cuts into a metal music explosion. "Do not get up" We're pretty sure it's a play on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie Introduction. Simon Carless and Jamil Moledina takes the stage.6:38 pm PT -- "The show will be televised on national television" He means G4TV -- close enough, we suppose. Introducing the folks from developer Flashbang. A round of applause for the indie developers, the "heart and soul" of the industry.%Gallery-16565%
