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Writer's Guild of America recognizes game writing, announces award
Video game writing is a mixed bag, running the gamut from the thoughtful story and dialogue of Bioshock to "wizard needs food badly." Still, no form of writing should be without its accolades, and it's encouraging to see the Writer's Guild of America finally calling attention to the often-thankless field of writing for video games.The Guild's New Media Caucus has officially announced the Video Game Writing Award, which will first be presented in Los Angeles at the Writer's Guild Awards on February 9, 2008. According to GamesIndustry.biz, the award has been introduced to broaden the Guild's repertoire of acknowledged writing fields, as well as promote awareness of game writing as a craft, and hopefully raise the bar on the quality of game writing as well. No words yet on the nominees, but we can probably make a few guesses.[Via Gay Gamer]
Ratchet & Clank, SingStar and Uncharted pick up BAFTA nods
Even before they've reached store shelves, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts have nominated a number of PS3 exclusives for its annual Video Game Awards. Notably, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction is picking up a nomination for best Action & Adventure game. Heavenly Sword is competing for best Artistic Achievement. SingStar is going for best Casual game. Warhawk is getting a nod for its Gameplay, while both fl0w and The Eye of Judgment are getting nominations for Innovation.Yes, even Lair picked up a nomination on something that's hard to deny -- the soundtrack. For the complete list of nominations, click here.[Thanks, LJKelley!]
PS3 named best 'media center' by European org.
The good news for Sony: The PlayStation 3 has won another prestigious award for hardware design. The bad news: It has little to nothing to do with it's capabilities as a video game system.The European Imaging and Sound Association's convergence panel has named the PS3 the best European media center for 2007/2008. The award description cites the systems audio/video/photo playback capabilities, included 60GB hard drive, Wi-Fi, ethernet, bluetooth and surround sound support and, most importantly, the Blu-ray disc player. Oh, and they also mention, almost as an afterthought, that the system is "of course a very advanced game console and a worthy heir to the grand PlayStation heritage."We have to wonder how well Sony's convergent set top box would have done without its game-playing capabilities. Would consumers have been interested in an all-in-one TV entertainment center on its own merits, or are all these multimedia features just nice additions to a unit that's primarily meant for games. Leave your thoughts in the comments.[Via PS3Fanboy]
Nintendo wins prestigious awards at G-phoria
In case your G-Phoria watch party got too loud for you to actually hear the winners, a GoNintendo reader wrote down all the Nintendo wins and sent them in. We had our G-Phoria Scorecards all ready for the big show, but at the last minute our traditional Adam Sessler-shaped G-Phoria cake fell apart, and we cancelled the gathering out of shame. We still had to pay for the auditorium, but we think we made the right decision.Here are the winners (good luck on your betting pool!): Best Sports Game: Wii SportsBest RPG: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessStride's Longest Lasting Game: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessGame Most Deserving of an Uwe Boll Movie: Red SteelOh, G4 and their hilarious comedy awards. Zelda's not an RPG!
Harmonix CEO talks about E3 award
We hope that Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, was happy when Joystiq gave Rock Band the Best in Show Award for E3, but just in case he wasn't, the Game Critics Awards also gave them the same award just to make sure. Rigopulos recently spoke to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal about their Game Critics award saying that they took a break from beta to polish off "several crates of champagne."With all the delays lately, it's good to know that Rock Band is still on track for its holiday release. Rigopulos says all the major stuff is out of the way and they're just bug-fixing and polishing the game. He also believes that the music game genre has "finally arrived" and become a major mainstream category in games. Now we're just waiting to see if the mass produced versions of Harmonix's new guitar, mic and drum hardware (the prototypes at E3 worked well) hold up to the quality which Red Octane's guitars have -- ignoring those two weeks in April.%Gallery-3923%
LittleBigPlanet and Killzone win Game Critics Awards
Was there any doubt that LittleBigPlanet is the most original game of E3? The Game Critics Awards have named Media Molecule's 2D wonder the "Best Original Game" of E3 this year (a week after we named it the best PS3 game; and Joystiq also named it the "Best Original Game"). In addition, Killzone earned special honors in graphics -- it didn't match the visual fidelity of the original trailer, but boy did it get close. Finally, the Game of the Show was Rock Band ... a multiplatform release that'll find its way on PS3. Not a bad line-up of awards for the PS3, no? [Via PlayStation.blog]
Sony leads Develop Industry Excellence Awards in UK
Sony Europe won the Grand Prix award at the UK-focused Develop Industry Excellence Awards held in Brighton, England for "capping 12 months which have seen the firm deliver a new hardware format that has inspired developers around the world to make cutting-edge next generation games." Sega won for being the industry's "Publishing Hero" and Motorstorm won "New Console IP accolades." And apparently, although we can't quite confirm this, the event was neither a roast, nor was the Hasty Pudding theatre company anywhere to be found.A little less confusing is that Traveler's Tales won "Independent Developer" for their work with Lego Star Wars and Realtime Worlds won the "Innovation Award" for the "thrillingly original" Crackdown. (While we love us some Crackdown, nobody who isn't on their third glass of Cabernet is going to call it "thrillingly original.") But we shouldn't be so mean, the Develop Awards – judged by 100 "industry experts" – are focused on UK and Euro companies so the pool is intentionally narrowed. Check out the full list of those winners by following that Read link.
The Joystiq E3 2007 Awards
We haven't fully recovered from E3 2007 just yet, but in the final stages (there's 12, naturally) of recovery, we're told it's only proper to hand out awards for the best (and sometimes the worst) of what we saw in Santa Monica.The nominations for this year's Game Critics Awards were given out on Monday and, next Monday, we'll learn who the final winners are in categories such as Best of Show and Best Original Game. For our first Joystiq E3 Awards, we've borrowed those two categories and made a bunch of our own.So what did we like the most? Assassin's Creed, Metroid Prime 3, My Word Coach? Those were all great, but one title stood above the rest. The answers you seek lie after the break. Disclaimer: Any comments regarding Harry Potter were made prior to the release of the book and therefore do not necessarily reflect what happens in the book.
The Departed, 007: Casino Royale films snag more awards
As if moving over 100,000 units wasn't enough, those involved with the making of The Departed have yet another reason to celebrate -- right alongside the equally successful crew involved with 007: Casino Royale, of course. At the first Entertainment Merchants Association's Home Entertainment Awards to hand out honors for high-definition titles, Scorsese's latest gem managed to take home the awards for HD DVD Title of the Year as well as DVD Rental Title of the Year, while the latest in the Bond series took home Blu-ray Title of the Year. Unfortunately, these two films (Casablanca notwithstanding, which nabbed the Hall of Fame Award) were the only notable winners residing on an HD format, but we'll be interested to see how all that changes on the next go 'round.[Via HighDefDigest]
Independent Games Festival submission open call
The official Independent Games Festival website is now open for submissions for a chance to win a spot to their 2008 awards in February at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). There are $50,000 in prizes up for grabs with a $20,000 grand prize. The deadline to enter the competition is Oct. 1 2007.The IGF awards, which we've covered semi-live before, is the ever growing arena to get a feel for what today's up-and-coming developers are interested in. It's where we first get a feel for games like Castle Crashers and Darwinia. So, independent developers get cracking -- you've got three and a half months to put something award winning together.[Via GameSetWatch]
Apple Design Awards 2007
Apple has announced the winners of the 2007 Apple Design Awards, and as always, the winners are a selection of the very best of OS X applications. While a good deal of the winning developers tonight received their second or even third award, it's nice to see a bunch of smaller and lesser known first time winners mixed in. Results after the jump.
Nintendo Wii takes Engadget Awards
Nintendo Wii Fanboy is related, in an odd sort of second-cousin once-removed kind of way, to the hyper-popular Engadget, which like totally everyone reads all the time forever. As such, their annual Engadget awards are nothing to sneeze at, and so we look with great pride (we helped, after all) at their selections for 2k6. Let's take a glance at the honors: Reader's Choice: Most Innovative Peripheral Reader's Choice: Game Console of the Year Editor's Choice: Game Console of the Year Reader's Choice: Gadget of the Year (!!!) Editor's Choice: Gadget of the Year (!!!) Yeah, that's right. That means the Wii pretty much wins at life. It's quite a series of awards, but which console will take home 2007? It may come down to one showdown: Halo 3 vs. Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Which will suck up more of the average gamer's free time? Bring it, Chiefy.
The winners of the 2006 Engadget Awards!
2006 was a banner year for mobile enthusiasts; North America's 3G networks really started to come into their own, the line between "camera" and "phone" became blurrier than ever before, and smartphones cemented their place in ubiquity. Of course, all that tech made choosing last year's Engadget Awards a truly daunting task, one best left to our trusty readers -- and as usual, you've come through with some solid selections. Follow the break for the mobile winners, or hit the read link to head over to Engadget's full list!
FIRST Robotics champion crowned, Dean Kamen elated
Tossing up autonomous robots into the galaxy to perform a variety of prototypical tests is intriguing to say the least, but a trio of high-school teams were able to bring robotic competition a bit closer to home as they took home the gold in the highly-anticipated FIRST Robotics corrivalry. Cooked up by Dean Kamen (you know, the Segway inventor) in 1989, the challenge garnered entrants from a whopping 23 countries this year, and teammates from Bobcat Robotics from South Windsor, Connecticut, Highrollers from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Gompei and the HERD from Worcester, Massachusetts were able to craft the most dexterous and successful machine. Their creation reportedly excelled at "completing simple -- albeit goofy -- tasks such as shooting balls or stacking inner tubes," but we can already imagine the evil potential these innocent bots already posses. Apparently, "thousands of screaming high-school participants" were in attendance to witness the unveiling of a new champion, and if the popularity of this contest is any indication, we could be seeing these uber-intelligent, entirely autonomous robot armies being constructed an awful lot sooner than previously expected hoped.
The 2006 Engadget Awards: phones on the ballot!
We know Engadget Mobile readers are opinionated folks -- just the way we like 'em -- so go make those opinions count! The 2006 Engadget Awards are in full swing, and the Cellphone and Smartphone categories are currently up for voting. You have until this coming Monday night, April 16, at 11:59PM Eastern Time to rock the vote, so what are you still doing reading this? Make it happen!Vote - Cellphone of the YearVote - Smartphone of the Year
Yes, LocoRoco gets another award nomination
You're probably tired of these stories. We are too. LocoRoco continues to receive praise from critics around the world, and it's nominated (yet again) for a new award. This time, educational charity D&AD has nominated the happiest PSP title for a Yellow Pencil award. Yellow Pencil awards aren't just for kids games, though. Previous winners include Resident Evil 4, and other fare, like Nintendogs.LocoRoco joins Shadow of the Colossus, Buzz!, Brain Training and Wii Sports in this year's nominations. Hopefully, next time Sony gets nominated, it'll be for a new game.
Awards to recognize best in game media
Most people with minimal literacy skills know good writing when they see it. But some people, tragically, are unable to distinguish the good from the bad in games writing. For those tragically handicapped people, help is on the way in the form of Britain's Games Media Awards.Sponsored by Intent Media (publishers of British trade mag MCV), the just-announced awards will be given out Oct. 11 in London's Soho Revue Bar (not exactly the Kodak Theatre, but you gotta start somewhere). A dozen awards will be presented for everything from print publications to podcasts with winners "voted by the industry itself" according to the press release. We can only hope this means the journalism industry and not the larger game industry as a whole. We can see the potential blackmail now: "Oh, look who gave my latest game a bad review. I guess I know who I won't be voting for at the GMAs this year."
DS Daily: Do we need awards for the video game media?
We're not even sure we need awards for video games themselves, and now they're talking about awards for the members of the gaming media. Game|Life is reporting that Intent Media is looking to build a better relationship between the game developers and publishers and the folks who write about them, and apparently, they believe this is best accomplished through the giving of awards. There's probably some logic in there somewhere.While this doesn't have anything to do with the DS specifically, you guys are savvy web-browsing and news-reading types, and we figured you probably have opinions about the gaming media. Do you think awards will somehow legitimatize the gaming media? Would you be more inclined to believe a review written by an award-winning writer? Or would you yawn, idly flip through the news while sipping coffee and then go on about your day?
Girl Gamer Award nominations for 2006 -- 2007 out today
Several different girl gaming networks and groups have pulled together a mass of games from different sites, forums, and other networks devoted to female gamers, and have put together this list of the final nominees. While they encourage female gamers to log in and vote, it doesn't look like they'll be screening for X or Y chromosomes at login.We've recently been talking about developing and marketing games for females, and this is a great example of how to do that -- find out what they're playing, not tell them what they should be playing. However, in all honesty ... this looks like a list of games that could have been pulled together from sites populated by only male gamers. Further proving that the line between girl gamers and guy gamers is something created by PR and marketing, not the people who play the games.Our advice? Open up the voting to everyone, but have them identify which sex they are (Austin Powers: "Yes, please!) from the outset. Once the awards are done, give us the winners, and show us how the demographics break down by sex, age, toothbrush color, favorite type of pizza, etc. That way the marketers will see we're all just playing games.
Microsoft's posse leads in NAViGaTR nominations
The nominees for the 2006 National Academy of Video Game Testers and Reviewers (NAViGaTR) awards were just announced with Microsoft leading the pack in nominations count. Microsoft garnered 29 nominations for various games including games like Gears of War and Viva Piñata. Speaking of Gears, it's up for an amazing 16 nominations including Graphics/Technical and Game of the Year. With over 1,150 media critics, analysts, and journalists making the final decision, we'll be keeping our eyes open on May 20th to see if Gears can add to its ever expanding trophy case.[Via TeamXbox]
