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Nominations For AIAS Gaming Awards Announced
yakobusan writes "The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) just announced the finalists for the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, to be given out on March 4th in Las Vegas - there's a full list of nominees over on the AIAS site." It's noted that "Electronic Arts led the finalist count with 29, followed closely by Ubisoft and Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) with 23 and 21 finalists respectively" - highlights include Metal Arms: Glitch in the System's nomination for "Best Console Action / Adventure", and Snoop Dogg's appearance in the "Best Character Performance - Male" finalists for True Crime: Streets of LA.
Yes, and that's my professional opinion. The AIAS are a bunch of wankers.
They wouldn't know gameplay or innovation if it beat them to death with a surgical 2x4.
From glancing at the list of games (and the "members" of this organisation), it seems like they've invented these "awards" (and look how god-damned many of them there are) merely to pat themselves on the back and put a "GAME OF TEH YEAR" sticker on the box, re-issue the game in a "GOLD" edition and get additional press coverage of their products.
And I'm also pissed that none of the people that actually worked on the damn games get recognised. The only people nominated are all voice actors - hired goons that probably did all their work in a couple of afternoons - and probably never even stooped to the lows of having to set foot in the studio where the real talent worked to make the game. Programmers, artists and animators get to work 80+ hour weeks for two years - and somebody who did less than a tenth of a percent of the work in an afternoon gets a fucking award on stage.
Oh, and it's not really "winning" when there's only one nomination in a category. Yes, thank you Microsoft in category 15 - you're all winners, you're just so fucking special.
Those "awards" are wrong on so many levels.
so true. The actual creators never goet recognised nowadays - just look at invention farms. "ooh, a billion dollar idea! Here's your reward - not getting fired!"
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Let's see. There are precisely 2 noms for Console FPS. Deus Ex 2 and Rainbow Six 3 (18?).
Precisely one for one category, Family.
Oh, what are they *thinking* with these original score awards?! Call of Duty I can stomach, if just for the title screen theme. Beyond Good and Evil? Forgettable music entirely. GRABBED BY THE GHOULIES? I don't think so. Where in Christ's name is Xenosaga, eh!? *sigh* they just don't GET it.
There's an online downloadable category- Pogo has two (Poppit, Word Whomp), PopCap takes one (Zuma!) and Real's Hamsterball. Please let Popcap win.
Rikku from FFX-2 got a nod for Best Female Performance? I thought she'd be a shoo-in for best ta-^H^H^Hanimation, given the audience voting on these things...
Please, someone tell me these are BS awards.
Well, since not many people have commented yet, I can still whine without being redundant. I haven't played all the games on the list, so I'll have a pretty short response. KotOR nominated for innovation? It's a standard CRPG. Bleh. No Star Wars Galaxies or Final Fantasy XI for best MMORPG? Again, bleh. Wind Waker nominated for best character/story development? This game has characters? And Xenosaga not nominated for best original soundtrack? At least the one- and two-nominee categories prove that these guys have no idea what they're doing, so I don't feel too angry.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
or this website completly broken, none of the links work.
Such an half assed site with all links highlighting when you move the mouse over one of them.
Reported using a standard compliant browser.
The Innovation section is *really* depressing. Makes you realise how little innovation there is.
KotOR was a brilliant game (GotY IMO) but there was no innovation in it. It was just a retread of BG with a good/evil system (which has been around for ages. I remember it in Fallout 2). It was all about production values and plot and gameplay, and did those things well.
With the possible exception of PoP, only Zelda was at all innovative (BTW despite PoP, Ubisoft look to be going bust).
To top it all, the page doesn't work in Opera, which is despicable.
These awards seem designed to appeal to pseudo-hardcore gamers-the gaming equivalent of the "punk" who knows everything about Rancid and Operation Ivy, but has never heard of Blitz because they haven't been recommended by a magazine. Thanks to places like Penny Arcade, there's a thriving market of fanboys and teenagers who think Final Fantasy 6 and Snes roms are old school gaming and Japanese RPGS are underground indie games
This is what happens when they model their awards after the worst elements of the Oscars.
The nominees are just the games with the largest marketing budgets, irrespective of quality.
This is just a cynical PR exercise used to milk some cash from publishers willing to stump up to have their games nominated.
(Site doesn't seem to work properly either.)
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
who thinks their logo is a little suggestive?
meep
Michael Ironsides, however, did a tremendous job in Splinter Cell as the main character. In the on-disk bonus, he even did an extensive interview as 'Sam Fischer' and also did a lot of behind the scenes fooling around that was caught on tape. Regardless, that was the one instance in all of the games I played where a real-life professional actor actually made the game better in a way that some walk-on cousin-of-the-producer could not have. He exhibited true talent that contributed a lot to making Splinter Cell an awesome game.
Note to 'The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences': if I weren't so horribly offended by your page design BS, I would love your article. I would read it, explore your site and click on your banners and do the same, again, when the winners are announced, and I'm sure many others would too. But, now, we won't.
PS: Fuck you.
From the about infomation page : Interactive Achievement Award recipients are determined by a vote of qualified Academy members.
In otherwords games are chosen and voted for based on the amount of money the judges were bribed with. Now from the Board of Directors information page:
Gordon Bellamy, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (the guy running this whole thing)
He has played key business and product development roles at Electronic Arts, where he was named the company's Rookie of the Year for his work on the best-selling Madden Football franchise, THQ, and Activision subsidiary Z-Axis.
(sarcasm)OMFG! He had a "Rookie of the Year" award on working on Madden! Thats such a hard game/genre to improve on! Give this man a million dollars!(/sarcasm)
Check out the Game Developers Choice Awards. Their full nominations aren't up yet, but they did announce Mark Cerny (Jak, Spyro, Sonic2, Crash Bandicoot, Marble Madness!) as their hall of famer for this year...
;)
Also, there are only a few categories (no genre/platform specifics). From their rules page, voting process looks interesting - no membership/money required... Also, if you look at the "archives" section, you'll notice that almost all of the awards go to (you would assume) the specific people who did the work (need to cross check at MobyGames
PS: Also, not sure on this but I remember some noise last year about the AIAS charging publishers money to be allowed in for nominations - or something like that - google might turn something up on that...
Just FYI.