Wario Ware Grabs Edinburgh Games Festival Award

Thanks to BBC News for its article discussing GBA title Wario Ware's victory in the Edge Awards at this week's Edinburgh International Games Festival. The official webpage explains that the award honors "a willingness to prioritise creativity over a narrowly focused commercial appeal", and Margaret Robertson of Edge Magazine says of Wario Ware: "It's a game which hinges on the kind of video game literacy that millions of people across the world have built up without even realising it." Other nominees for the award included Katamari Damacy, In Memoriam, and Viewtiful Joe.

Comments

Its ironic then

[xenocide2]

That this game that depends on being well versed in video game concepts, was universally panned by my friends. They all had a try at it at EB, and they all thought it looked and was stupid and pointless. Really, about the only bright side to the game was the intro to the motorscooter levels. Monkies trump any argument I could ever make.

Re:Its ironic then

[Aerion]

Certainly not all gamers enjoy games like WarioWare, and your friends would appear to be part of the group that doesn't. But the game is very enjoyable to non-gamers. I've introduced a few of my non-gamer friends to it, and its simplicity and low learning curve is a huge plus. Yet, as the game progresses, its difficulty picks up enough to interest and challenge even veteran gamers.

A lot of people are scared away from video games because they seem so complex, but WarioWare is intuitive enough that anybody can play. That is really the game's primary strength.

That and the monkeys.

Re:Nintendo has award winners... but...

[KDR_11k]

The problem is that image and hype sell better than innovation or awards. However, Nintendo is pretty much winning the handheld arena, where Wario Ware was entered. Sony is trying to challenge them, but currently Nintendo still has a lot of momentum (read: developers'/publishers' trust) on that front and devs don't seem to be running away there. The GC is a completely different deal. Multiple blunders during the early life and bad marketing by Nintendo while facing strong marketing by the competition (leading to things like the "kiddie image") prevented the GC from grabbing a major part of the market and therefore made it a minor player in the eyes of publishers. Sure, there's the occassional third-party exclusive, but their numbers are low. Often the beancounters later on decide that a GC exclusive was a bad idea and get the game ported to the PS2 or XBox. Whether those decisions were based on facts or fiction or whether those ports actually outsell the original GC game varies, but they're being made. If that's going to continue it'll look like you can just get a PS2 (or a PS3 next round) and wait until the managers get greedy enough and port all the good games that were supposedly exclusive. I don't think a console monopoly is desirable and apparently neither do most software companies (hey, it's known how draconian Nintendo and Sony were/are when they practically own the market). Sony already has a quasi-monopoly, Nintendo and Microsoft can only deliver reasons to buy their consoles by either making them themselves or paying to keep them. Sony can reject games without the third party running to the competition, Sony has something the devs and pubs want (the largest market) and the competition to Sony cannot offer a real alternative to this. Few third-parties are in a position to tell Sony to go fuck themselves if they don't like Sony's business practices.

No surprise that Wario Ware won...

[chrispyman]

For those who have played Wario Ware (either on the GBA or GameCube, they're mostly the same game), you know how very strange of a game it is. Yet you (most people anyways) enjoy this game and somehow it becomes addictive. Probably one of the most original games to come out in recent years. It's kinda the same for Viewtiful Joe; takes the 16-bit era beat-em-ups and takes it to a whole new level.