2005 Game Developer's Choice Award Winners

Quite a ceremony. The winners this year were all extremely deserving and a lot of good games received their due respect. While commentary and images from the ceremony will be available here on Slashdot later today, read on for a look at the list of winners. Best Game -
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Ken Birdwell, Gabe Newell, Jay Stelly

Innovation -
Donkey Konga (Namco / Nintendo)
Hiroshi Igarashi, Hiroyuki Onoda

Innovation -
I Love Bees (4orty2wo Entertainment / Microsoft Game Studios)
Elan Lee

Innovation -
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Keita Takahashi

New Studio -
Crytek (Far Cry)
Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli

Audio -
Halo 2 (Bungie Software / Microsoft Game Studios)
C Paul Johnson, Marty O'Donnell, Jay Weinland

Character Design -
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Ted Backman, Dhabih Eng, Bill Fletcher, Bill Van Buren

Game Design -
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Keita Takahashi

Technology -
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Yahn Bernier, Brian Jacobson

Visual Arts -
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
Sam Didier, William Petras, Justin Thavirat

Writing -
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
Marc Laidlaw

Community Contribution - Shari Graner Ray
First Penguin - Richard Bartle
Lifetime Achievement Award - Eugene Jarvis

Comments

Bonus Prize

[Ford Prefect]

... And the Prefect Award for Awesome goes to Darwinia, by Introversion Software.

Bought a copy yesterday, and have been really enjoying it. It's a bit glitchy and buggy, but I've been grinning almost constantly while playing it - they've definitely managed to nail that elusive 'fun' concept, for me at least.

I'd describe it as a cross between Cannon Fodder, Lemmings and an early Command and Conquer, all overseen by a god-like figure blatantly inspired by Sir Clive Sinclair. The Darwinians themselves are probably my favourite game characters in ages - I get really emotional when they get munched by a Virus...

Re:Bonus Prize

[Spankophile]

Are you a total fucking shill for that game or what? Do you work for the company? You keep posting about it.

Re:Bonus Prize

[88NoSoup4U88]

Maybe because he likes it, and likes to tell other people about it ?

Are you working for a competitor, that you get so wound up over it ?

Re:Bonus Prize

[Winterblink]

Not that I want to hijack the overall thread and turn it into a game review, but I'm pretty curious about this one and I haven't seen many reviews about it. Would you mind doing a bit of a writeup about it?

Re:Bonus Prize

[Ford Prefect]

I'm pretty curious about this one and I haven't seen many reviews about it. Would you mind doing a bit of a writeup about it?

Well I would, but apparently expressing a positive opinion about some random, recently released game is a definite no-no on Slashdot. One must winge, grumble and bear grudges indefinitely - cynicism and paranoia are the only acceptable behaviours!

...

Ahem!

But anyway, there's a couple of reviews on Gamerankings and there's the demo for download somewhere. I imagine it's a bit of an acquired taste - there's an interesting article from Edge magazine explaining in part why the game's so utterly peculiar.

I think I'd better shut up now, lest anyone accuses me of yet more dodgy activities... ;-)

Slightly strange choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little surprised by a couple of the choices on the list. The games mentioned are all pretty worthy games, but I'm not sure the order here is "right" (in as far as something so subjective can ever be right).

The writing award for HL2 strikes me as particularly odd. HL2 was a good game, but I found the writing distinctly disappointing. The plot felt tired and lazy (and lacked a proper ending) and the dialogue was cheesy in the extreme. I kind of see Valve's point about not wanting to have cutscenes where the player doesn't control the character, but ultimately, I don't think this is worth the credibility hit you take from having a main character who goes through the game entirely mute (particularly where said character is apparently supposed to be both an academic and a charismatic resistance leader). Quite frankly, Doom 3 had a better plot, which isn't saying much. If I had to make a pick for writing, I'd probably go for KOTOR 2 (this came out in 2004 in the States, didn't it?).

World of Warcraft as the pick for visual arts also seems a bit of a strange choice. The game has some strengths, but quite frankly, its visuals seem pretty dire after the first hour or so, when you realise that they consist of extremely low-detail models and a few fancy lighting effects. I know MMORPGs are never visual powerhouses, but quite frankly, the two-year-old FFXI looks better. Doom 3 and Farcry are the only real contenders on the PC I can think of for this category. The Japanese release of Gran Turismo 4 (December 04) should have put it in the running on the console side, while Burnout 3 and Halo 2 were also visually stunning in both technical and aesthetic senses.

On the plus side, it's nice to see Crytek being recognised as best new studio. Farcry wasn't perfect, but it's still damned impressive on its own merits, even if it hadn't been Crytek's debut game.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[syphoon]

I think the writing award for HL2 was entirely deserved. The HL2 writing and storyboarding was very much done respecting the rule of "Show, don't tell". Most of the HL2 story isn't told in dialogue. It isn't forced upon the player via cut-scenes. This is tremendously important in a first person perspective, because suddenly switching into a cut-scene (ala Doom 3) is a great way of breaking player immersion and the illusion that you are Gordon Freeman.

Yes the Mossman betrayal was foreseeable from the E3 demo more than a year before the game was even released. Yes there were lots of tired dialogue and plot chunks. But this was true for the original Half-Life. HL2 won the award because the story in a game is far greater than just the plot and dialogue. In an interactive environment, how you tell it makes all the difference in the world.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Ford Prefect]

Yes the Mossman betrayal was foreseeable from the E3 demo more than a year before the game was even released.

But was it a betrayal?

Play through the section where you oversee her conversation with Breen again - what she actually says is somewhat more ambiguous than it first appeared, and it's mainly due to Alyx fearing the worst that you assume that Mossman has completely turned to the Combine's side.

Naive, yes, used by Breen, definitely, but evil? Perhaps not. Turning in a rather nasty, violent thug-for-hire in return for her and Eli being left alone by the Combine doesn't seem so bad after all. Abandoning Alyx at the teleporter was foolish, but perhaps Mossman wanted to plead with Breen for a non-violent capture and release?

It's definitely not a perfect game, and some of the dialogue is admittedly a bit cheesy, but personally I can't fault the world, the plot and its portrayal. If anything, its telling is just too subtle - noticing that the clocks in the railway station were all lacking hands messed with my brain far more than yet another lame zombie attack in Doom 3...

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Mukaikubo]

I'd make the argument for Vampire: Bloodlines having the best writing/plot of all the 2004 games. Buggier than a roach motel after the nukes go off, but tanj if that plot didn't have me fighting through all the gamebreaking plot thingies to see what happened next.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Anonymous Coward]

As I said in the grandparent post, I can see why Valve reasoned the way they did, regarding non-interactive cutscenes. However, I personally found being able to accept the idea of a completely mute progragonist (and the fact that npcs don't find this particularly strange) to be a far bigger obstacle to the suspension of disbelief. At the very least, Valve could have offered some dialogue options, or provided a voice for Gordon.

A couple of the background "plot items" were somewhat funky, but, let's face it, most of them revolved around reading posters to gain insight into the less than inspirational back-story. This is basically the same as Doom 3's PDA system and at least Doom 3 made a (pretty decent) attempt to be atmospheric about it.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[inkless1]

"Show, don't tell" is instructive of not explaining your situation overtly, not avoiding the story entirely like Half-Life 2 does.

While HL2 had excellent immersion and set scenes, it's story was completely lacking. There's never any depth into Gordon's missing time, you get the background of the war from a stupid bulletin board, and virtually no character undergoes any kind of change.

Yes, they did great on the how - but great stories are based on the what. HL2 was all style and no substance. There's no depth to the combine, no real explanation of it's formation, no understanding of the "city" system. It's a pretty surface, but once you scratch it - there's nothing underneath.

But I've rambled on this before...

Re:Slightly strange choices

[illumina us]

This is perhaps because HL2 is a connecting piece between HL1 and perhaps the 3rd installment. Why would people question Gordon's missing time? They thought he was lost after the Black Mesa incident.

Of course no one talks about the war or anything like that. I mean c'mon these people are supressed. They feel as if they say something wrong they will be shot or sent to Nova Prospekt. Moreover, it wasn't really much of a war. More like a hostile take over. If I remember right it didn't last more than a few days.

I don't see how you say no character changes. If you are referring to HL and HL2 characters then they indeed do change. In fact it's difficult to perceive characters even existing in HL compared to the depth of characters in HL2.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I know MMORPGs are never visual powerhouses, but quite frankly, the two-year-old FFXI looks better [than World of Warcraft].

Have you ever played FFXI, or just seen screenshots? FFXI most certainly does not look better than WoW. FFXI manages, somehow, to have the most washed-out environment that I've ever played in. Everything looks like it was done in pastels. There's no color, anywhere.

Even better, the environments are exceedingly bland. Each zone will basically be all solid one color. (Well, solid texture...)

I wish I could point out screenshots, but FFXI - doesn't offer any! (Well, that's not entirely true, there's a "screenshot gallery" link that opens a JavaScript popup, but that apparently is for user-submitted screenshots that are supposed to have some theme. And they actually all look worse than the game really does, due to the scaling and JPEG artifacts created by the game's screenshot JPEG compression routine.)

WoW has a nice screenshot gallery which won't really help explain what I'm talking about. I guess the best bet is to go here and watch it pan around a zone and note that the zone basically always looks the same.

The screenshot I linked to for WoW is an oasis in The Barrens. When you move away from that, you're in a large grassy plains surrounded by mountains. It's really quite beautiful.

The art is WoW is flat-out better. The interface is much easier on the eyes and easy to use. The graphics are, simply, better. The only thing I'll grant you is the player models. Honestly, I like the player models in FFXI better. But when it comes to the overall artwork - the scenery, the user interface icons, the monsters - WoW's art is better.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[LincolnQ]

I totally agree that Crytek deserves their prize. For the rest of the choices (besides community contribution), I feel like they didn't try very hard. :) Half-Life 2 was pretty good but I don't think it deserved all that it got, and I like hearing about lesser games rather than the ones pushed hard. Katamari Damacy is cool, too, and perhaps that deserved game design, but again it seems like an obvious choice (people talk about it all the time in how it's so quirky and unique).

Anyway, this list isn't very exciting because it doesn't make me go "ooh, I have to try that" -- I've played everything here.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[inkless1]

Why would people question Gordon's missing time? They thought he was lost after the Black Mesa incident.

Riiight. So he magically disappears, the whole world is taken over by aliens, magically reappears, is now a folk hero and that just makes sense and by NOT explaining any of that in detail - Valve is telling a good story?

You could barely remember the details of the backstory. If Valve had told a real story, these details would still be fresh in your mind.

And no, I'm not talking about a character change from HL to HL2, I'm talking about characters having enough depth to be dynamic in the story itself. It's definately an improvement to HL1, but we're not talking Halo here.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Torgo's Pizza]

> I think the writing award for HL2 was entirely deserved.

> Yes the Mossman betrayal was foreseeable from the E3 demo more than a year before the game was even released. Yes there were lots of tired dialogue and plot chunks.

By your own statements, HL2 shouldn't have won. Dialogue and plot are key elements to writing. I think too many people were suckered in by the glossy companion book. Frankly, if you need an additional book to explain what should have been in the game in the first place, you don't deserve to be called a writer.

The King of Cosmos made more sense than Half-Life 2.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[Poseidon88]

I think you're missing the point of these awards. Everything is subjective. Just because you found the writing in HL2 to be lacking, doesn't mean everyone felt the same. Besides, writing is more than just dialogue. It's how you choose to expose the plot and how immersed the player feels. Personally, I think HL2 totally deserved this award. Like a really good suspense novel, I was so engrossed in the plot that I couldn't put it down. It expanded on, and deepened the plot of the original game, but left us hanging and wanting more at the end.

And as for visuals, keep in mind the award is for "visual arts," not "most eye-poppingly realistic graphics." MMO graphics are almost always a balancing act between making them look good and making them perform well on a wide range of machine specs. Blizzard went in a completely different direction from most games. Instead of striving for realism, they made everything cartoonish and exaggerated. Despite the low-poly models, the visuals have a great deal of life and charm. The fact that they were able to make it look good and still perform well when there are large numbers of players on screen is both an artistic and technological achievement.

Again, it's all just subjective, but I think all of the awards given were well deserved, if not necessarily what I would have chosen.

Re:Slightly strange choices

[t2h3c]

You cannot complain that HL2's writing was bad because it lacked a proper ending and then endorse KOTOR2 as the deserved winner. KOTOR2 had a MUCH more dissapointing ending than HL2 in my mind.

Tunnel vision

[Winterblink]

I can never get over small the scope is when determining what games are eligible for winning. World of Warcraft winning for visuals? Ok it runs smooth and the environments are well constructed, but look no further than EVE Online for a game that literally looks like space art in motion. Put simply, the game is beautiful, and doesn't require a top of the line computer to run properly. Technically speaking, that alone is an achievement in engine design.

I guess if a game doesn't have a huge following or massive launch it's not win worthy?

Re:Tunnel vision

[Poseidon88]

I guess if a game doesn't have a huge following or massive launch it's not win worthy

Uh, Eve was launched in early 2003. I think that's what makes it inelligible for a 2004 award.

Darwinia

[Marran Gray]

I'm not sure whether this is an appropriate occasion for this discussion, but because Winterblink asked: Darwinia is an odd sort of real-time strategy game, which doesn't depend too much on amassing hordes---in fact, one of the tech development paths allows you to increase your number of simultaneous "processes" from the initial value of only 3. It has a unique interface, a unique pseudo-retro graphical style, and an absolutely amazingly original concept. Everything beyond that is said best by the demo; visit http://www.darwinia.co.uk/.

I really, really love BEES!

[Mukaikubo]

I think the fact that I Love Bees- a niche, cultish classic if ever there was one- won the award for Innovation tells you that no, it's not just about sales figures that determined what game got what award. To all the lovely, lovely blokes at 4orty2wo Entertainment- HURRY UP, I NEED ANOTHER HIT FROM THE CRACK PIPE.