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2005 Game Developer's Choice Award Winners

Posted by Zonk on from the and-the-winner-is dept.

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

5 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Bonus Prize by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... 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...

    --
    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    1. Re:Bonus Prize by Spankophile · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

  2. Re:Slightly strange choices by syphoon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Slightly strange choices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Slightly strange choices by inkless1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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...