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Special Hugo Award For Videogames
techno-vampire writes "Every year, the Hugo Awards are given out at the World Science Fiction Convention, and each year's convention is allowed one special category. This year's convention, LACon IV, has decided to honor The Year's Best Interactive Video Game. As the announcement explains, games have changed over the years. 'No longer the simple flickering photons of Pong or Asteroids, the improvement in computer chips has given games not only better graphics but the capability of more involving, fully developed stories.' The time may have come that they deserve such a honor, and this year's special award is a test, to find out if they're ready."
I think it's great that they're trying something new, but I'm surprised video games gets a category before sequential art, since the latter has actually been nominated for existing category awards in the past.
Alex.
After all, he walked out of the hugos over the rise of fantasy. Now video games? Bah!
While a huge number of games have Sci Fi plots, a lot of the contenders for the title of 'best' do not. Will they ingore the next tetris/nintendogs/gran turismo/WWII Fps game or will they give the award to something inferior that fits into the right genre?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It has transdimensional travel!
GPL Deconstructed
From the nomination form, the game must be original (not a remake of another story/game, or a port from a different platform) and it must have been released in 2005. I can't think of a single game that meets those criteria and deserves the right to be the first Hugo winner for video games.
That said, I also second the above opinion that sequential art deserves its own category first.
Anm
Only members of the convention can nominate or vote. That's what makes them so prestigious: they're awarded by the fans. Not the authors, or the publishers, or the retailers or the critics, but the people who actually buy and use the books, films, games etc. are deciding what's best. However, if you can't attend, you can buy a supporting membership, for less money. You get all the progress reports, the program, the handouts that the attending members get and voting rights, including the right to vote on where it's held. All you don't get is the right to attend, but if you can't anyway, who cares?
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They deserve one of those "lifetime achievement" awards for the Myst series.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Since it's for this year's games, I'd say Shadow of the Colossus would be the easy guess. (I believe Hugo Awards also apply to fantasy works, which is a good thing because there are very few recent video games could be considered "science fiction.")
Rob
If they want to give a Hugo to best SF-themed game, I'm all for that... though I'll probably nominate something from Cheapass.
It's science fiction, released in 2005, and an awesome game as well.
I won't say it can't be done, but you'd probably need several hundred votes. That's at least $100/"member" for the supporting membership, possibly more, so there's ten to twenty thousand dollars invested, just to have a good chance. I doubt anybody'd find it worth their while.
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