Independent Games Festival Awards Winners

The Independent Games Festival is a gathering of some of the finest minds in the fertile industry that exist outside the big games publishers. Several hits have come out of the sector over the past year, including World of Goo, Multiwinia, Braid and Tag: The Power of Paint.

The latter of that list, Tag, won the Student award, beating out 145 other entrants. Machinarium won the Excellent in Visual Art prize, and the Grand Prize went to exploration-based Blueberry Garden. Here’s the full list of winners:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Blueberry Garden, by Erik Svedang

Innovation (Nuovo) Award
Between, by Jason Rohrer

Excellence in Visual Art
Machinarium, by Amanita Design

Excellence in Audio
BrainPipe, by Digital Eel

Technical Excellence
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

Excellence in Design
Musaic Box, by KranX Productions

Best Student Game
Tag: The Power of Paint, by DigiPen Institute of Technology

Audience Award
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

D2D Vision Award
Osmos, by Hemisphere Games

Each winner walks away with $2,500, with the grand prize winner pocketing $20,000. If you’d like to play any of them, then this week only, Steam is offering discounts of between 10% and 33% off all its independent games.

(via BBC)

Gaming BAFTAs – winners announced

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Last night, the gaming BAFTA winners were announced. They went predominantly to ‘hardcore’, more traditional games and ignored more recent successes. Particularly missing out were GTA IV and the Guitar Hero/Rock Band franchises. Call of Duty 4, on the other hand, cleared up – winning three awards.

Action & Adventure: Fable II
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto IV, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider: Underworld

Artistic Achievement: LittleBigPlanet
Nominated: Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dead Space, Gears of War 2 (Eh? – ed.), Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Best Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Rock Band

Casual: Boom Blox
Nominated: Guitar Hero World Tour, Buzz! Quiz TV, LittleBigPlanet, SingStar Vol. 2, Wii Fit

Gameplay: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Grand Theft Auto IV, Left 4 Dead, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy

Handheld: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Nominated: Geometry Wars: Galaxies, God of War: Chains of Olympus, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Patapon, Soul Bubbles

Multiplayer: Left 4 Dead
Nominated: Buzz! Quiz TV, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Gears of War 2, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band

Original Score: Dead Space
Nominated: Assassin’s Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Sports: Race Driver: GRID
Nominated: FIFA 09, Football Manager 2009, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, Pure, Wii Fit

Strategy: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution
Nominated: Advance Wars: Dark Conflict, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Ninjatown, SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Tactical Strike, Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise

Story and Character: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Assassin’s Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Mass Effect

Technical Achievement: Spore
Nominated: Assassin’s Creed, Fable II, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet

Use of Audio: Dead Space
Nominated: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet, Super Mario Galaxy

GAME Award of 2008 (public voting): Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Nominated: Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Left 4 Dead, LittleBigPlanet, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Wii Fit, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Gary won’t be too happy, given how few of his original recommendations won awards. I’m fairly pleased though – CoD4 is fantastic, as is Spore, Civilization, GRID, Left 4 Dead and Fable 2. Given the competition, it’s good to see excellent games beating off the populist choices like GTA IV and Gears of War.

(via Buzzin Games)

Video Game BAFTA nominations announced – Call of Duty, GTA IV and Rock Band lead predictable line up

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The Video Game BAFTAs are nothing to do with the proper BAFTA awards that happened over the weekend. It’s different. It is, more importantly, a separate event, so you don’t get the oddly-shaped, bearded, podgy video game makers of the world mingling with the beautiful people of the film universe.

The gaming BAFTA winners will be announced this March and the Academy has just released its full, vast list of all the nominations. They’re all here, right from “Best Game” to the odd world of “Best Audio”.

You and I, the common folk, are allowed to vote in only ONE category – the GAME-sponsored “GAME Award of 2008”. Nine games are in this category – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Guitar Hero…