The ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards were held last night at GDC – which Steerpike is still not attending, but which hasn’t stopped any of the PR people from hammering him with tech demo offers if he “stops by their booth.”
We love the DevChoice awards, because IGDA members vote on the winners, and IGDA members are almost universally developers and as such are cooler than the people who do the Spike TV awards. I am an IGDA member, and I voted, and as usual not one of my picks won a damned thing. Also as usual with DevChoice, the winners tended more toward actually deserving it than the more mainstream shock-and-awe types of award shows, where winners are generally chosen for the wrong reasons, like sales figures. One interesting aspect of this year’s awards was that the same six or seven games totally dominated every category. In a year with a fair number of unnoticed but admirable releases, I was a little disappointed to see my colleagues not dig any deeper when selecting nominees and winners. Clicky the linky for a full list of winnahs and losahs.
Game of the Year
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks)
Other Nominees: Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto 4
Best Game Design:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Other Nominees: Far Cry 2 (gag), Braid, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead
Best Writing:
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks)
Other Nominees: Far Cry 2 (retch), Braid, Grand Theft Auto 4, Metal Gear Solid 4
Best Technology:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Other Nominees: Spore, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2
Best Visual Arts:
Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)
Other Nominees: Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, Gears of War 2
Best Debut Game:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Other Nominees: Braid (Number None), Sins of a Solar Empire (Ironclad), World of Goo (2D Boy), Soul Bubbles (Mekensleep)
Best Handheld Game:
God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (Ready at Dawn)
Other Nominees: Patapon, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Echochrome, The World Ends with You
Innovation in Game Design:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
Other Nominees: Spore, World of Goo, Boom Blox, Braid
Best Audio:
Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores)
Other Nominees: LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2
Best Downloadable Game:
World Of Goo (2D Boy)
Other Nominees: Castle Crashers, Braid, N+, PixelJunk Eden
While I don’t have much complaint as far as who won and who lost, this is an unusually mainstream and homogenized crowd for the DevChoice awards. Typically you’ll see some more obscure games nominated, though they almost never win. And while we can all likely agree that Left 4 Dead, Braid, and LittleBigPlanet are important, wonderfully-designed games, to see them dominating nearly every category is a little disheartening to the variety of this medium.
Next year should be especially interesting, since 2009 is, by all accounts, going to be a real breakout for indies and small downloadables. Games like Auditorium, Love, and Blueberry Garden are hugely innovative and promise real excellence, so it will be interesting to see if they can compete with more traditional COTS titles. 
LBP won out over World of Goo or Soul Bubbles?! Cretins. God of War as best handheld? blech.
Well, at least by the end of the year most people had gotten over the GTA4 hype-machine. I didn’t see it win many GOTY awards. To think it’s regarded by many as the best game ever is kind of sad.
My favourite game was Braid, with Fallout 3 a close second. Although, I’ve only just begun to play World of Goo; it too is very clever and likable.
I am playing Fallout 3 and it is the Game of the Year for me.
But I haven’t played any of the other games so I am worthless to evaluate these awards.
But I decided to just post to say once again how much I love Fallout 3. kay
It sounds like I will have to get “Fallout 3”. I am so far behind. I have never even heard of “Braid.”
In the words of some of our friends, Braids is “just another puzzle game” and so you might not care for it too much, Ajax. If you didn’t like the hallowed genius of Portal, then you won’t like Braid, either. Of course, you never really TRIED Portal, so you will perish in flames with the rest of the unclean.
Fallout 3 was fun but I was distracted by Football Manager, Empire, Left 4 Dead, and TF2. So many games, so many babies….
Fallout 3 won for best writing? It was actually quite bad compared to even GTA4, OR Bethesda’s past works (Morrowind). The others I could let slip on merit, but no, Fallout 3’s writing was sloppy and the deliveries were often stiff. It was the second worst choice in that category (don’t know how Far Cry 2 got into any of those. Wow).
I agree, Fallout 3’s writing, while good from a general game perspective, didn’t have the complex brilliance of Morrowind’s. And Far Cry 2 was such a total disaster that there’s really no excuse for it to ever be nominated for anything.
Braid had beautiful writing, but may have been viewed as too short and too experimental a game for such a “big” award. What other un-nominated titles would have been more worthy in the writing category? I’m drawing a blank here but I know there were some good ones in 2008.
I agree, Fallout 3’s writing, while good from a general game perspective, didn’t have the complex brilliance of Morrowind’s. And Far Cry 2 was such a total disaster that there’s really no excuse for it to ever be nominated for anything.
Braid had beautiful writing, but may have been viewed as too short and too experimental a game for such a “big” award. What other un-nominated titles would have been more worthy in the writing category? I’m drawing a blank here but I know there were some good ones in 2008.