Game Developers Choice Awards

Yay Halo made it!!

LINK:  http://www.igda.org/awards/nominations.htm

The Nominations period is now over. Nominees were announced on Tuesday, February 12th, and they are:

Game of the Year

BLACK & WHITE (Lionhead Studios)
GRAND THEFT AUTO III (DMA Design/Rockstar Games)
HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED (Bungie Studios)
ICO (Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.)
MAX PAYNE (Remedy Entertainment)

Rookie Studio of the Year

Adrenium Games for AZURIK: RISE OF PERATHIA
Bohemia Interactive Studio for OPERATION FLASHPOINT
Croteam for SERIOUS SAM
Pseudo Interactive for CEL DAMAGE
TimeGate Studios for KOHAN: IMMORTAL SOVEREIGNS

Original Game Character of the Year

Dante from DEVIL MAY CRY
Daxter from JAK & DAXTER: THE PRECURSOR LEGACY
Ico from ICO
Max Payne from MAX PAYNE
Munch from ODDWORLD: MUNCH\'S ODDYSEE

Excellence in Audio

Erik Kraber & Jack Grillo for sound design in CLIVE BARKER\'S UNDYING
Harry Gregson-Williams for composition in METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY
Josh Randall for sound design in FREQUENCY
Marty O\'Donnell & team for sound effects in HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED
Thomas Engel, Rudolf Stember & Chris Huelsbeck for sound engineering in STAR WARS ROGUE SQUADRON II: ROGUE LEADER

Excellence in Game Design

Fumito Ueda & team for game design in ICO
GTA3 team for game play in GRAND THEFT AUTO III
Lorne Lanning & Chris Ulm for story/writing of ODDWORLD: MUNCH\'S ODDYSEE
Peter Molyneux & team for game design in BLACK & WHITE
Shigeru Miyamto & team for game design in PIKMIN

Excellence in Level Design

Craig Filshie, William Mills, Chris Rothwell & James Worrall for level design in GRAND THEFT AUTO III
Fumito Ueda & team for level design in ICO
Ghost Recon team for level design in TOM CLANCY\'S GHOST RECON
Scott Campbell, Dave Jaffe, Kellan Hatch & team for level design in TWISTED METAL: BLACK
Toshihiro Nagoshi & team for level design in SUPER MONKEY BALL

Excellence in Programming

Kazunori Yamauchi & team for physics in GRAN TURISMO 3 A-SPEC
Andy Gavin for programming in JAK & DAXTER: THE PRECURSOR LEGACY
Jason Jones & team for programming in HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED
Richard Evans for artificial intelligence in BLACK & WHITE
Sherman Archibald, John Carmack & Ryan Feltrin for graphics in RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN

Excellence in Visual Arts

Dan Arey & Evan Wells for animation in JAK & DAXTER: THE PRECURSOR LEGACY
Fumito Ueda & team for art direction in ICO
Kazunori Yamauchi & team for modeling in GRAN TURISMO 3 A-SPEC
Lorne Lanning & Farzad Varahramyan for art direction in ODDWORLD: MUNCH\'S ODDYSEE
Tetsuya Mizuguchi & team for art direction in REZ

Game Innovation Spotlights

BLACK & WHITE (Lionhead Studios)
CEL DAMAGE (Pseudo Interactive)
FREQUENCY (Harmonix Music Systems)
GRAND THEFT AUTO III (DMA Design)
ICO (Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.)
KOHAN: IMMORTAL SOVEREIGNS (TimeGate Studios)
MAJESTIC (Electronic Arts)
MAX PAYNE (Remedy Entertainment)
REZ (United Game Artists)
SUPER MONKEY BALL (Amusement Vision)

Max Payne nominated for best original character?!?!? OH COME ON!

[Bobs_Hardware]

max payne didnt deserve any of those... but its still a top game

i still think GTA3 is overrated...

Wow.. Halo and ICO made almost every list... and MGS2 only made one! Talk about a surpise verdict seein as how MGS2 was getting "Game of the Show" at E3 when it wasn\'t even playable!!

glad to see one of my fave PC games get an award

Erik Kraber & Jack Grillo for sound design in CLIVE BARKER\'S UNDYING


that game rocked

Bob, we agree on something!  GTA3 is a terribly overrated game.

[Bobs_Hardware]

Originally posted by Watchdog
Bob, we agree on something!  GTA3 is a terribly overrated game.

dont get me wrong, its still fun.. and has plenty of great things about it...but c\'mon...its no Metal Gear Solid...its no Final Fantasy...pfft is alli can say  

GTA3 is not overrated at all. It\'s a great game, it\'s actually one of the few games that\'s worth buying

the Final Fantasy series is overrated IMO. What a f\'in chore to play.

It\'s nice to see that a game like ICO and the team behind it are getting the praise they deserve.

yeah ico was an awesome game. Its truely awestriking. Im glad that the developers got their props.

Originally posted by SonyFan
Wow.. Halo and ICO made almost every list... and MGS2 only made one! Talk about a surpise verdict seein as how MGS2 was getting "Game of the Show" at E3 when it wasn\'t even playable!!

actually ICo is dominating the list by far

Halo = 3 nominations

ICO = 6 nominations

still impressive though

GTA3 should be replaced by Pikmin in the innovation department, IMO.

GTA3 (no matter how awesome it is) is just a 3D sequel to GTA 1 and 2. Pikmin is new.

[Living-In-Clip]

Eh? How in the HELL did Cel Damage get any nominations?   Same with Max Payne, I mean sure it was a fun game but it wasn\'t exactly anything new, \'cept the gimmick "bullet-time".

My vote goes for GT3 and HALO the best on the PS2 and the best on the B-izox.

Final Fantasy series is overrated IMO. What a f\'in chore to play

Well I havent played all of em......but I think ff7 and ff10 are the oly too not overated games of the series. IMO ff7 is underated it appeared number 76 out of the top 100 games! It practically was the father of all RPG\'s! And GTA3 is not overated its a great game! I was suprised not to see any GC games on the Game Of the Year list. SSBM is awsome probally the best party game made. And Star Wars........it was almost as good as MGS2 and this suprised us all......MGS2 was not one of the games of the year!