BAFTA Video Game Award Winners
October 24th, 2007 by Will Prusik in Articles, News
Last night awards were handed out in Britain by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in their second annual celebration of creative innovation and excellence in the video game industry. With big contenders like Bioshock, Crysis and God of War 2 all vying for multiple awards the biggest winner wasn’t one you’d expect. Nintendo took home six different awards- but none went to Twilight Princess. Wii Sports took home awards in the ‘casual’, ’sports’, ‘gameplay’, ‘innovation’, ‘multiplayer’ and ’strategy and simulation’ categories. All but one of the awards went to console games– the sole PC award was given to Football Manager 2007 in the ‘PC World Gamer’s award’. Not surprising given that this category is the only publicly voted one, and Football Manager 2007 was the only actual PC game in the running for that award. The PS2 netted more awards than the Xbox 360, with two awards going to Okami and two more for Kratos and God of War 2. Microsoft’s console brought home three, which is only a narrow margin and possibly made up for with the ‘best game’ win by Bioshock. Crackdown netted the ‘action and adventure’ and ‘best use of audio’ categories. The competition for next years’ awards should be intense with titles like Halo 3, GTA IV, Mass Effect, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and more all on their way.
October 24th, 2007 at 7:25 am
[...] Karl B. wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptNintendo took home six different awards- but none went to Twilight Princess. Wii Sports took home awards in the ‘casual’, ’sports’, ‘gameplay’, ‘innovation’, ‘multiplayer’ and ’strategy and simulation’ categories. … [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 9:01 am
How do you have a game of the year award in Oct. a month before a slew of amazing games come out … how do you just eliminate them so easily? I guess these dudes really liked Bioshock so they didn’t even want to wait for Crysis, Mass Effect, CoD4, UT3, or even Gears on the PC. And how is Gears of War for the 360 even nominated for any awards when it came out in 2006 and already won a bunch of GoTY awards for 2006? This is a joke and I cannot take it seriously even though they honored God of War 2.
What is the cutoff date for this year … I don’t get it? Why would Halo 3 … a game released in September be up for any 2008 awards and not 2007 awards? That makes no sense at all to me? Who the hell is running this thing?
October 24th, 2007 at 9:27 am
I think the cut off is sometime in the summer. Games released after that participate in the next year’s competition… or something like that. Still doesn’t explain Gears of War, as it won in 2007… perhaps they changed the rules.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Nope that isn’t it either … if you look at the complete list you can see it includes games that are not even released yet as well as The Orange Box. Nope there is no explaining these awards man … they are fubared. A summer cutoff point is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. None if it makes any sense.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I meant Gears won in 2006, but anyway, it’s very strange indeed.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:48 am
If you go onto the BAFTA site you can find an area where publishers can enter their games to be judged. It’s likely that the games on the list which weren’t officially released yet were put into the running nonetheless. The website also lists the entry date as having been closed on July 17th of this year. Presumably games like Halo 3 will be eligible for entry into next years’ awards. As for why the Xbox 360 version of Gears was included in the 2007 awards: the game came out in November and the 2006 Awards were scheduled for the fifth of October. Check their website for the list of past contenders and winners. Gears Of War wasn’t submitted in 2006.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Anuban- check the website, Crysis was in the running. So was Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction was another unreleased game that was submitted to the competition. Unfortunately that’s one of the biggest flaws of the awards ceremony: only the games which are submitted can win. I personally don’t understand why you’d submit an unfinished game to something like this, but I suppose if your game did win it’d be likely to generate some good publicity.