Thatgamecompany's adventure title beats out Mass Effect 3, Walking Dead, and others to secure top honor; Cart Life wins grand prize at Independent Game Festival Awards.
The votes are in and has taken top honors at the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards this evening in San Francisco, California. Journey not only took home the top award, but also accolades for innovation, best visual arts, best downloadable game, best audio, and best game design.
Thatgamecompany's adventure game beat out to secure the Game of the Year Award.
Jenova Chen, cofounder of Thatgamecompany, thanked his parents and his educators for helping him get where he is today. He said creating Journey was no easy task, but noted he has learned a great deal since beginning on his own journey to make the game.
The 2013 Game Developers Choice Awards was hosted by Double Fine founder Tim Schafer. Last year's winner was .
The GDC Awards were preceded by the 15th annual Independent Games Festival Awards, where Cart Life took home the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In addition to the top prize, Cart Life--developed by Richard Hofmeier--won the excellence in narrative and nuovo award.
A full list of the night's nominees with winners in italics follows below.
GAME DEVELOPERS CHOICE AWARDS
Game of the Year
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Best Debut
Humble Hearts (Dust: An Elysian Tail)
Polytron Corporation (Fez)
Giant Sparrow (The Unfinished Swan) Subset Games (FTL: Faster Than Light)
Fireproof Games (The Room)
Best Game Design
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)
Best Downloadable Game
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull)
Trials: Evolution (RedLynx/Microsoft Studios)
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Best Technology Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
PlanetSide 2 (Sony Online Entertainment)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Treyarch/Activision)
Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Gravity Rush (SCE Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment) The Room (Fireproof Games)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (Sora/Nintendo)
Best Narrative
Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Entertainment/2K Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks) The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Virtue's Last Reward (Chunsoft/Aksys Games)
Best Visual Arts
Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software/2K Games) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)
Innovation
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios) Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment)
ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)
Ambassador Award Chris Melissinos, curator of The Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games exhibit
Pioneer Award Spacewar creator Steve Russell
Audience Award Dishonored
Lifetime Achievement Award BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
INDEPENDENT GAMES FESTIVAL AWARDS
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Excellence in Visual Art
Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan) Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Guacalamelee! (Drinkbox Studios)
Loves in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base)
Year Walk (Simogo)
Excellence in Narrative
Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games) Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Gone Home (The Fullbright Company)
Excellence In Design
Samurai Gunn (Beau Blyth) FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth)
Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh)
Super Space (David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard/DigiPen)
Excellence In Audio
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Bad Hotel (Lucky Frame) 140 (Jeppe Carlsen)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
Pixeljunk 4AM (Q-Games)
Nuovo Award Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Spaceteam (Henry Smith)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Bientot l'ete (Tale of Tales)
7 Grand Steps (Mousechief)
MirrorMoon (SantaRagione + BloodyMonkey)
VESPER.5 (Michael Brough)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Audience Award FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
While there have been morsels of PlayStation 4 information doled out since the consoles coming out party, Sony really hasnt had the chance to speak at length about the product since February. At least, not until today. Here in San Francisco, Sony Computer Entertainment America Senior Staff Engineer Chris Norton hosted a Game Developers Conference panel titled Developing for the PS4.
While a lot of the speech was heady technical stuff, there were some very interesting reveals. Here they are.
Labels boss Frank Gibeau says digital rights management "not a viable strategy" for gaming at large.
Digital rights management (DRM) is a broken system, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau told this week at the Game Developers Conference.
"DRM is a failed, dead-end strategy; it's not a viable strategy for the gaming business," Gibeau said.
The EA executive's comments came in response to a question about whether or not was actually a form of DRM. Gibeau insisted this is not the case.
"That's not the reality; I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once," he said. "For the folks who have conspiracy theories about evil suits at EA forcing DRM down the throats of Maxis, that's not the case at all."
SimCity launched earlier this month amid , marking the best start in franchise history.
Labels boss Frank Gibeau says digital rights management "not a viable strategy" for gaming at large.
Digital rights management (DRM) is a broken system, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau told this week at the Game Developers Conference.
"DRM is a failed, dead-end strategy; it's not a viable strategy for the gaming business," Gibeau said.
The EA executive's comments came in response to a question about whether or not was actually a form of DRM. Gibeau insisted this is not the case.
"That's not the reality; I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once," he said. "For the folks who have conspiracy theories about evil suits at EA forcing DRM down the throats of Maxis, that's not the case at all."
SimCity launched earlier this month amid , marking the best start in franchise history.
Sony went into a deep dive on the PlayStation 4 during a session at the 2013 Game Developers Conference today, giving attendees details on the console's user interface, account features and social functionality.
Chris Norton, senior staff engineer from the strategy team for developer services and support at Sony Computer Entertainment America, showed off the console's interface and pointed out that it will show information about a game including comments from other players and downloadable content before you boot up a game.
Today at a panel during the Game Developers Conference, developer Hideo Kojima confirmed that both The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes make up Metal Gear Solid 5.
Sony teases size of hard drive for next-gen platform; new "play-as-you-download" feature aims to alleviate frustrations over loading screens.
Today during a PlayStation 4 panel at the Game Developers Conference, Sony teased that the next-generation platform will have a "very large" hard drive. Senior staff engineer at Sony's strategy team Chris Norden offered the tease, but would not give a specific figure.
"There's also going to be a very large hard drive in every console," Norden said.
Also during Norden's hour-long PS4 discussion, he explained that the system is designed around features and specifications that core gamers expect from a next-generation platform. At the same time, however, he made clear the PS4 should also be fun and accessible for the entire family.
Norden also spoke of a "new paradigm" in gaming when everything and everyone is connected. He explained that in the PS4 generation, even the traditional single-player experience becomes a connected experience through in-game services and features.
One example Norden provided was a feature that allows players to see in-game choices their friends made in real-time. This was shown in the context of Heavy Rain, allowing the player--when confronted with a choice--to see how their friends reacted to the situation.
Another point Norden pressed in his talk was the overhaul of the PlayStation 3 download process for the PS4. He opened up on the platform's new "play-as-you-download" feature that allows gamers to start playing a game almost immediately after they make a purchase.
This is made possible by games being split into "chunks," the first of which is small enough to download "pretty much immediately" so players can get started right away. Sony will encourage developers to create a bare minimum amount of data for this first chunk, which could be an introduction movie or a character creation menu, among other things.
This is all an effort to minimize time spent looking at loading screens, which was a pain point on PS3, Norden said.
"What we want to do is be able to have people play the game immediately. We don't want to have people sit there and wait like you did on the PS3," Norden said. "Let's say you initiate a download and then you go off and make a sandwich or go out to dinner and then come back and hope it's finished downloading. And then you have to wait for another install. We don't want that anymore. That's just not a good user experience."
The Verge: One of the lone pieces of hardware that Sony decided to reveal at its PlayStation 4 event last February was the new DualShock 4 controller, and now the company is showing it off in person at this year's Game Developers Conference.
The controller looks quite nice in person there's a nice matte finish to the hardware and the light bar on the back gives it a real Tron vibe.
