BAFTA Game Awards Announced

13 Jan 2009 at 12:20:45 by Andy Alderson

The British Academy of Film and Televisual Arts (BAFTA) has announced the British Academy Video Games Awards will take place on 10 March in the London Hilton.

The awards, running since 2003, span 13 catgeories including Action & Adventure, Artistic Achievement, Casual, Gameplay, Multiplayer, Original Score, Sports, Strategy, Story & Character, Technical Achievement, Use of Audio and Best Game. This year will also see the introduction of the new Handheld award as well as the new Gift of the Academy award for games or gaming technology worthy of special recognition.

2K's Bioshock took the coveted Best Game award last year (mystifyingly, Kane & Lynch was also nominated) while Realtime Worlds' excellent Crackdown took the Action & Adventure title.

The Academy will also bestow its highest honour, The Fellowship, upon one lucky individual to mark their outstanding contribution to the industry. Last year's winner was Spore creator Will Wright.

BAFTA, in an effort to promote games as an art form, has also encouraged the publishers and developers of nominated games to produce films, highlighting the development process. The films will then be hosted on the BAFTA site as well as general gaming sites.

"We are keen to see the new filmed support material be developed by each nominee," said chairman of the Academy's game committe, Ray Maguire "as this is the sort of initiative that helps the wider world understand that the creation and development of video games is an art form, often with teams of hundreds of people and budgets on a par with feature films."

"One of the many strengths of the British Academy Video Games Awards is that the focus is on creativity and innovation as opposed to a simple measure of commercial success", he added.

"This enables niche but highly creative work to be recognised and rewarded."

The nominees for each category will be announced on 10 February.

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