Well, the awards ceremony dinner of the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) just wrapped up a few hours ago at the Hilton Brisbane, and the results are in! Just like last year with Infinite Interactive and their game Puzzle Quest, this year there was another title which swept the awards. That game was of course, De Blob, by Blue Tongue who won every category they were finalists in with a total of five awards. Here are the results!
And the winners are:
Best unassigned game - indie category
Finalists:
Zompocalypse, Toadtrip
Battle scarred, University of Ballarat
Debug, Qantm college
Winner: Debug, Qantm college
Best audio
Finalists:
De Blob, Blue Tongue
Zoo Hospital, Torus Games
Winner : De Blob, Blue Tongue
Best Graphics
Finalists:
De Blob, Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, Torus Games
Winner : De Blob, Blue Tongue
Best Gameplay
Finalists:
De Blob, Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, Torus Games
Winner : De Blob, Blue Tongue
Best Mobile title for 2008
Finalists:
Dung, Firemint
Pink Slip 3, Firemint
Winner : Dung, Firemint
Best Handheld title for 2008
Finalists:
Zoo Hospital, Torus Games
MX vs ATV untamed, Tantalus
Winner : Zoo Hospital, Torus Games
Best PC title for 2008
Finalists:
Monster Jam, Torus Games
Space Chimps, Red Tribe
Winner : Monster Jam, Torus Games
Best Console title for 2008
Finalists:
De Blob, Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, Torus Games
Winner : De Blob, Blue Tongue
GDAA Award for best game of 2008
Finalists:
De Blob, Blue Tongue
MX vs ATV untamed, Tantalus
Winner : De Blob, Blue Tongue
de Blob deserves the nods,
de Blob deserves the nods, but damn, slim pickings this year...
Where's Krome?
Their games are noticeably absent.
GDAA only
I believe that the awards are only for companies that are part of the GDAA. Which Krome and some others are not.
Finalists
The games listed are the finalists in their category - there were many more that were nominated but weren't mentioned in the award ceremony (which is where I typed the info from).
For example, there were like six or seven entries in the Best unassigned game - indie category, but only three of them were listed as finalists. I'm sure the case was the same in all the other categories.
De Blob
Good to see a studio brave enough deliver such a game.
Marty
De What?
"De Blog"? LOL. What's the sequel gonna be called, De Facebook?
Whoops!
Typos fixed!
Not all typos fixed ;)
Souri,
The University of Ballarat student developed game is called 'Battle Scarred' :P
Fixed!
Sorry about that.
GCAP Vids
Hey Souri, slightly off-topic, but are you going to be posting the vids you shot of various sessions?
Cheers,
Ed Orman
Around mid-December
Hi Ed,
Unfortunately, I'm just about to start packing my luggage again because I'm flying off to Thailand and Laos tomorrow morning! I'm going to be gone until mid-December, just in time for the Modelling and Programmer challenge deadline. I'll be furiously encoding and uploading all the footage when I get back.
Damn! Jealous of your trip,
Damn! Jealous of your trip, and also looking forward to those vids.
I'll keep an eye out on the site for updates :)
Cheers,
Ed
Just thinking... isn't the
Just thinking... isn't the Thailand main airport under siege by protesters at the moment? Souri, your timing is awesome.
Yeh,
When we landed in Thailand, I saw the protestors forming outside the airport. They hadn't done enough to block things yet at that time. Anyway, they seem to be letting some flights in and out at the moment, so hopefully things will be fine when we need to fly out :X
Congrats to de Blob
We had Puzzle Quest last year and de Blob this year - Australia is on a roll with some great games!
Congrats to Blue Tongue and THQ.
John P
De Blob was a fantastic and
De Blob was a fantastic and innovative effort - congrats are definitely due. Great work Blue Tongue!
That said, where can we see the nomination list? Firemint, Torus and BlueTongue are the only companies that had finalists? I don't think Krome is a member of the GDAA, but no Pandemic or Creative Assembely or Infinite Interative or Team Bondi? Were there so few releases this year?
I'm sure De Blob would have swept the awards anyway, but the lack of variety is a little disappointing...
Any company that isn't part
Any company that isn't part of the GDAA had to pay $1000 per game, per catagory, as a nomination fee. I'd say that's a great way to turn off nominations!
That's rough... So what does
That's rough... So what does the GDAA offer to members to make them want to join?
Not a lot.
Not a lot.
According to the GDAA web
According to the GDAA web site, Pandemic and Team Bondi are not members. So unless those studios were prepared to cough up the $1000, I suppose they never entered the competition. Besides, Team Bondi would have to actually ship a game before they have any chance of winning a prize. ;)
As far as I know Infinite Interactive did not release a new game in 2008, so that explains their absence. Not sure why Creative Assembly didn't qualify though. They are GDAA members and they released "Viking: Battle for Asgard" in March 2008. Maybe the game was nominated but didn't make it to the finals?
Wow, that clears it up,
Wow, that clears it up, thanks. Huh. I am less impressed with the GDAA than I was ten minutes ago.
All the same, congrats to De Blob!
You're all wrong
Actually you're not, but I felt like a catchy subject.
As someone who was actually one of the JUDGES this year, I can tell you some categories had lots of games to narrow things down, some didn't have many. I honestly don't know the process behind submitting a game to be nominated, though I'd be interested to find out.
As far as I've been told as well, it doesn't matter if you are a GDAA member or not - you can still submit your game for nomination. I'm unaware of how much is costs though, or the difference for a GDAA or non-GDAA member. $1000 sounds steep.
Notable non-GDAA members include Pandemic, Krome, Creative Assembly (they used to be though) ...
Think about it though. Pandemic (Brisbane) haven't actually released a game since Destroy all Humans 2 (PS2). Last game Sega Creative Assembly did was before Sega even bought them - the Total War expansion - Kingdoms. Everyone else is kinda working away on their next gen titles coming out early next year, so no - not many games this year from your bigger developers.
THQ only just joined the GDAA before the awards I think, as their new Avatar game on the Wii was on of the games we could choose.
Personally I thought the big one missing was Krome. The Force Unleashed, Scene It, Hellboy, Viva Pinata (maybe?), Jedi Battles ... I think it's dissapointing they weren't there, otherwise the nominations may have been a bit closer.
AustralianGamer.com
GamersEvents.com
Vurp.com
Coming soon - GameDamage.net (a new TV show starring Yug, Matt & Yahtzee)
Right about the $1000
I can confirm from a friend who works at THQ that the GDAA do indeed charge non-members upwards of $1000 per game per category for the privilege of submitting for the awards. Pretty steep alright! Apparently that's why THQ never bothered until they became members just this year. Well they sure timed it well with De Blob.
Yug, I totally agree with you about missing Krome. They are the biggest developer in Australia, for pete's sake! I wonder why they are not members?
Because they don't have to be...
Because they are the biggest is probably one of the main reasons they arn't members. GDAA simply cannot offer them any services that Walshy can't do himself by picking up a phone.
The majority of GDAA's services appear to be geared around promoting Australian developers to overseas publishers and assisting with sending devs over to US conferences to promote themselves.
It would be nice if they were members purely so they could be more included in community events, I'm sure there is a lot their staff could teach others and be tought themselves in turn.
What specific GDAA community
What specific GDAA community events are you referring to?
AustralianGamer.com
GamersEvents.com
Vurp.com
Here's as good a place as
Here's as good a place as any:
http://www.banthisurl.com/2008/12/anti-censorship-protests-planned-for-…
Get out there or lose what you've got.