BAFTA! That’s the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to the rest of you not on an acronym basis with the academy. And they’re giving the creator of Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros fellowship props. More »
The GAME British Academy Video Games Awards are starting to be handed out in the UK. So far the official BAFTA Twitter has named a few winners.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts will bestow their highest honour at this years GAME British Academy Video Games Awards to the gather of Atari and pioneer of Pong, Nolan Bushnell.
Man, those BAFTA awards were nutty. Games in the wrong category, games nominated that weren’t even out yet…what a mess. Were the Golden Joysticks any better? We’d love to say “yes”, but are going to instead bust out a resounding “no”. Why? Because of the award’s scheduling, the winners list reads exactly like a list of…the best games of 2006. Full list of winners after the jump, but know Gears of War and Guitar Hero II feature prominently.
The 2007 British Academy Video Games Awards wrapped up yesterday, and while we’ve already brought you the list of winners and losers, we didn’t bring you what is possibly the most important thing to come out of the gaming BAFTAs every year: pictures of people getting awards in England. Luckily for us they had some sort of staff photographer on hand who seems genuinely good at what he or she does, so the day is saved! At the top you’ll see the legendary Will Wright getting his award from television producer Hilary Bevan Jones. More pictures of people I don’t recognise follow!
Gallery after the jump.
Glad to see someone else has the same opinion as me on the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Game Awards.
Back on Atomic, I did an editorial on the BAFTAs in 2005, when Half-Life 2 made a close-to-clean sweep of the proceedings. It even managed to pick up an award for Best Online, despite at the time not having an online component.
What surprised me even more was that in ’05, Peter Molyneux was on the board for the Game Awards. WTF indeed.
When that sort of crap happens, you know there’s someone behind the scenes who’s a few cans short of a six pack. From that point onwards, the BAFTA Game Awards, at least for me, became a complete joke.
Sadly, things have not improved in two years.
Carlos Bergfeld over at Shacknews has his own editorial up on this year’s awards and how he considers them to be a bumbled operation:
Looking at this year’s list of nominations as well as the official rules for eligibility on BAFTA’s site shows how the game awards have quickly become a sham. Eight of the titles nominated for awards this year had not yet been released in Europe, with seven of them unreleased in any territory, making it highly improbable that each of the category juries made up of seven to nine developers and publishers had played or even seen a significant portion of these games.
Personally – the BAFTA Game Awards should be scrapped until there are people with some, oh… I don’t know, familiarity with the industry running the show. Just stop, please, before I die from laughter.
Editorial: BAFTA’s Games Awards Have Failed Us [Shacknews] More »
The gaming BAFTAs just wound up in London. Full list of winners are after the jump, so for now, we’re just going to generalise. List the big winners, the big losers. Wii Sports, it was a big winner, cleaning up in six categories. Okami, it won too, nabbing two awards. Which is also how many God of War II took home. BioShock only won a single award, so lucky it was for Best Game. And the losers? Well, the PS3 didn’t win squat. Neither did the handhelds. Not even the DS.
Ubisoft Montreal’s Assassin’s Creed is shipping in November for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, we all know that. What gamers might not know about the medieval adventure is that it will ship with music. True story. There’s going to be music and, from what I understand, it will be featured throughout the game, not just a clever title jingle. That music—or “score” as we say in the biz—will be handled by British Academy Award winner Jesper Kyd, pictured above in the boiler room in which he keeps his prey.
Kyd has a slew of gaming soundtracks under his belt, including various Splinter Cell and Hitman jams. His musical contribution to Assassin’s Creed has been described as “fused with both traditional medieval instruments and modern synth sounds” by producer Jade Raymond. She, by the way, has great taste in sneakers. Kyd describes his own work as having been taken “to the max.” I deem this description totally badical.
More info after the jump, with a score provided by me More »
For the first time in the history of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Fellowship – the Academy’s highest accolade – will be bestowed upon a member of the video game industry. SimCity creator Will Wright is rightly receiving the honour at this year’s British Academy Video Game Awards, taking place at London’s Battersea Evolution on October 23rd. Hilary Bevan Jones, Chairman of the Academy said “Will’s immense, creative body of work and his continued contribution to the industry make him a most worthy recipient of the Fellowship and being such a pioneer, we are thrilled that he will be the first person to receive this honour”.
Past winners of the Fellowship include Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and Steven Spielberg. Congratulations Mr. Wright. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bloke. More »
