Flight Control, which uses the touchscreen to enable the player to draw flight paths at an increasingly congested airport, has been a huge hit for Firemint this year and remains one of the best-selling games on the iPhone’s app store.

“Congratulations to Firemint on their success at the 2009 GDAA Industry Awards. Flight Control has been a phenomenal success and has really been responsible for the creation of an entire new genre on iPhone. We’re very proud that this title was developed in Australia,” said Tom Crago, President of the Game Developers’ Association of Australia.

The other major awards saw the now-defunct Transmission Games scoop Best Console Title for Heroes Over Europe and Infinite Interactive take Best PC Title and Best Handheld Title for Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.

Here’s the full list of winners:

Best Game
Flight Control
Firemint

Best Console Title
Heroes over Europe
Transmission Games

Best PC Title
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Infinite Interactive

Best Handheld Title
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Infinite Interactive

Best Mobile Title
Flight Control
Firemint

Best Game Play
Flight Control
Firemint

Best Graphics
Heroes over Europe
Transmission Games

Best Audio
Heroes over Europe
Transmission Games

Best Downloadable Title
Shatter
Sidhe

Independent Games – Best Unsigned Game
Hazard: The Journey of Life
Alexander Bruce

Independent Games – Best Game Play
Last Life
Powerboard Productions

Independent Games – Best Graphics
Pillager
AIE Melbourne

Presenting at the Game Connect: Asia Pacific conference in Melbourne, the always quotable Jaffe was asked for his views on games classification in Australia and how he feels about the possibility of having to edit or self-censor his own games.

“There’s a government board and if they say it’s too offensive, in that case there’s no fight to fight — it is what it is,” he said. “There’s not much you can do if you’re making games aimed at a mature audience. We never like to cut it, but what are you going to do? You’re dealing with governments.

“There’s absolutely an inconsistency in the consciousness about video games. The reality is people still see a lot of these things as kids’ toys. It’s utter BS.”

Jaffe’s original God of War, its sequel and the PSP’s Chains of Olympus were all rated MA15+ for violence and sexual references by the Australian Classification Board. God of War III has yet to be classified.

Jaffe also hinted at his plans for the future with his development studio, Eat Sleep Play, suggesting he’s working on a very mainstream title for the PlayStation Network. Read more at the link below.

David Jaffe on his next title and Aussie game censorship [ITWire]

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image is hosting the Best of the Independent Games Festival 2009 at its Federation Square, Melbourne, gallery. The exhibition runs from Tuesday, December 8 through to Sunday, February 14, and is open from 10am to 6pm daily. Oh, and entry is free.

There, you’ll be able to check out ten of the best games entered into the IGF Awards for 2009, among them the eventual grand prize winner, Blueberry Garden (pictured), and the as-yet-unreleased Night Sky from Knytt and Cave Story Wii developer Nicalis. The full list is:

* Blueberry Garden, Eric Svendang, Sweden. Winner – Seumas McnNally Grand Prize
* Machinarium, Amanita Design, Czech Republic. Winner – Excellence in Visual Art
* Brainpipe, Digital Eel, USA. Winner – Excellence in Audio.
* Musaic Box, KranX Productions, Ukraine. Winner – Excellence in Design.
* Cortex Command, Data Realms, USA. Winner – Technical Excellence.
* Osmos, Hemisphere Games, Canada. Winner – D2D Vision Award.
* PixelJunk Eden, Q-Games, Japan. Nominated – Excellence in Visual Art.
* The Graveyard, Tale of Tales, Belgium. Nominated – Excellence in Visual Art.
* Night Sky, Nicalis, USA. Nominated – Seumus McNally Grand Prize.
* Eufloria, Alex May & Rudolf Kremers, UK.

Best of the Independent Games Festival 2009 [ACMI]

Organised by the Game Developers Association of Australia, GCAP is centred this year on the theme: Create Innovate Thrive. It’s very much a development focused conference, bringing the local development community together and in touch with numerous overseas guests.

Epic’s Jay Wilbur will be discussing his experience with the Unreal Development Kit on a panel titled “No point Re-inventing the Wheel. How to Make the Most of Middleware” alongside fellow middleware suppliers Brian Waddle from Image-Metrics and Tim Mower from Havoc.

Jaffe (pictured) will appear via videolink for a Q&A session hosted by the hosts of ABC TV’s Good Game television program. (Bonus points for the first person to get the opinionated designer to swear profusely.)

Yahtzee will join a critics’ discussion panel featuring Screen Play’s Jason Hill and Good Game’s Bajo and Hex to debate what they hate about video games.

Other speakers include Tim Stellmach from Vicarious Visions and formerly Looking Glass Studios, ex-Irrational and now indie designer Farbs, and Justin Halliday from what used to be known as Transmission Games.

The conference runs from Sunday, December 6 to Tuesday, December 8. Register now at the GCAP website.

Game Connect: Asia Pacific [site]

Soundbytes is celebrating its first birthday with its fifth gig in Melbourne tonight. The venue is the Queensberry Hotel (cnr of Swanston and Queensberry) and just $10 will get you inside for six sets of chiptunes, ie. music that sounds very much like old video game music.

Soundbytes 5 [DPad, thanks Drew!]

Former Krome employees have apparently contacted Australian Gamer to let them know about the layoffs. Further redundancies have apparently also taken place at Krome’s Melbourne office as well.

Krome is Australia’s largest game development studio and creator of the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger franchise. Recent titles include Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes (pictured), Scene It? Box Office Smash, the Wii and PS2 versions of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the PS2 and PSP versions Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Krome is currently working on Blade Kitten, an action game that has yet to find a publisher.

It’s been a tough year for Aussie game development. First, Pandemic Brisbane was shut down after the failure of its Batman project then Melbourne’s Transmission Games suffered severe cuts ahead of the studio’s eventual closure last month. Now it’s Krome’s turn. We hope everyone affected by the layoffs lands on their feet as quickly as possible.

Friday the 13th hits Krome Studios [Australian Gamer]

The highlights will be at Liverpool Westfield in Sydney and Knox City Shopping Centre in Melbourne, the two stores designated to host what EB predict will be the biggest gaming launch ever in Australia.

“EB Games are extremely excited to be the premier launch destination of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. We look forward to being an integral part of this historic event as this will be the biggest gaming launch in Australian history,” says Shane Stockwell, EB Games merchandising director.

“We are expecting tens of thousands of people to come out at midnight to get this game, it will definitely be a sight to see and I would encourage everyone to come along and be part of these very special events right across Australia.”

Those heading down to the two official midnight launches will be in the running to win a bunch of prizes, too, including:

* Dress in camo and get your head shaved for your chance to win a Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Xbox 360 console
* Free cans of V energy drink
* Energizer Torches
* Plus the chance to get a free upgrade from Standard Edition to Hardened Edition

Oh, and if you’re going, don’t forget to take some pics and send them to us.

Transmission recently laid off a third of its staff after failing to secure several lucrative publishing deals. Today, the entire studio has shut its doors with the remaining staff made redundant.

We’ve heard that the studio went into liquidation this morning and an administrator has been appointed. However, no official statement has been forthcoming.

Any studios in Melbourne looking to hire, there’s now a bunch of talented developers looking for a new gig.

We mentioned the news that Film Victoria was increasing funding to local developers of downloadable games. But the speakers at the Summit spoke about a range of issues affecting not just developers, but gamers too.

The Summit’s organisers have just made available via their website five videos, including talks from international guests such as David Edery, former manager of Xbox Live Arcade, and Simon Carless, head of the Independent Games Festival. Joining them were local developers including Krome’s Rob Walsh, Halfbrick’s Shainiel Deo and Firemint’s Rob Murray.

Watch them below.

Digital Distribution Summit – Sandra Sdraulig Opening & David Edery Keynote from Digital Distribution Summit on Vimeo.

Digital Distribution Summit – Simon Carless from Digital Distribution Summit on Vimeo.

Digital Distributon Summit – Rob Murray from Digital Distribution Summit on Vimeo.

Digital Distribution Summit – Shainiel Deo from Digital Distribution Summit on Vimeo.

Digital Distribution Summit – Future of Digital Distribution Panel from Digital Distribution Summit on Vimeo.

The lay offs come shortly after Transmission shipped Ashes Cricket 2009 for Codemasters and Heroes Over Europe for Ubisoft. We were told that the redundancies occurred on Wednesday, September 30, and comprised of 30 full-time staff – primarily coders, as well as all remaining QA staff, which accounted for a third of the total studio.

It seems Transmission were forced to cut costs after failing to secure several publishing deals. Transmisison had been hoping to sign a deal to work on a game based on a major upcoming movie, but that deal apparently fell through this week.

According to an internal email sent by Transmission CEO Mike Fegan, the studio was also pitching another project in a well-known franchise to the same international publisher.

“We finally heard back from XXXX this morning and the news is mixed as [licensed movie game] is currently on hold due to a legal IP problem with the film and no indication on when this issue will be fixed. As part of our fall back plan we have now submitted a pre-prepared pitch for [a sequel to an existing IP] and they also want us to pitch on another project but the reality is we will not have another project in place with them for at least 60-90 days.”

Also contributing to the financial woes is a project called Rotorhead, an arcade style helicopter game, for which Transmission has been unable to find a publisher.

In better news, other internal emails obtained by Kotaku indicate that they will be working on a new Cricket game for Codemasters, codenamed Cricket 2010 and due for release next year. And a previously announced Jane’s F-22 flight sim to be published by Evolved Games is still in production.

Note: This post has been altered since its original publication.