The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers, a non-profit media organization, has announced nominations for its 15th annual awards program honoring video game art, technology, and production.
The nominees for GAME OF THE YEAR are:
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Bloodborne
• Fallout 4
• Splatoon
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The leader in nominations (20) is Fallout 4, setting a record for most nominations. Heavy Rain is now the second most-nominated game. With 17 nominations, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt now ties for third most-nominated game in history, along with The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Metroid Prime.
Rounding out this year’s top nominees is The Order: 1886 with 10 nominations, as well as Life is Strange and Batman: Arkham Knight with 9 each.
Small budget leaders include Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, Her Story, and Crypt of the Necrodancer. Additional small budget games include Axiom Verge, Grow Home, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Donut County, iDARB, Lines the Game, and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask scored 3 nominations. Despite an initial release in the year 2000, eligibility rules allow a re-release to compete if no previous version was nominated. Majora’s Mask pre-dates the existence of the academy by one year.
This year, with 21 nominations, Bethesda Game Studios leads the totals among development companies. CD Projekt RED has 17, and Nintendo has 14. Other top developers include Ready at Dawn (10), Rocksteady Studios (9), and Dontnod Entertainment (9). Developers Toby Fox and Sam Barlow tied the tallies from Microsoft.
By publisher, Sony leads with 25 nominations. Bethesda Softworks has 20, and Warner Bros. and Square Enix have tied with 19 each. Other top publishers include Nintendo (18), CD Projekt (13), and Activision (11).
Creative and technical award categories recognize achievement in animation, art direction, character design, control design, control precision, game design, game engineering, musical score, sound effects, writing, and more.
For a complete list of 56 categories and nominees, visit http://navgtr.org
This year’s Honorary Award recipients are Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man, and Mark DeLoura, for developing programs for children to explore coding.
The academy now begins the attribution process to assign names and credits to each nominated work. An initial attribution record will be made available on February 16, and nominated company input is requested by March 1. Winners will be announced March 21, 2016.
NAVGTR strongly supports the IGDA Developer Credit special interest group (SIG) athttp://igda.org/devcredit to improve crediting practices and help certify award attributions. Unofficial associated credits have been made available for those researching career achievements or preserving the history of game development where there is otherwise no public record at AIAS, DICE, GDC, GANG, VGA, VGX, TGA, BAFTA, and Golden Joysticks. The SIG group may seek to certify associated credits especially in cases where years of award recipients are not made public, though associated credits do not necessarily indicate actual recipients. To assist in proper future attributions, developers are highly encouraged to adopt the IGDA Credit Standards Guidelines as a first step.
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NAVGTR Corp. TM is a 501©(3) non-profit corporation devoted to promoting and recognizing the developments and achievements of the interactive entertainment industry for public awareness and education.
The general voting body of reviewers, journalists, analysts, and writers includes contributors for such varied outlets as 1up, About.com, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Austin American-Statesman, Break, Chicago Sun-Times, CNN, Contra Costa Times, Detroit Free Press, Digital Journal, Discovery, EclipseMagazine.com, EGM Now, FHM, Gamespot, Gaming Illustrated, Gannett News Service, Geek, Joystiq, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Machinima, MAX Level, Moody’s, National Post, NBC, New Gamer Nation, New York Times, The Ottawa Citizen, PC Gamer, Salon, San Jose Mercury-News, Terminal Gamer, USA Today, The Vancouver Sun, Wired News, and hundreds more.
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