The GAME British Academy Video Games Awards event for 2009 to recognise the top achievers of the British video game industry, took place at the London Hilton on Park Lane, UK, on March 10th 2009.
The who’s who of the video gaming industry were all present to see who took home the prize wins in the various award categories. Fifteen awards were presented on the evening, including presentations by Konnie Huq and Jonathan Ross from the BBC.
The ceremony unveiled a complete surprise winner for the Best Game category – Super Mario Galaxy, on the Wii platform, which took on and won the game tipped to be the winner, Call of Duty 4, which won three awards on the night. Another shock for the night was GTA IV, which won no awards despite being nominated in seven different categories.
The awards process to determine the winners involved a mix of specialised online voting and decisions made by a jury. Qualifying games were grouped into categories and voted on by selected industry professionals and BAFTA members. The top six games which achieved the highest votes in each category then qualified for the next stage, where they were presented to a carefully selected jury, specialising in that category.
Each jury consisted of seven to nine industry practitioners across a range of developers and publishers and is chaired by a member of the BAFTA Video Games committee. No juror was permitted to sit on the jury if he/she has had any direct association with a short-listed game.
The members of the BAFTA Video Games Committee includes the Chair, Ray Maguire, Senior Vice President/Managing Director, SCE UK; Deputy Chair, Ian Liviingstone OBE (Product Acquisition Director, Eidos); Mark Maslowicz (Director, Xbox and Games for Windows 3rd Party Publishing, Microsoft); Andy Nuttall (Games Development Manager, Sky) and Rob Saunders (Senior PR Manager, Nintendo).
Watch the video for an insight into the night of the 2009 gaming awards, for games released in 2008.
Here are the winners of the GAME BAFTA Awards 2009:
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BEST GAME
- SUPER MARIO GALAXY
Development Team: Nintendo/Nintendo - FABLE II
Development Team: Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios - RACE DRIVER: GRID
Development Team: Codemasters Studios/Codemasters - SID MEIER’S CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION
Development Team: Firaxis Games/2K Games - BOOM BLOX
Steven Spielberg, Louis Castle, Amir Rahimi
Development Team: Electronic Arts LA/Electronic Arts - CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE
Development Team: Infinity Ward/Activision - PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE CURIOUS VILLAGE
Development Team: Nintendo/Nintendo - LEFT 4 DEAD
Gabe Newell, Mike Booth, Chet Faliszek
Development Team: Valve/Valve - CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE
Development Team: Infinity Ward/Activision - DEAD SPACE
Development Team: Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts - LITTLEBIGPLANET
Kareem Ettouney, Mark Healey, Leo Cubbin
Development Team: Media Molecule & XDev Studio Europe/Sony Computer Entertainment - SPORE
Development Team: Electronic Arts Montreal/Electronic Arts - DEAD SPACE
Development Team: Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts - BORO-TORO
Adam Westwood, Graham Ranson, Yves Wheeler,
Matthew Booton, Owen Schwehr
(DarkMatter Designs) - ORIGAMEE
Richard Barlow, Alberto Fustinoni, Jonathon Holmes, Kevin Dunlop, Jade Law
(Blue Skies) - VEGEME
Guo Lin, Gao Ting, Zhang Jun, Laing Wei, Alexander Syminton (Ctrl_D) - CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE
Development Team: Infinity Ward/Activision - Nolan Bushnell
ACTION & ADVENTURE
SPORTS
STRATEGY
CASUAL
GAMEPLAY
HANDHELD
MULTIPLAYER
STORY & CHARACTER
ORIGINAL SCORE
ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT
USE OF AUDIO
BAFTA ONES TO WATCH
In association with Dare to Be Digital
GAME AWARD 2008
Voting was free of charge and open to everyone – wherever they were in the world. Over 60,000 people cast their vote for their favourite game and the winner was:
ACADEMY FELLOWSHIP