Game Developer Announces 2005 Front Line Award Winners

Author: by Staff

The CMP Game Group’s Game Developer magazine has announced the winners of the eighth annual Front Line Awards, recognizing the year’s best in tools for game development. The winners will be profiled in the January 2006 issue of the magazine, which will be available on newsstands January 17. The competition honors excellence and innovation in hardware and software for programming, art, audio and game components. Winners were chosen for their ability to advance the art of game creation by crafting more efficient and effective tools. Winners in each category include the following: Books - Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production by Alexander Brandon (New Riders Press) Middleware - Speed TreeRT v1.7 by Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) Art Tools - ZBrush 2 by Pixologic Audio Tools - ISACT v1.60 by Creative Labs Hardware - MX40 Motion Capture System by Vicon Programming Tools - ProDG for PSP by SN Systems Ltd. Engines - Unreal Engine 3 by Epic Games Inc. In addition to the Front Line Award category winners, each year, one product is inducted into the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame. The inductee is chosen for its outstanding contribution to the game development industry for five years or more. This year’s honor was presented to 3ds Max by Autodesk, which increases artists’ options for creating next-generation content. “The Front Line Awards were established to acknowledge the companies that are pushing the envelope to help create better games,” Simon Carless, editor of Game Developer, said. “These companies, along with the game developers themselves, are behind the evolution of the industry.” Nominations were open to all new products and new versions of products related to game development released before Sept. 1, 2005. Products are nominated by Game Developer’s readers and other industry professionals. A distinguished panel of leading game developers specializing in each of the competition’s categories helped select finalists and winners based on their products’ level of utility, innovation, value and ease of use. For more information about The 2005 Front Line Awards and winners, please visit the official Game Developer Front Line Awards website. Further magazine details and subscription information is available on Game Developer's website.