Left 4 Dead Dominates Third Annual ELAN Awards

Valve's Left 4 Dead swept the ELAN Awards, the Vancouver-based award show honoring the video game and animation industries. The multiplayer zombie shooter took the overall Video Game of the Year award, as well as three other awards: Best PC Game, Best Game Design, and Outstanding Technical Innovation. The only award for which the game was nominated but did not win was Best Console Game. That distinction went to Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout 3, which also took Best Art Direction. Bethesda's open-world RPG was the only other title with multiple wins. Deguiyu, an alternate reality game created largely with Xbox 360's implementation of XNA (but currently unavailable for standard purchase, and only playable by those with a Creators Club membership), took the Best Student Video Game award. Since their founding three years ago, the ELANS have gone from focusing specifically on Canadian media to having no particular national focus. Other than Deguiyu, none of this year's winning developers are located in Canada. In previous years, Canadian developers like Ubisoft Montreal and BioWare were much more heavily represented.