AIAS Names Half-Life 2 As Game Of The Year

The winners of the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards have been announced at a Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) event in Las Vegas, conducted as part of the DICE industry summit. Around four hundred industry figures were in attendance, with Valve Software's PC FPS Half-Life 2 not only scooping the top award, but also eight others. Other notable winners were Bungie's top-selling Halo 2, with four awards and Namco's Katamari Damacy with two, including the Innovation in Console Gaming award. Trip Hawkins was also formally inducted in the AIAS hall of fame, after the honor was announced on Monday. “It was a dream of mine to turn games into an art form,” commented the Electronic Arts and 3D0 co-founder. The awards were voted on by qualified members of the AIAS, a non-profit organization of over 5500 members, solely dedicated to serving the entertainment software industry. A selection of the most notable AIAS award winners is as follows, and full details can be found on the AIAS website. Game of the Year Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal Games/Valve) Console Game of the Year Halo 2 (Microsoft/Bungie) Innovation in Console Gaming Katamari Damacy (Namco Hometek Inc./Namco Limited) Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design Halo 2 (Microsoft/Bungie) Outstanding Achievement in Game Design Katamari Damacy (Namco Hometek Inc./Namco Limited) Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games/Rockstar North) Console Racing Game of the Year Burnout 3 (Electronic Arts/Criterion) Console Role-Playing Game of the Year Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Nintendo/Intelligent Systems) Handheld Game of the Year Metroid: Zero Mission (Nintendo) PC Role-Playing Game of the Year Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker (BioWare/BioWare) PC Massive Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year World of WarCraft (Vivendi Universal Games/Blizzard)