GameShadow Announces Innovation Awards

Software house GameShadow has announced the founding of a new awards competition meant to honor a wide spectrum of industry games and related creative output based solely on their innovation. The GameShadow Innovation in Games Awards promises "to promote fun, innovative gameplay whether from games that are firmly in the public eye or those that have previously gone unnoticed, and to reward the respective developers - whether they are global publishers like Sony, Nintendo and Take 2, or small development teams crafting creative gems like Stickman Madness, N or Darwinia." The awards will be given across 11 categories: Best Game, Best New Character, Innovative Gameplay, Innovative Visual Effects (sponsored by ATI CrossFire), Imaginative use of in-game Audio, Best Narrative, Best Casual Game, Jaw Dropping Demo (sponsored by Softwrap), Best Machinima Movie, Best Mobile Game and the ATI CrossFire People’s Choice Award. A judging panel has been selected for the more than 50 titles nominated for the award, including Revolution Software founder Charles Cecil (Broken Sword series), Lara Croft and Galleon creator Toby Gard, TT Games (LEGO Star Wars) development director Jonathan Smith, 2000AD, DC, and Darkhorse comic artist Greg Staples, and freelance scriptwriter Rhianna Pratchett. In addition, the People's Choice Awards will be decided on by a public vote. Interested voters can visit the GameShadow site to make their voices heard, as well as have a chance to win over £1,000 of PC hardware. Said former Eidos creative director and nDreams developer Patrick O’Luanaigh, “At E3 this year in-between the repetitive sequels and me-too titles, there were a handful of real gems. The awards team has undertaken a mammoth task to separate the wheat from the chaff, and identify all these games that will hopefully remind gamers why they fell in love with games in the first place.”