The Game Awards adds new honors, including an award for 'live games'

Next month The Game Awards take place for the third year running, and this time the annual game industry gala will include two new awards to give out: one for mobile games only (as opposed to previous years' "best mobile/handheld game" award), and one for live games.

The latter's addition is especially interesting because it prominently highlights how important the care and feeding of live games has become in contemporary game dev, especially for big-budget studios.

The event's executive producer and frontman Geoff Keighley confirmed to Variety that the award category was added in an effort to be "more reflective of games being ongoing services instead of one-time releases." 

The fact that The Game Awards is breaking mobile games out into a separate category is also intriguing, as it suggests the organizers now see value in having a category dedicated to games on handheld consoles. This seems like a response to the remarkably strong debut of Nintendo's Switch console, which many owners use primarily as a portable console.

Curious devs can find further details about The Game Awards, which are scheduled to broadcast live from Los Angeles on December 4th, can be found on the event's website.