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)
