Have to admit I've been kinda pissed at the games industry recently. Particularly when Call of Duty 4 won Game of the Year at the DICE Awards despite Bioshock cleaning up everything else. Since that awards show I've found out a few things that lessened my anger at the result (ie. it's voted on by a panel not by the industry, you have to pay to join (remember the RE4 debacle?)) but now the Game Developer's Choice Awards have been announced and they completely reverse any bad blood I might have had.

Here they are (copy/pasted from RPS);

Best Game Design:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect
Portal
Super Mario Galaxy

Best Debut Game:
Crackdown
flOw
The Witcher
Everyday Shooter
Aquaria

Best Audio:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Everyday Shooter
God of War II
Mass Effect

Best Downloadable Game:
Everyday Shooter
flOw
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Peggle
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Best Technology:
Assassin's Creed
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Crysis
Halo 3
Portal

Innovation Award:
flOw
Mass Effect
Peggle
Portal
Rock Band

Best Visual Arts:
Assassin's Creed
Bioshock
Crysis
Team Fortress 2
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Best Handheld Game:
Contra 4
Peggle
Phase
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Best Writing:
Bioshock
God of War II
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Mass Effect
Portal

Game of the Year:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Portal
Rock Band
Super Mario Galaxy

Those are some fantastic choices! I have little disagreements here and there, for example I would have given the best downloadable award to Peggle rather than Flow, but most of the winners are totally deserving so it's hard to get angry. Even my beloved Crackdown got a nod!

Personally I would have given Game of the Year to Bioshock (and I did in my own awards) but Portal would still my second choice, obviously it's a fantastic game. I think my impression of Portal is slightly lessened vs. most of the rest of the gaming public simply because it didn't really surprise me. There was alot of stuff about Portal that immediately appealed to me when the game was first revealed and I expected it to be good. Infact before I had decided to buy HL2:Ep2 or TF2 I already knew I was going to get Portal. So maybe some of what pushed it over the line was the fact that for most people it was a huge shock.

Ofcourse it did a whole bunch of other stuff extremely well so... as I've said, it's a deserving winner. I think what's most important about it is probably what it says about how you present a video game. It's short when compared to the majority of other games but it's also exactly how long it should be. Rather than stretching out it's ideas until the player is totally sick of them the game gets in and gets out quickly leaving you wanting more but feeling like you've had a totally cohesive, completely enjoyable experience.

Anyway, so I guess the moral here is that the whole $100 AUS twenty-hour game shouldn't be the standard anymore. We need to start tailoring game length and price to what the game calls for rather than trying to fit everything into an outdated model that strangles the life out of a lot of brilliant ideas.