Rockstar's Grand theft Auto 5 has won the 'Game of the Year' award at this year's golden Joystick awards held in London. Naughty Dog's ' The Last of Us' also takes home two awards while BioShock Infinite won the award for best visual design.
Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 has won the ‘Game of the Year’ at this year’s ‘Golden Joystick’ awards, held at an event in central London. Unveiled barely a month back, GTA 5 has become the fast selling game ever, generating a revenue of around $1 billion in just three days.
GTA 5 recently got caught up in a controversy, as human right activists have expressed contempt towards the latest installment, courtesy of a graphical torture scene.
“Rockstar North has crossed a line by effectively forcing people to take on the role of a torturer and perform a series of unspeakable acts if they want to achieve success in the game,” Freedom from Torture chief executive Keith Best told the Guardian.
Meanwhile, Naughty Dog’s action adventure survival zombie horror game ‘ The Last of Us’ also bagged in two awards, grabbing the award for the ‘Best Newcomer’ and ‘Best Storytelling’.
BioShock Infinite won the award for the ‘Best Visual Design’. The brainchild behind the widly popular franchise – Kevin Levine – was honoured with a new category special ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award. ” Its a little scary, because a lifetime achievement award means you’re done and I,m not ready to be done yet. The industry is going into a stage of rapid change, digital distribution and simpler development tools are lowering the barrier of entry for young creative people”, said Levine.
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Kevin Levine with Lifetime Achievement award!
Levine has been a popular figure around since the time he worked with designer Doug Church, on the first person stealth action title, Theif: The Dark Project, dubbed as one of the first titles to introduce the concept of stealth in video games.
“The great thing about the still-maturing nature of video games is you get to be inspired by the work of novices and veterans alike,” he said.
Witcher 3 won the ‘Most Wanted’ award, up against titles such as Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts, while, Mark of the Ninja bagged the ‘best indie game’ award. The ‘Best Multiplayer’ award winner was Payday 2,whereas, the open world shooter from Ubisoft, ‘Far Cry’ won the ‘Best Gaming Moment’ award. The ‘Call of Duty series’ was honored with the ‘Hall of Fame’ award as the most iconic shooter ever, with the franchise selling over more than 160 million copies globally.
The winner of Britain and Ireland’s next top model ‘Lauren Lambert’ was also at the ceremony. She happens to be a Call of Duty fan model.
“I’m very good for a female gamer. My older brother introduced me to first person shooters. I try to fit in at least an hour playing in the evening. When I talk about games other models are like… Pardon?!” said Lambert.
Call of Duty fan model ‘Lauren Lambert’
Occulus Rift won the ‘ Innovation of the Year’ award for its virtual reality headset, while Naughty Dog won the ‘Studio of the Year’ award.
In the online gaming category, World of Tank was awarded the ‘Best Online Game’. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation grabbed the award for the ‘Best Handheld’ game, up against the likes of Persona 4 Golden and Hotline Miami in its category.
The award for ‘Youtube’ gamer of the year was picked up by Mark Turpin from Yogscast. Yogscast are a group of YouTube broadcasters who produce game related video content, focussing around their main YouTube channel.
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Mark Turpin from Yogscast!!
” It’s very flattering and very appreciated. Gaming is the second biggest search term on YouTube. People are always using demos less and less and they’re using YouTube as their way to see how good a game is before they buy it.”, adds Turpin.
Finally, the best gaming platform winner was Steam. XCOM being named as the best ‘Mobile/Tablet Game of the Year’, against Ridiculous Fishing and Super Hexagon in the same category.
The Golden Joysticks are the biggest publicly voted video game awards in the world. This year saw the addition of the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award. This marks the 31st year, the awards first started out way back in 1983, with Jet Pac winning the first Game of the year award on the ZX Spectrum.
Three decades on, the awards still ‘ represent the voice of gamers worldwide, says Andy Robinson, Editor of ComputerandVideogames.
Source: BBC