The Sims, Shattered Galaxy, others honored at Game Developers Choice Awards

The First Penguin

Industry veterans Chip Morningstar and F. Randall "Randy" Farmer both won the First Penguin Award, created to honor those willing to take a risk and dive into uncharted waters. Morningstar and Farmer worked together on Lucasfilm's Habitat, the first large-scale commercial online graphical world, in the early 80s. A five-minute commercial from Habitat was shown, featuring humorous dialogue and (at the time) state-of-the-art 16-color graphics.

	Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer received the First Penguin Award for their work on Lucasfilm's Habitat, the first "massively multiplayer" game, which shipped in the 80's.

"Habitat was the fulfillment of a dream," said Farmer. He went on to thank one particular boss "who offered me a job after I was caught hacking into the computer network and realizing that I could do something better." Morningstar also was thankful to many people, but for different reasons. "I'd like to thank Lucusfilm, because we got the freedom to go way way out. And for George Lucas for not noticing things until it was way way too late to do anything about it," he said laughing.

ION Storm Austin won the Excellence in Game Design award for Deus Ex, surpassing Lucasfilm's Escape from Monkey Island, Nintendo's Zelda: Majora's Mask, FunCom's The Longest Journey and Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Warren Spector, the designer of Deus Ex, said he appreciated the team's support. "The design team was unbelievable and went through many trials to make the game that started as two pages of notes I had in 1994."

Sega's Seaman took the Original Character of the Year award, over Cate Archer from No One Lives Forever (Monolith), Kabuto from Giants: Citizen Kabuto (Planet Moon), Ulala from Space Channel 5 (Sega) and Tamale Loco from Tamale Loco@Shockwave.com. A representative receiving the award for Sega said that Seaman's designer was "a very unique person and an overall genius." American McGee's Alice won the Excellence in Level Design award, surpassing Monolith's No One Lives Forever, UbiSoft's Rayman 2: The Great Escape, EA's SSX and Activision's Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

	John Carmack of id software accepts his Award for Community Contribution.

Team leader Jim Molinets thanked, first and foremost, one of the legends. "I would like to thank John Carmack for getting me into this industry. I may still have been an auto mechanic right now." John Carmack continued to receive accolades, receiving the IGDA Award for Community Contribution. He also had others to thank. "I owe people like Michael Abrash and others who have put out books and code... so I'm just doing my part."

Maxis' The Sims won the Excellence in Programming award, up against Sega's F355 Challenge, Planet Moon's Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Visual Concepts' NFL2K1 and Shiny's Sacrifice. Onstage Maxis' Wright introduced the six-man AI team, five of which were present. Sega's Jet Grind Radio received the Excellence in Visual Arts, over American McGee's Alice, Tecmo's Dead or Alive 2, Shiny's Sacrifice and Insomniac's Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

The two-person team of Ryuto Ueda and Kazuki Hosokawa smiled and quickly said "Thank you very much." The Spotlight Awards, which highlight some of the overall best titles of the year, were given to five titles: Sega's Crazy Taxi and Jet Grind Radio, Counter-Strike, ION Storm Austin Deus Ex and Monolith's No One Lives Forever.

One of the more touching moments was the acceptance speech from the Crazy Taxi team member. In a tearful tribute he dedicated the success of the racing game to former Sega President Isao Okawa, who passed from a heart attack earlier this year. Also honored were Andy Astor of Planet Moon, creators of Giants:Planet Kabuto, and Seumas McNally of Longbow Digital Arts, creators of IGF 2000 three-award winner Treadmarks. Both passed in the time since the last GDC. Despite the increase in size and stature, it seems that the Game Developers Choice is still small enough to satisfy the hardcore individuals in the industry; hopefully this will remain as it grow. Perhaps Hal Barwood of Lucas Arts Entertainment said it best. "I hope and trust that these awards will have a long life of respect and recognition." More information on the nominees can be found at http://www.igda.org/awards/