Newsbrief: Organizers for GameCity Prize, an annual award that seeks to celebrate the cultural validity and accessibility of games, have published a list of 2012 contenders that includes both indie titles and triple-A releases.
Mojang's hit indie game Minecraft took home last year's award at GameCity Prize's inaugural event. This year's "longlist" of selected titles, which were nominated by the public, includes 18 games:
Bastion – Supergiant Games
Catherine – Atlus Persona Games
Contre Jour – Chilingo
Dark Souls – From Software
DayZ – Dean "Rocket" Hall
Dear Esther – thechineseroom
English Country Tune – Increpare Games
Fez – Polytron
FIFA 12 – EA Canada
Fingle – Game Oven Studios
Johann Sebastian Joust – Die Gute Fabrik
Journey – thatgamecompany
Mass Effect 3 – Bioware
Proteus – Ed Key & David Kanaga
Skyrim – Bethesda Game Studios
Spelltower – Zach Gage
Super Mario 3D Land – Nintendo EAD
Waking Mars – Tiger Style Games
GameCity Prize's organizers will pare that list down over the next few weeks, before allowing a panel of judges -- a group of wider cultural commentators that include Young Bond author Charlie Higson and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons -- to choose a single winner.
The winner will be announced on October 24 at Nottingham, UK's week-long video game culture festival GameCity 7.
Great list. It's nice to see Proteus, English Country Tune, DayZ, Fingle and JSJ; they're not your usual award picks. I had meant to nominate Dys4ia and Unmanned, both in terms of their content as well as the delivery of the experiences themselves, so I'm a small bit disappointed but I must admit it was very unlikely! Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to make it to GameCity this year.
