The 2021 Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards

[Music] hello and welcome to the 23rd annual independent games festival awards and also the second official digital version of the awards ceremony i am your chairman kelly wallach and um yeah it's been a year it's uh it's definitely been a year and you know we miss you all so much but it's been really lovely to stay connected through all of the games and all the work and the contribution that folks put into keeping the igf alive this year so i really wanted to give a special thanks to all the judges and jury member and the staff who helped make this possible and also

of course to everybody who sent us in their games it was a really really great bunch of games this year so it was really it was really heartwarming and lovely to see everyone's work that got submitted i also wanted to give a special thanks to id at xbox who is our supporter for the igf this year for making this all possible um yeah and a big congratulations to all the finalists and nominees the honorable mentions and uh best of luck really looking forward to seeing the winners and to celebrating with you all and um hopefully we'll be able to see each other again in person soon but until then miss you good luck and enjoy the ceremony all right bye hi everyone i'm victoria tran community director at intersloth creators of among us and the henry stickman collection i am super honored to be your 2021 host for the igf awards this year which like most of life for the past while has been all online so how do you start

a speech about a year like this am i right am i right everyone this past year sucked in so many ways and i'm honestly a little bit afraid to celebrate and a little bit afraid to do this because i don't know what to say to make it better and it feels almost disrespectful to be celebrating like this at a time when so many people have been through a lot are currently going through a lot and have been ignored for so long an award show won't mitigate any of the pain that people have gone through and that we're still going through but i think there is a certain type of power in being here watching the awards show together i genuinely hope that you can celebrate watching these awards with us and also just celebrate where you are right now in moving forward and taking action as i've seen so much of the industry do whether it was for free palestine black lives matter

or any of the other causes that we've gathered for especially as someone who works directly with players oh i'm gonna cry i have seen first hand oh my god how much you've changed their lives and how much you've saved them and how much you've saved me um oh sorry okay [Music] staying hydrated is really important everyone this is a celebration of indie games or as the epic and apple lawsuit called it items that are so offensive we cannot speak about them here well it's too bad that all games are canceled now i don't understand tech sometimes but look i could go on and on but this is a celebration of indie games and the nominees and i cannot wait for you to see all the wonderful games and to see who takes home an award so let's just get

the show on the road to kick us off we have the nominees for best for best student game student gamers just remind us that yep they will always be more talented than us there are so many new ideas coming into the indie game space and honestly i'm really grateful for that make sure you pay attention to the nominees in this category because this will be on the final exam why am i stroking this best student game vessels developed by local space survey corps llc john baxa garrett hale alex polito caleb mills doffermantic developed by tukana interactive luca longberg

sandro halberger timofaque sv some old stuff developed by paul fan harry weizong chen haku minyan sai emmy showfield rainy season developed by [Music] nasa symphonia developed by the symphonia [Music] team hotter developed by atelier du chu dominic kanecha

[Music] and the winner is [Music] we are the team of vessels the local space survey corps llc and we are so excited that you have selected us to win this award for best student game we'd like to extend thanks from our team who couldn't make it today caleb travis nick kim and erica this was a labor of love it was the brainchild of one john and we all worked really hard to make that vision come true hi mom thank you so much for choosing us to be the best student game we wanted to make an intriguing game something that captures a little bit of the human experience and morbid

curiosity we greatly appreciate your support we could not be more proud of our team and excited that you would honor us with us i know i'm not the only one that has appreciated a good soundtrack especially while i'm working and a boss battle song comes on and i'm like really productive all i'm saying is that audio can make or break a game whether that's sound effects or the ost or literally anything else so keep those ear balls your ear balls keep those ear balls open as we hear who the nominees are for best audio excellence in audio developed by studio marios winter are you kidding me nick meyer catherine cut

blind drive developed by lo-fi people yuri politi [Music] sunlight developed by krill bite studio martin kavala adrian kingston kamakura genesis noir developed by feral cat dead skill barn [Applause] [Music] spirit bearer developed by thunder lotus eric shaw ulrich corvae trudell nicola geron

a monster's expedition through puzzling exhibitions developed by drachnik and friends ellie rainsberry [Music] and the winner is [Music] genesis noir wouldn't work without the audio and we happen to think it's the best part of the game we're so happy that you agree and thank you so much for this honor yeah tom vincent and joe from skillbard did all the music and sound design for the game and they worked tremendously hard to make everything sound really great rich and reactive thanks for working with us and you really helped take the game to the next level we really also want to thank the musicians and vocalists who contributed to the soundtrack

josh celine freddy chris clive kitty sarah angus the deep throat choir elton nadia noah and oki thank you our next category shows off the games that are able to stop those button mashers from continually hitting a to skip dialogue or ones that are able to tell stories without even uttering a single word narrative stays with us touches our hearts and live on in the moments that we carry with us these are your nominees for best narrative excellence in narrative lost words beyond the page developed by sketchbook games [Music] across the grooves developed by nova box

geforce von sons nicola fukay genesis noir developed by feral cat den [Music] [Music] umarangi generation developed by origami digital naphtali faulkner thor hemskirk haven developed by the game bakers emery toa pierre corbine audrey le prince in other waters developed by jump over the age gareth damien martin

[Music] and the winner is um hello everyone uh thank you for the win on the narrative award uh you know i'm pretty blown away with that i i think you know the game started with no story and then it then you know developed one along the way with with sort of the environmental storytelling in there uh i think one thing i guess i would like to share around that is basically a little bit of a thing why i did that in the game uh and it's just i guess this this little frustration i have where a lot of times indies will make these

really great ideas for stories and then or ideas for games where the gameplay is just awesome and then it almost feels like you need to sort of tack on a story that ends up being text-based which adds a lot of work and a lot of extra dev time and i think you know the reality with this game is you know uh it won this award without any text at all and i think um it's a kind of thing where i think uh you know we can all sort of start to think about what stories mean in games and maybe try explore different ways of telling them um i want to thank playerism for you know taking the risk with us uh being a new developer and all but also um you know it was one of those moments where i could say things to them and they understood it uh and i think that's just that shared cultural context around a lot of this stuff but um you know they took a risk with the sort of more indirect storytelling i wanted to do not sort of spelling things out or

foreshadowing things too early and you know i'm sure everyone who's played it enjoys the story for that and um i just want to say thank you to them for that and um i think it's one of those things where we've got more stories to tell in the future so me and thor um and you know i think it's this kind of thing where uh you know if stories are coming out of lismore uh you know i think i think anything can be told can it um thank you so this next award is a little bit like a popularity contest to whoever wins congratulations you're pretty popular there's a lot to be said for a game that is able to create a really strong community that cheers on its developers and encourages others to do the same i'm a little bit biased because i work in community so i think it's really great that these things can happen

and the winner is hello everyone i am matteo eliza i am the director of arrog and i'm very honored to receive this award on behalf of the whole team of hermanos mafia and lip games studios i must thank especially my team the help i received from luis wong and sol sanchez as well as gabriella eliza and vania castanino this is a very significant prize to all of us and for the industry in peru we hope that we can still deliver these messages to you and to the world and keep talking about deep meanings in games thank you very much are you hydrating i wasn't joking

good design can make you see ordinary things in new fantastic ways like envisioning a conversation as a card battle or creating a genre called saw core anything is up for grabs and we're all just players in their game these are your nominees for best game design excellence in design teardown developed by tuxedo labs [Music] this group developed by kitty palace one

shady part of me developed by dus desieme [Music] there is no gauge signs of the soldier developed by echo dog games dayala tanwright holly rothrock zach vinnless [Music] a monster's expedition through puzzling exhibitions developed by drachnik and friends alan hazelden benjamin davis jamie perconti

[Music] and the winner is i'm especially happy that we got the excellence in design because teardown started as a technology experiment with no particular game in mind at all and it took almost a full year of prototyping to come up with the right idea find the right setting and getting the design in place it was a very long and bumpy road and we almost gave up along the way so thank you everyone who saw the potential in this when it was just a bunch of videos on twitter without your support teardown wouldn't exist also a huge congratulations to everyone on the team we're a very small group of developers so everyone's contribution is really important also special thanks to all the fans the

modding community and everyone else who made this possible thank you whether it's pixel 2d 3d voxel art is everything we imagined we would share with the world [Music] great art can really pack a punch whether it's in the first 15 seconds of a trailer or within the hours and hours of gameplay oh gosh um these are your nominees for best visual art excellence in visual art genesis noir developed by feral cat den developed by hermanus machia in league

game studios [Music] in other waters developed by jump over the age gareth damien martin [Music] shady part of me developed by dus desieme hall of the sea developed by out of the blue tatiana delgado manuel fernandez danielle nombella carto developed by sunhead games

li huo chen kwan hong chen chia yuu chen eddi u and the winner is creating the visual art of genesis tomorrow was a huge technical and creative challenge and we're so happy that the work has resonated with so many people uh thanks so much for this honor we must thank marcin pedro mercy dave audrey and mayo you guys elevated the simple black and white art of genesis noir and filled in the big bang with detail and richness that i couldn't have done on my own also huge thanks to adria jeffrey stephen and sam for your huge technical contributions that enabled us to pull this off we could have done it without you guys thank you

reject what you think games can be and embrace the absolute chaos of the human imagination these are your nominees for the nuovo award nuovo award blazeball developed by the game band nightmare temptation academy developed by lena nw and costco dream girl that night steeped by blood river developed by taylor swatansky

airplane mode developed by bakrenim hosni augie ben castrell lawrence ricklin corey bertelsen welcome to elk developed by triple topping the triple topping team [Music] umarangi generation developed by origami digital natalie faulkner thor hainsburg [Music] chasing light developed by virgin inc bae sang hyun

roman and salman [Music] and the winner is thank you to the igf the new oval award is synonymous with so many games that have inspired us over the years this honor is something that we would have never dared imagine possible we want to congratulate our fellow nominees it's an honor to be named alongside each

of you these are all incredible and super innovative projects so please everyone who's watching play all of them the three of us are only a few members of a much larger band so we accept this on behalf of everyone at the game band um and and thank our teammates for all the love dedication and talent that they uh put into placebo over the last year um joel gabe rodon elena corey bria cedric stephanie our anchor quinns our ambassadors kat and sam our newest band member lonnie and especially our sluggers and our keepers who have given so much of themselves who work hard every single day to care for and shape this growing community making blazeball with this team has been a rare immense joy amid what was otherwise a really difficult year we also need to thank our families and our loved ones this game was a hail mary it was by no means a sure thing and your constant support and encouragement really kept us going

um and we want to thank the fans as well you know we share this award with the entire play small community from baseball cares all the work that you've done to raise real material support for worthy causes under the voicemail banner to all the data crimes and the independent projects from siber both hopefully our technically limited game to all of the independent artists and fellow fans who bring their joy care and creativity to plays ball baseball is an ongoing dialogue with the community we're so grateful to have the opportunity to commune with you through this absurd little game you continue to surprise us you continue to delight us and we're so excited to venture into new eras together thank you so much thank you thank you hi everyone i'm extremely honored to present the sheamus mcnally grand prize nominees for this year last year i never expected to receive this award and it meant so much to me to even be nominated for it indie games have been a huge source of

inspiration for me ever since i discovered that they were a thing i remember thinking that it was incredible that one or two or a handful of people could put together a game and release it on their own without a huge studio or a ton of resources and thinking that maybe i could do that someday and since then game development has only become even more accessible and we're just seeing so many more games games that are willing to do things differently games that are personal and human and games that push the boundaries of what a game even is and this is the festival to celebrate and champion those games so as someone who has always looked up to the games in this festival it really is an honor to present the nominees so without further ado here they are seamus mcnally grand prize paradise killer developed by kaizen gameworks ollie clark smith phil crabtree rachel noyes

tear down developed by tuxedo labs [Music] chicory a colorful tale developed by the chicory team genesis 1 developed by [Music] pharaoh [Music] umarangi generation developed by origami digital natalie faulkner thor [Music]

spirit fairer developed by thunder lotus nicola garron joe gottier alex boyer alexander monette martin [Music] and the winner is [Music] [Applause] uh hello everyone i'm naftali faulkner um that with me in the background uh lismore which means uh if i can win this award and i'm from lismore then anyone can do it much um anyway uh i want to thank everyone today for uh the win on the grand prize

at the igf um this is a huge accomplishment um that you know we're really happy to like it's blown us away um and when i say us i mean you know me and thor thought being the composer who totally smashed it with the soundtrack getting the tone of that right for the stuff he composed and and just just the general mood of the music um you know i i i want to thank um players as well with this um i think you know that they've been really able to sort of help us uh move into the space and you know i don't think it's it's a you know coincidence that we won this with them because like i would just say that there has been a lot of times where they've really uh helped me out and i've really not been afraid to ask questions and they've been able to provide me with all the support on that so i want to really thank them uh just a car going past and you know i just say uh it has been a

really rough year for a lot of people that's why i'm recording it outside so we can remember what that looks like um but yeah i'd like to thank uh not just thor and players but also my partner for putting up with my late hours i'd like to thank professor normsheen for sort of sharing with me a different way of doing design which ended up informing this game um i'd like to thank uh julia faulkner for you know sitting and painting with me all those times and you know everyone else sort of met along the way uh there's this it's literally a giant list you know this is an indie game it was made by you know one to two people um but you know that the people that we are are always informed by people we meet along the way so um you know we never dance alone in that respect so i'd like to say once again thank you for this grand prize win and um you know he's hoping for next time as well

and that's it we are at the end of the igfs thank you for tuning in from wherever you are and to the winners huge congratulations and to the nominees huge congratulations and to people who weren't even nominated also giant congratulations just take take all the congratulations it takes a lot to put out a game and you did it but but but there are also a ton of people who aren't recognized at these awards so to all the people who do qa community managers localization ui designers moderators and everyone else who often gets overlooked in these things thank you for doing what you do you freaking rock we would all be perishing without you and i am very passionate about thanking you right now so have an award here you go i'll photoshop an award right here or here i'll photoshop two awards that i guess i have to hand draw so that i don't like

run into any ip contractual errors congratulations you've won these awards and as a little bit of a parting message i hope we all can continue creating a home for people and that we continue amplifying and supporting diverse stories and the people that make them to dream and care so much about the world you create thank you for giving so many of us a home and finally a huge thank you to our igf platinum sponsor id xbox you make this all possible thank you for supporting indies we did it bam hi there i'm an exorbitantly paid canadian with an over-inflated sense of self-importance here to host the industry's most important awards what no not that one oh no no i see now how that could have been confusing okay hang on i'll take it from

stop hi everyone i'm sam maggs and welcome to the 21st annual game developers choice awards as a dev myself i'm honored to be hosting these awards especially in a year when we needed games more than ever to help get us through quarantine personally my sanity was saved by phasmophobia no matter how ironic that may be i also want to preface this ceremony by saying that while i understand that it might be uncomfortable or even confusing to see a woman on stage for the entirety of a gaming event i have done the customary blazer over graphic t-shirt in order to make everyone feel as at home as possible i contemplated also being terrible at reading teleprompter but then i remembered that i'm filming this in my own office and i don't have one so this is as good as it's gonna get the gdc awards are the premier accolades for peer recognition in the games industry and what's that marketing says we have

to launch right now i know i thought we had another year in development rewards aren't ready to you know what we're fine we're fine one second yeah we're ready let's go [Music] hi hi is this executive leadership hi yeah it's sam the host yes that's me hi hi um i just i think there might have been a bit of a mix-up

see we are here to celebrate games that already came out not to get hype over games that haven't come out yet you know it just seems counter-intuitive um and maybe a little bit disrespectful to the whole uh uh-huh yeah yeah i mean obviously i want people to suck up to me and show me exclusives but i'm not you know i no no no i'm not being argumentative i no i'm not getting emotional i'm just a woman this is just what my voice sounds like no i'm not not being a team player i just yes we will talk about this later okay oh thanks so much um in the meantime let's celebrate all the premieres that people loved that came out over this past year [Music] best debut kinetic games nominated for

phasmaphobia daniel knight origami digital nominated for umurangi generation natalie faulkner thor phobia game studio nominated for carry on cold symmetry nominated for mortal shall andrew mclennan murray anton gonzalez vitale bulgarov dimitri harkin nodding heads games nominated for

rajin and ancient epic official sing [Music] and the winner is [Music] no no i got it i got it let's try it i can do it in one that's fine okay our next award is absolutely poggers these nominees dabbed on their competition so get ready to get gachi hyper and spam w's in chat for no i can't do it i can't do it it's gonna age super badly it's not even good now

do we really want to be using memes and our no i mean i think streamers know that devs appreciate them enough without us having to talk down to them like they're wait what award is this even for anyways oh oh uh well big thanks to all our subs who voted with their bits for our audience award and the winner is thank you so much for this audience award of course all of us that make video games we started out as members of the audience right played video games that moved us emotionally that really excited our creativity and inspired us to want

to pay it forward to make games ourselves and so getting this award it means that with ghosts of sushima did a good job and that feels amazing i know from all of us at sucker punch we want to thank you for giving us your time there are a lot of fantastic games out there and you played ghost hopefully we've inspired you to go forth and make the next game that inspires the next person and so on and so forth because video games are beautiful and we should all pay it forward thank you

you best technology the last of us part two

developed by naughty dog published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog development team alex developed by valve the half-life alex team [Music] dreams developed by media molecules published by sony interactive entertainment [Music] ghost of tsushima developed by sucker punch productions published by sony interactive entertainment microsoft flight simulator developed by

a sobo studio published by xbox game studios alon guilier leonel fuentes sebastian locke and the winner is hi my name is jorg neumann i'm the head of microsoft flight simulator when we first unveiled the trailer for the new simulator back at e3 2019 we could have not imagined the positive and wonderful response from the community from our global preview event to our tech alpha and betas to launch at many world and sim updates it has been an amazing journey it is humbling to see how many fans have embraced the sim and this award celebrates the passion the teams at the sobo xbox bing and many others have for this franchise

i would be remiss not to recognize and thank all the many talented developers who have contributed to this franchise over the last 39 years and the contributions go beyond the core development team so many third-party developers have elevated and expanded not only microsoft flight simulator but the genre as a whole with many amazing mods and add-ons that delight fans around the world on behalf of every developer who's contributed to the microsoft flight simulator thank you where do you even start with tom fole i the guy's a legend he's done more single-handedly for the gaming and entertainment industry as a whole then and there's not enough time in the day is what i'm saying to talk about tom fold but we'll try anyway um tom fulp

husband to a badass wife father of two awesome kids three if you consider the black sheep uh newgrounds.com uh the lost boy that never quite grew up see you don't talk about tom fult without bringing up newgrounds so years before youtube was a thing newgrounds was the website where you would go to find all the newest cartoons and games from your favorite online creators and it was all a completely self-regulated system all judgments all content had to go through an approval process that was regulated by the users it was amazing no one had quite seen something just like that before it's where you went for everything by everyone and it still is even now after adobe's closed its doors on flash forever new grounds is still somehow thriving it's a testament to the man's enduring image of what games and entertainment actually are and what began as a basement-run website in the mid 90s

has now over the last decade become the industry foot in the door for hundreds upon hundreds of creators trying to get into the games and animation industries or even just entertainment uh people like myself who owe everything to what newgrounds has done for them tom also co-founded the behemoth the game development company and you know them if you've played alien hominid or castle crashers that's right that was him and he didn't just oversee production he made those games look at the end of the day tom fult may not be the father of the internet but if you've ever shared your creative content online for other people to enjoy or open up your browser to see how far you could launch a cartoon animal if you've ever quoted to your friends we're on a bridge charlie or i like rusty spoons or all your bases belong to us if you've ever done any of these things if it applies to you then tom phulp is the father of the

internet that you know he's also a hot dad so that's kind of cool congratulations tom hey everyone it's really great to be here uh all my life i dreamed of making games but i i dreamed about it the way a kid dreams about being a superhero where you know it's you don't think it would actually happen in reality so it's kind of surreal to be here uh right now winning this award you know and having gotten to make games so i'd like to thank gdc for for choosing me it's been a huge honor if it wasn't for flash i don't know if i would have had the opportunity to to live out this dream and i think a lot of people share the same sort of story uh flashing the internet was a game changer that allowed people to make games who otherwise might not have and that energy is what drove new grounds and continues to carry it forward to this day i'd like to thank ross snyder for bringing his programming expertise to the new grounds portal

allowing people to instantly publish their games and animation which was a a big thing in the year 2000 it's really uh exciting times building up that system i'd like to thank all the pioneers who shared their flash on new grounds they were we were all kind of inspiring each other and making each other up our game all the time along the way i had the good fortune of teaming up with john baez and dan paladin to form the behemoth where i got to make console games like alien hominid and castle crashers and it's been really rewarding to see other people from the flash scene go along the same sort of journey with their games like the binding of isaac among us rogue legacy super meat boy and now friday night funken there's been a lot of twists and turns along the way including the death of flash and with that i'd like to thank mike welsh and everyone who works on ruffle ruffle is an open source flash player that's bringing more and more flash games back to the web and over time we risk losing a lot of games to history so i think we should all

thank everyone working in game preservation in general increasingly feels like preserving old games is just as important as making new games uh as for me i'm still making games and i look forward to sharing nightmare cops with everyone when it's done and for all of you working year after year on your own dream games i see you and good luck and we'll all get there eventually to wrap this up thank you again for this award and i'll see you on the internet our next award is for best narrative as a game writer myself this category is oh my gosh oh my gosh that's our publisher oh i'm so sorry i have to take this hello you the writer i'm glad you're free um actually i was kind of in the middle of something but have you ever watched titanic uh yeah i mean wonderful i've just watched it for the first time today i feel like you should rewrite everything to be more like the movie

titanic you want me to rewrite the gdc awards so they're more like titanic yes exactly i'm glad we're on the same page it's just that i'm actually currently presenting the gdc awards so it feels like it's a little late to be making that kind of like a fundamental change to our right i know you can do it i'll check back in and out right well while i get to work on that here are nominees for best narrative best narrative kentucky route zero tv edition developed by cardboard computer published by annapurna interactive ben fabian jake elliott thomas kumensi final fantasy vii remake developed by square enix [Music]

hades developed by separate giants greg cassaven [Music] developed by naughty dog published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog development team take a look i just want my brother back and the winner is

uh i thought i'd do an outfit change yeah yeah what do you think with blazer without blazer you think you want to see without blazer okay okay hang on hang on i'll dig in there what do you think yeah better without i think without blazer yeah okay we'll mix it up we'll do without blazer okay here we go games would be nothing without the beautiful soundscapes created by our incredibly talented audio departments plus their soundproofing needs mean they always get the best and most private offices in the studio and for that the rest of us are immensely jealous here are the nominees for best audio

best audio 80s developed by super giant jase darren the last of us part two developed by naughty dog published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog development team [Music] doom eternal developed by baby software published by bethesda softworks hugo martin marty stratton mick gordon chad mossholder final fantasy 7 remake developed by square enix [Music]

ghost of tsushima developed by sucker punch productions published by sony interactive entertainment and the winner is i want to say thank you so much to the game developers choice awards it is really incredible to be honored in a category with these incredible games and this is regis here who helped bring cerberus to life along with the dogs of several other team members so i want to say thank you to all the team dogs for all the love and support on this project and i want to say thank you to our incredible families

for putting up with a lot of this work being done in our homes towards the end of the project and i want to say thank you to my incredible team at supergiant games for being some of the most wonderful and talented people that i know and it is really a joy to do what i do every day and and to be able to call it my job so thank you so much vr and ar games are more realistic than ever completely disrupting our idea of what reality even is hi this is jason tryer calling from bloomberg news uh hi yeah i'm just calling for comment on a story what kind of story so i've heard from two sources that this award show is a bit of a disaster really i mean it's gone a little off the rails but i don't think it's you want to like i'd be happy to keep you anonymous i'm in the middle of hosting yeah i just think our readers deserve to know what's really happening here

you know i can't talk to you oh my god how do i turn this off they're calling this the anthem of award shows oh could someone please call it what even just happened um anyways here's our nominees for best vr ar game was that even real best vr ar game the walking dead prince and sinners developed by sky dance interactive peter ackman mark domwitz todd adamson jesse young paper beast developed by pixel reef [Applause] dreams developed by media molecule published by sony interactive

[Music] entertainment [Music] developed by motive studios published by electronic arts [Music] and the winner is [Music]

[Music] it is my distinct honor to introduce laura lynn i counter as a close friend an amazing game maker and a superlative human being laurel and has quietly been elevating the work of anyone with the good fortune to be your teammate over the last three decades her humility talent and perseverance are in such abundance that she has enough of each to share with everyone around her after a couple of attempts at starting her own companies she eventually joined

another studio on the design team and soon thereafter became the lead designer on full spectrum warrior where she and her team delivered a top-tier squad game in the vein of x-com that delivered innovations and gameplay and user experience that garnered best of knobs and player adulation on its release not content to rest on her successes she moved over to sony online where she became creative director of an ambitious mmo free realms aimed at bringing a whole new audience and generation of players to the game as well as new way of involving those players in their own storytelling it's hard to overstate the accomplishments and success of free realms when it released in 2011. it was free to play play a viable the web player advancement was multifaceted and not solely dependent on combat avatar customization was expansive player self-expression and cooperative storytelling were at the center of its goals and its successes it was wildly popular reaching over 10 million players at its peak we are still seeing reverberations from this title 10 years on throughout the mmo and free to play sectors more recently she really landed as chief

creative officer at skydance interactive where she explored and set the groundwork for innovative storytelling in the wildly successful vr title the walking dead saints and centers without the foundation laura leonard laid it would have been easy to let the technological and gameplay accomplishments of saints and sinners overshadow the humanity of the game throughout her careers loralyn has challenged herself and her teammates and her craft at every opportunity looking for ways to further storytelling and interactivity in that eclectic marriage that is game making modern game making is a collaborative effort one that benefits from people who know how to bring out the best and everyone on the team who always keep players in mind as we engage in our craft and who never lose sight of the excitement that playing games can bring i can't think of somebody who better embodies this and more deserves recognition for modeling what a game maker should be than laura lynn congratulations laura lynn i feel like saying thank you isn't nearly enough especially considering the people who have gotten this award before me and that thank you isn't just for the game developers choice committee

but for everyone i've ever worked alongside and everyone who supported me over the years i genuinely can't wrap my head around this honor but in this moment i also can't help thinking of my path to get here as a young kid i always thought attractions like pirates the caribbean were magic living immersive stories but then around 1980 i got this weird new game called adventureland for my home computer it was a text adventure a living story that was actually interactive where i could make choices and those choices mattered now that was magic i immediately started making my own text adventure a romance game where you were stranded on an island with a cute guy because i was 16. but even then i knew exactly what i was supposed to be doing with the rest of my life making games but how so i did a bunch of other stuff but then in 1993 everything changed when i played mist they'd made a living breathing interactive word world and now it looked real i couldn't take it anymore i taught myself 3d graphics i improved my scripting i made a demo i sold it to

microprose and started my own company and then two years later my very first game was cancelled my second game was canceled too so welcome to game development it's been almost 30 years since then and 41 years since i first played adventureland and i still get up every morning a couple hours early even if that means six a.m so i have time to play games and even now after all this time when i sit down to play return all or replay pray or dive head first back into mass effect it's still magic so i'll leave you with one thought we're all wizards all of us no matter how experienced we are no matter what our role is or what kind of games we're building or who those games are for we all make magic but that magic comes from unexpected places i never studied computer science or art in school and the concept of game designer as a role didn't even exist back then i was almost 30 when i started my career in games in most companies at that time i was one of one or two or maybe three women in

the whole company and almost always the only woman in a leadership role so i know what it's like to be conspicuously different and yet here i am we all have our own paths our own ways to create magic for our players and each one of those unique paths brings something special and new to the game and the team and the company so my wish for all of us individuals and the industry as a whole is that we'll keep taking risks and will grow and will welcome fellow wizards of all types and all paths there's something to learn from each of us and in each of us there's magic so thank you again from the bottom of my heart and now for everyone's favorite part of the awards ceremony i'm sorry does that take commercials no i mean i'm just confused like video games are the biggest selling industry in the world i mean we bring in like three times what box

office does in a year over seven times what music does why would we need to sell ad space during our awards ceremony where's all the money going right right okay well we're cutting that and instead this airspace is just going to be me smiling to camera and saying unionize and now the award for the industry's biggest money maker accounting for nearly half of all money brought in by video games period best mobile game best mobile game the pathless developed by giant squid published by anaperna interactive the giant squid team [Music] gangshin impact developed by mihoyo

haiyu kai legends of runeterra developed by riot games jeff ju andrew yip [Music] alba a wildlife adventure developed by us too published by pid publishing [Music] if found developed by dreamfield published by anaperna interactive the dream field team [Music]

and the winner is [Music] hello everyone here is how you tank as the ceo and producer of mihoyo is absolutely thrilling to accept the best mobile game of gdc awards financial impact it was a crazy idea to bring the open world adventure experience to the mobile platform back in 2017. we made the launch of ganjan impact in september last year and was surprised to see gashan impact has been well received by our fans globally so here today i'd like to share this award with every team member who has been working on hard enough on this project and most importantly a big thank you to our fans globally who believing in

and supporting us without you we cannot be here thank you we have another award on deck here but i just gotta ping on slack so hang on a second let me just bring this up here ah okay it's from chad our chief visionary creative okay let's see what he has to say um hi sam been doing some thinking okay i've been in the industry about 20 years now and i've just had my first daughter starting to think that maybe women are people haven't gotten too far into it yet but we should pivot to make the awards about a middle-aged man becoming a father and dealing with his own daddy issues you are probably not the best fit for this so you know what um i'm just going to set my status to away and pretend that i never saw that okay um so since creative leadership is clearly having a moment why don't we go ahead and take a look at the games that were objectively beautiful last year that we

all loved oh my god i'm gonna get fired best visual art ghost of tsushima developed by sucker punch productions published by sony interactive entertainment [Music] developed by supergiant games gen z [Music] the last of us part two developed by naughty dog published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog development team [Music]

ori and the will of the wisps developed by moon studios published by xbox game studios i am epic jeremy britton daniel van leeuwen mikhail brockman cyberpunk 2077 developed by cd project red published by cd project and the winner is [Music] hey everyone it is an absolute honor to win this award for the best visual art you know it takes an entire team of you know super creative uh people at a studio years of dedication and hard work you

know a specific style and you know way that you'd like to depict a place like feudal japan and honestly a lot of collaborating with you know team members that maybe we've never worked with before so i want to thank all of our consultants and our teammates in japan that helped us make this game and gave us feedback all over the you know the course of making this game over the last few years and i just want to say thank you to our team the character artists and environment artists and the concept team and the animators and you know the visual uh development team the lighting team as well as the graphics engineers thank you so much for everything you've done to make this game great uh thank you for this award we're honored games would be nothing without the years of blood sweat and tears poured into their design and oh great this guy again okay okay okay hi i'm really sorry i actually

haven't had the opportunity to start reframing the show into titanic yet but forget about that have you heard about a sitcom called gen xers uh no i don't think so why the guy who made that sitcom cracked the code on narrative he solved it he made a chart we'll use this to plot out every intro for the ceremony every intro i mean i'm sure the chart is gray it's probably just one of many tools in a writer's toolbox like you know someone had really cracked the code on storytelling we would all be doing it so every other department i can measure their progress on a grid contractors at least i don't have to pay you royalties benefits health care really anything okay well while i figure out how to read this thing here are the nominees for best design best design

ghost of tsushima developed by sucker punch productions published by sony interactive always changing to battle with your hakamat the last of us part two developed by naughty dog published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog development team eyes on me [Music] hades developed by supergiant groups [Music] animal crossing new horizons developed by nintendo epd published by nintendo the nintendo epd team [Music]

half-life alex developed by val the half-life alex team and the winner is [Music] thank you for this game developers choice award for design first we want to thank the video game rogue and all the roguelikes that came after it which inspired us to see if we had something we could contribute here we also want to thank our team who elevates everything we do our players in early access who gave us invaluable feedback and finally our test maps we spent a lot of time in our test maps trying to figure out what hades would be and when you're doing that you have no idea that it's going to lead to something like this

so on behalf of gavin greg eduardo alice and myself thank you so much let's take a pause now and remember those co-workers colleagues and friends whom we lost over this last year and remember the ways in which they added to our industry and to our lives

i don't want to introduce the innovation award no i don't want to okay fine if it's so easy then why don't you tell naughty dogs they're not nominated for a whole category yeah yeah that's what i thought that's what i thought fine fine you know what fine here nominees for the innovation award so i'm gonna go hide under my desk before the sony snipers find me bye innovation award microsoft flight simulator developed by asobo studios published by xbox game studios jorg newman

[Music] developed by media molecules published by sony interactive musicians half-life alex developed by val the half-life alex team ultimate knockout developed by mediatonic published by devolver [Music] developed by supergiant games

[Music] and the winner is [Music] on behalf of media molecule i'm very glad to accept this innovation award i might like to thank our friends and family at sony for supporting us along this journey um and as always it's the community that that i have the most uh thanks to um in many ways the success of our innovation in making dreams has been to empower the innovation of our community and it brings us joy every day to see the things that they're making thank you now any game awards ceremony wouldn't be complete without a deeply awkward celebrity cameo and for

this year's gdc awards have we got a surprise for you so please help me in welcoming what do you mean we don't have mercer well what are we supposed to do he's the only voice actor anyone recognizes i don't know what we're supposed to okay fine fine you know what fine everyone please help me welcome my producer leslie to the stage what why am i on camera you're now our celebrity guest say hi to the crowd hi listen we're way off the timeline here and unless we do some serious triage we're not going to be able to end the show in time did you make a jira for that producers do more than make jiras nothing would ship without producers i'm sorry are you saying that without producers game writers would just throw down a bunch of random [ __ ] that is completely unmakeable in engine and just assume that's gonna end up on screen because we have a god

complex yes that's exactly what i'm saying whatever i have no idea what you're talking about anyways here's 14 unicorns swimming through an ocean of golden flower petals to announce our game of the year we can't afford that what game of the year animal crossing new horizons developed by nintendo epd published by nintendo the nintendo epd team [Music] all right the last of us part two we all know the drill developed by naughty dog

published by sony interactive entertainment the naughty dog [Music] i really hope you make it half-life alex developed spices you will not save him they're gonna find out what he knows and then they're gonna kill him [Music] hades developed by supergiant games

[Music] [Music] [Music] do you not deserve death then you're safe i can't let more of my people die [Music] and the winner is

[Music] thank you very much for the game developers choice award for game of the year i am here with most of the core team that worked on hades in 2012 we were really lucky to earn best debut with our first game bastion at the game developers choice awards and all of us who worked on that game are still working here together today on all our projects and i don't think we ever thought we'd be back here again much less in the company of last year's most beloved video games on behalf of our whole team and all the vital and new voices we've added who helped make hades what it was we are just really grateful that people liked hades so much it was a privilege to work on it and to make it at all we want to thank our audience for all our previous games who encouraged us and also to the fans of hades in our early access

uh who gave us feedback that was that was really really critical uh to helping finnish hades out thank you to our partners and the platforms who helped hades find an audience and to our families who love and support us it feels really really really really good to make them proud with a huge honor like this one thank you thank you thank you thank you guys thank you thank you thanks for joining us everybody and a huge thanks to katie blair leslie jason sandesh the jury the crew and everyone who worked so hard on these awards so if you haven't clicked that x yet uh please hire me to write your name because i am afraid that i'm going to be blacklisted in the industry after this so someone please okay bye

um you