TMCnet News

2015 Game Developers Choice Awards Honoring Veteran Brenda Romero With Ambassador Award, Elite Co-Creator David Braben With Pioneer Award
[January 27, 2015]

2015 Game Developers Choice Awards Honoring Veteran Brenda Romero With Ambassador Award, Elite Co-Creator David Braben With Pioneer Award


SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The 15th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA), the peer-awarded highest honors in video game development, has revealed its first two special award winners for this year.

The Ambassador Award, honoring someone who is helping video games "advance to a better place" through advocacy or action, is going to game designer and academic Brenda Romero, who has been a key figure in video games throughout more than three decades of standout game design, teaching and advocacy. The Pioneer Award, honoring breakthrough tech and game design milestones, is being awarded to David Braben, the co-creator of seminal 3D space exploration title Elite - now in resurgence with Elite: Dangerous - and co-founder of the foundation for the popular 'hobbyist computer revival' Raspberry Pi device.

Ambassador Award winner Romero, whose honor was bestowed after open nominations from the game development community, and voting by the Game Developers Choice Advisory Committee (http://www.gamechoiceawards.com/advisory.html) is an award-winning game designer and academic who entered the video game industry in 1981 at the age of 15.

She is the longest continuously serving woman in the video game industry and a 2014 Fulbright fellow for her work with Ireland's game industry, game academics and government to improve the industry overall. As a designer, she has contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games, The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly Train, which has been demonstrated at GDC on multiple occasions, and Siochan Leat (The Irish Game), which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. Brenda's work advocating passionately for games - and the role of women in them - over the past three decades made her a natural choice for this award. Romero co-owns Loot Drop and Romero Games, and is also program director of the UC Santa Cruz master's program in Games and Playable Media. 

Pioneer Award winner David Braben co-developed the seminal 'open world' 3D space trading game Elite with Ian Bell while atuniversity in the early 1980s. The best-selling, startlingly expansive title had revolutionary 3D graphics and let the player make all kinds of intriguing moral decisions as they flew the known universe. Elite saw a number of sequels, including the crowdfunded, currently much buzzed-about Elite: Dangerous, and went on to be a big influence on games in the genre it helped create - from Wing Commander to No Man's Sky and beyond.



In addition to his work on Elite and his more than 30 years as a game developer - latterly at his major UK studio Frontier Developments - Braben was also involved in the genesis of the Raspberry Pi, a 'hobbyist computer' which enables people of all ages to explore computing, and to program in languages like Scratch and Python. Braben helped to found the Raspberry Pi Foundation and guide the program through to mass production - with more than 4 million of the devices now manufactured.

Finally, as part of the awards evening that includes both the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards, the team behind the Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? video series, Ashly and Anthony Burch, will once again contribute brand-new videos to the Independent Games Festival this year. They augment the efforts of ceremony favorites, the video game sketch anarchists Mega64, again returning to make videos for the Game Developers Choice Awards this year.


The Game Developers Choice Awards are produced in association with the Game Developers Conference® (GDC) and will take place on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:30pm at the San Francisco Moscone Center and is open to all GDC badge-holders.

More information about the 15th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards can be found on the official website at http://www.gamechoiceawards.com - and for information about the 2015 Game Developers Conference, please visit http://www.gdconf.com.

About the UBM Tech Game Network
A core provider of essential information to the professional game industry, the UBM Tech Game Network offers market-defining content, and drives community through its award winning lineup of print, online, event and research products and services. These include the Game Developers Conference®, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com and network of sites, the Game Advertising Online ad network, the Game Developers Conference™ Europe, the Game Developers Conference™ China, the Game Career Seminars and GameCareerGuide.com, the Independent Games Festival and Summit, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Visit: www.jointhegamenetwork.com

About UBM Tech
UBM Tech is a global media business that brings together the world's technology communities through live events, online properties and custom services. UBM Tech's community-focused approach provides its users and clients with expertly curated research, education, training, community advocacy, user-generated content and peer-to-peer engagement opportunities that serve the Electronics, Security, Enterprise IT and Communications, Network Infrastructure and Applications, Game and App Developers, and Tech Marketing communities. UBM Tech's brands include Black Hat, DesignCon, EE Times, Enterprise Connect, Game Developers Conference (GDC), HDI, InformationWeek, and Interop. Create, a UBM Tech full range marketing services division, includes custom events, content marketing solutions, community development and demand generation programs based on its content and technology market expertise. UBM Tech is a part of UBM (UBM.L), a global provider of media and information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion. For more information, go to http://tech.ubm.com.

 

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2015-game-developers-choice-awards-honoring-veteran-brenda-romero-with-ambassador-award-elite-co-creator-david-braben-with-pioneer-award-300026049.html

SOURCE UBM Tech Game Network


[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]