Organizers have revealed the finalists for the 15th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game event celebrating the industry’s top games and developers.
Winners in all categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony, taking place on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 at 6:30pm at the San Francisco Moscone Center during the 2015 Game Developers Conference alongside the Independent Games Festival Awards.
Leading the pack with five nominations is Monolith Productions' acclaimed open-world action game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor - receiving nods for Game of the Year, Innovation, Best Design, Best Narrative and Best Technology.
Following close behind are Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation and Destiny from Bungie, each of which were nominated for multiple awards across categories like Best Audio and Best Technology, and also nominated for the 2014 Game of the Year.
Mirroring years past, titles from smaller teams have once again received strong recognition, with nominations or honorable mentions in nine of the 10 categories. Polish independent studio The Astronauts was nominated across four categories for its work producing the atmospheric first-person mystery game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter: the Innovation Award, Best Debut, Best Narrative and Best Audio. Several other games of similar scope garnered multiple category nominations, including 11 bit studios' This War of Mine, Inkle Studios' 80 Days and Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight.
Nintendo also showed strongly in the Choice Awards nominations across both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The latest iteration of the publisher’s flagship fighting game franchise, Super Smash Bros for 3DS picked up a nomination for the Best Handheld Game of the year, while the innovative puzzle-platformer Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is up for a Best Design award. The Nintendo-published, Platinum Games-developed Wii U character action game Bayonetta 2 was also nominated for multiple awards, including Game of the Year and Best Visual Art.
Additional titles with multiple nominations included Blizzard's free-to-play digital card game Hearthstone (three nominations), Bungie's ambitious online first-person shooter Destiny (three nominations) and Yacht Club Games' love letter to NES platformers Shovel Knight (two nominations),
The 2015 Game Developers Choice Awards are freely open to any video game that was initially released and made publicly available to customers during the 2014 calendar year, irrespective of platform or delivery medium. Both finalists and winners are selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is an invitation-only organization comprised of leading game creators from all parts of the industry.
The complete list of nominees, including honorable mentions, for the 15th annual Game Developers Choice Awards is as follows:
Game of the Year
Bayonetta 2 (Platinum Games/Nintendo)
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions/Warner Bros.)
Destiny (Bungie/Activision)
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (Blizzard)
Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly/Sega)
Honorable Mentions: Titanfall (Respawn/Electronic Arts), Valiant Hearts: The Great War (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft), Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft), Dragon Age: Inquisition (BioWare/Electronic Arts), Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco/Nintendo)
Innovation Award
Bounden (Game Oven)
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions/Warner Bros.)
This War of Mine (11 bit studios)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts)
Monument Valley (Ustwo)
Honorable Mentions: Crypt of the Necrodancer (Brace Yourself Games), Extrasolar (Lazy 8 Studios), Elite: Dangerous (Frontier Developments), Elegy For A Dead World (Dejobaan Games), 80 Days (Inkle Studios)
Best Debut
Yacht Club Games (Shovel Knight)
Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall)
The Astronauts (The Vanishing of Ethan Carter)
Stoic Studio (The Banner Saga)
Upper One Games (Never Alone)
Honorable Mentions: Dynamighty (CounterSpy), Hinterland Games (The Long Dark), 1337 & Senri (Leo's Fortune), MachineGames (Wolfenstein: The New Order), Hipster Whale (Crossy Road)
Best Design
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions/Warner Bros.)
Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games)
Dragon Age: Inquisition (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Nintendo EAD Tokyo and 1-Up Studio/Nintendo)
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (Blizzard)
Honorable Mentions: Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo EAD Tokyo/Nintendo), Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly/Sega), Destiny (Bungie/Activision), Monument Valley (Ustwo), Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Threes! (Sirvo)
Super Smash Bros. 3DS (Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco/Nintendo)
Hearthstone (Blizzard)
80 Days (Inkle Studios)
Monument Valley (Ustwo)
Honorable Mentions: Bounden (Game Oven), Bravely Default (Silicon Studio and Square Enix/Nintendo and Square Enix), Desert Golfing (Blinkbat Games), Velocity 2X (FuturLab), Fantasy Life
