San Francisco, Calif. - Organizers have revealed the finalists for the 11th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game industry event celebrating the industry's top games and developers.
Nominations this year are led by indie developer Playdead's Xbox Live Arcade hit Limbo. The evocative monochrome puzzle platformer, which was winner of last year's Independent Game Festival Awards for Visual Art and Technical Excellence, received seven nominations in all, including one for Game of the Year.
The indie stand-out is closely followed by two other Game of the Year nominees, Rockstar San Diego's western-themed open-world adventure game, Red Dead Redemption, with six nominations in total, and BioWare's emotionally-charged science fiction adventure Mass Effect 2, with five nominations.
Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops and Ubisoft Montreal's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood also received multiple nominations, including one each for Game of the Year. And, showcasing the diversity of the 'for developers, by developers' awards, other retail and digital games receiving multiple nominations include Double Fine's Costume Quest, SCE Santa Monica's God of War III¸ Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain, Uber Entertainment's Monday Night Combat and Team Meat's Super Meat Boy.
Swedish developer Mojang's Minecraft was also a multiple nominee, receiving three Game Developers Choice nominations, particularly notable because of a concurrent-year first: the game is also a finalist for this year's Independent Games Festival, where it also received three nominations.
Overall, the Game Developers Choice Awards are open to any video game, with no restrictions or payment for game submission, with open nominations from a plethora of game professionals helping to choose this year's finalists. Winners will now be selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is an invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators from all parts of the video game industry.
The complete list of nominees for the 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards are as follows:
Best Game Design
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo)
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
Limbo (Playdead)
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
God of War III (SCE Santa Monica)
Innovation
Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream)
Kirby's Epic Yarn (Good-Feel & HAL Laboratory)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Limbo (Playdead)
Dance Central (Harmonix)
Best Technology
Starcraft II (Blizzard)
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream)
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
God of War III (SCE Santa Monica)
Best Handheld Game
God of War: Ghost of Sparta (Ready At Dawn/SCE Santa Monica)
Cut the Rope (ZeptoLab)
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (Kojima Productions)
Game Dev Story (Kairosoft)
Dragon Quest IX (Level 5)
Best Audio
Limbo (Playdead)
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
Halo: Reach (Bungie)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DICE)
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
Best Downloadable Game
Costume Quest (Double Fine)
Limbo (Playdead)
Super Meat Boy (Team Meat)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Monday Night Combat (Uber Entertainment)
Best Writing
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream)
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
Costume Quest (Double Fine)
Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian)
Best Debut Game
Limbo (Playdead)
Darksiders (Vigil Games)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Monday Night Combat (Uber Entertainment)
Super Meat Boy (Team Meat)
Best Visual Arts
God of War III (SCE Santa Monica)
Limbo (Playdead)
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft Montreal)
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
Game of the Year
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch)
Limbo (Playdead)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft Montreal)
In addition to the awards for individual games, the Game Developers Choice Awards committee will be announcing its Special Award recipients in the near future, including honorees for the Pioneer, Ambassador and Lifetime Achievement Special Awards -- as well as revealing the identity of this year's Game Developers Choice Awards host.
Winners in all major categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards show, attended by over 3,000 of the world's leading video game developers, and taking place Wednesday, March 2nd at 6:30 pm at the Moscone Convention Center during the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Since last year's ceremony, the Game Developers Choice Awards added a sister Game Developers Conference Online Awards ceremony focused around the rise of online games, paired with Austin's GDC Online conference last October. Highlights from the show, which crowned Riot Games' League of Legends as Best New Online Game and CCP's EVE Online as Best Live Game, will be shown during the main Choice Awards ceremony.
For more information about the 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, check out the official website at http://www.gamechoiceawards.com - and for information about the 2011 Game Developers Conference, please visit the http://www.gdconf.com.