Austin, Texas - Trion Worlds' Rift and Mojang's
Minecraft each won two awards at the second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards ceremony, presented at UBM TechWeb Game Network's Game Developers Conference Online (GDC Online).
Free-to-play game Wizard101 by developer KingsIsle Entertainment earned the Audience Award, granted to a persistent online game voted upon by the worldwide online game community. The contest received over 170,000 verified votes from players.
The annual event brought together developers of large-scale MMOs, social free-to-play titles, and mobile network games to celebrate the accomplished history, technical excellence, and continued innovation in the online games space.
Trion Worlds' 2011 entrant Rift was honored with the top award as Best New Online Game, following its launch earlier this year; the title also took home the award for Best Online Technology. In addition, breakout sandbox building game
Minecraft, by Mojang, won the prestigious Best Live Game award, along with the award for Best Community Relations.
Additional Choice Online Award recipients include Sony Online Entertainment's MMORPG DC Universe Online, winning for Best Online Visual Arts, and top nominee adventure game
Spiral Knights, which won out for Best Online Game Design. The Online Innovation award, a new category to the Choice Online Awards, was presented to Grey Area for
Shadow Cities, a mobile MMO game which integrates real-life locations into game play.
The Online Game Legend award was presented to the creators of Island of Kesmai, John Taylor and Kelton Flinn. These two recipients were chosen for their achievements as game creators who have made a permanent imprint on the craft of developing online games and for having provided a launch pad for many other accomplished developers' careers for nearly 20 years.
The game inducted into the Choice Online Awards Hall of Fame, Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest, is now in its twelfth year of continuous operation. The fantasy MMORPG title launched in March 1999, and was one of the first games to introduce the concept of guilds and raiding within an online world.
The recipients for 2011 Game Developers Choice Online Awards are:
BEST ONLINE VISUAL ARTS
· DC Universe Online (Sony Online Entertainment)
BEST SOCIAL NETWORK GAME
· Gardens of Time (Playdom)
BEST ONLINE GAME DESIGN
· Spiral Knights (Three Rings Design/Sega)
ONLINE INNOVATION
· Shadow Cities (Grey Area)
BEST ONLINE TECHNOLOGY
· Rift (Trion Worlds)
BEST COMMUNITY RELATIONS
· Minecraft (Mojang)
BEST AUDIO for an ONLINE GAME
· Clone Wars Adventures (Sony Online Entertainment)
BEST NEW ONLINE GAME
· Rift (Trion Worlds)
BEST LIVE GAME
· Minecraft (Mojang)
AUDIENCE AWARD
· Wizard101 (KingsIsle Entertainment)
ONLINE GAME LEGEND
· John Taylor and Kelton Flinn (creators of Island of Kesmai)
HALL OF FAME
· EverQuest (Sony Online Entertainment)
The second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards, a sister event to GDC's annual Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco, honors the accomplishments of the creators and operators of online games.
This year, industry veteran Mike Goslin of Mindspark Interactive Network returned to host the "for developers, by developers" awards ceremony. All awards, with the exception of the Audience Award, Hall of Fame and Online Game Legend, were selected by the Choice Online Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN Online), an invitation-only group of 400 leading game creators from all parts of the online game industry.