Dave Lebling and Marc Blank will receive the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS). Wait, who? The two are co-founders of Playdom, best known for their work on the classic text-based adventure Zork and Enchanter series.

"The Pioneer Award is reserved for individuals whose career-spanning work has helped shape and define the interactive entertainment industry with the creation of a technological approach or the birth of a new genre," the AIAS explains. Previous winners included Activision co-founder David Crane and Atari game designer Ed Logg.

Read more: Their legacy »

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) held its 14th annual Interactive Achievement Awards at the DICE Summit last night, and now the results are in. Mass Effect 2 took the night's top honors with the Game of the Year award, but it wasn't the only standout of the evening.

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Today, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences announced its list of nominees for the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The awards will be given at the D.I.C.E. Summit on Thursday, February 10 in Las Vegas.

Shacknews Game of the Year Red Dead Redemption led the pack with nine nominations, but several games garnered multiple nods. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and God of War 3 both earned six nominations, and Call of Duty: Black Ops, Heavy Rain, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and Mass Effect 2 earned five a piece. Read more »

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced the extensive list of finalists for its 13th annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2: Among Thieves leads the pack with fifteen nominations, followed by Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal) with ten. Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 snagged nine nods, with Rocksteady Studios' Batman: Arkham Asylym grabbing eight. All of the nominations were were chosen by "industry leaders and members of the interactive entertainment software creative community." Read more »

Media Molecule's innovative platformer LittleBigPlanet (PS3) took top honors at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards, held last night at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas.

The title took Overall Game of the Year, in addition to Console Game of the Year, Family Game of the Year, and achievements in Game Direction, Art Direction, Visual Engineering, Character Performance and Innovation in Gaming. The Sackboy himself took home the award for Outstanding Character Performance. Read more »

The International Game Developers Association and Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, both organizations dedicated to furthering the video game industry, revealed today that they have partnered for the annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

AIAS president Joseph Olin claims that the partnership "basically makes the IAAs the awards of the games industry," with any IGDA member now able to vote in the Game of the Year categories. Traditionally awarded at the AIAS' yearly D.I.C.E. summit, the Interactive Achievement Awards have been running since 1998. Read more »

Speaking on the current state of video game journalism and criticism, Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences president Joseph Olin has expressed his belief that "game reviewers are lazy" due to a reliance on scores and the desire to review a game quickly.

"When I just see a score, whether it's a Metacritic score or 5 stars or 4 thumbs, that doesn't tell me anything," Olin told Shacknews during an extensive interview, to be published in full at a later date. "I am never surprised when there's as much as a 40% or 50% variance between Metacritic numbers and user numbers." Read more »

Once again it seems the weekend is upon us. Shall we commence with the traditional offering of links and goodies?

• Seat belts only like skinnies Read more »

During an awards ceremony last night, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named Infinity Wards' Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC, PS3, X360) as 2007's Overall Game of the Year. The title also took three other awards: Console Game of the Year, Action Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Online Game Play.

Valve's The Orange Box (PC, PS3, X360) was named Computer Game of the Year, while Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Game Play Engineering, and Character Performance all went to Portal, one of the three new titles contained within the bundle. Read more »

Blizzard Entertainment co-founder, president and CEO Mike Morhaime (pictured left) is the latest addition to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame, the academy announced today.

Morhaime marks the eleventh inductee into the Hall of Fame, joining renowned industry figures such as Sid Meier, Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux, Trip Hawkins, and Yu Suzuki. Read more »

Former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi, the "Father of PlayStation," will receive the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at next year's D.I.C.E. Summit, the academy announced today.

The ceremony on February 7 will mark the second time a lifetime achievement award has been granted by the academy, with the first going to former Nintendo of America executives Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln this year. Read more »

FiringSquad has a DICE summit Q&A up, asking AIAS president Joseph Olin about this game industry conference and the related Interactive Achievements Awards.

Last year, many gamers and industry members were surprised when the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences released its yearly list of gaming award nominations for 2005 and Capcom's highly praised Resident Evil 4 (PS2, GCN) was nowhere to be found. "Thank God for Capcom [not entering]. We're probably going to pick up some awards tonight," joked David Jaffe, designer of SCE Santa Monica's God of War, which indeed went on to win seven awards on twelve nominations. It turned out that Capcom had declined to join the AIAS--and pay its corporate membership dues--and meaning its games were not eligible for the ballot. AIAS voters wrote-in the game in high numbers but Capcom was informed the votes could not be counted without its membership. Cash-strapped publisher Majesco was unable to join, leaving Double Fine's acclaimed Psychonauts (PS2, Xbox, PC) out of the running. For the larger Capcom, however, it appears to be a matter of principle as much as anything else. This year two well received Capcom games were missing from the 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, its own Dead Rising (X360) and Clover Studio's Okami (PS2), the latter in particular a frequent recipient of awards from various publications. This year, Capcom has posted a frank, full-length reply to the AIAS' methods via its forums, originally sent to GameSpot. Calling the awards "of dubious merit, at best," Capcom asked whether its company, "really [needs] to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to present awards to our own games?" "Again, from the AIAS webpage, their awards are supposedly about 'Recognizing the best games of 2006.' Evidently, they meant, the best games that paid to be recognized. As a company, we find ourselves questioning the value or credibility of awards that seem to honor developers for their creative work, when the truth is that their marketing departments have to pay to obtain consideration," reads the statement, which went on to add that were indeed many "fantastic" nominated games from member companies on the list of nominees. In closing, the statement reads, "Capcom Entertainment would like to thank the gamers who have made Dead Rising and Okami so successful, the media who were similarly moved by the creativity and innovation found within the games and the teams at Capcom and Clover Studios who poured their outstanding passion, talent and creative energies into both ground-breaking games (coincidently, all things supposedly recognized by the Interactive Achievement Awards)." In it story on the matter, GameSpot learned from AIAS representatives that in addition to Capcom and Majesco, publishers Eidos and Tecmo are not paying members; no games from the four publishers have been nominated for awards in the past three years. Apparently, the membership requirement is long standing AIAS policy but has only been enforced for the last few award shows. An AIAS representative noted that it contacted Capcom in advance soliciting membership, but the publisher declined. The 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards will be presented on February 8, 2007, during the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas.

Joining a group whose ranks include industry luminaries such as Will Wright, John Carmack, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott, and Trip Hawkins, late M.U.L.E. designer and multiplayer innovator Dani Bunten will next month become the latest inductee into the American Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Bunten's seminal 1983 multiplayer turn-based strategic simulation M.U.L.E., delivered by her studio Ozark Software for Electronic Arts, was not a commercial success but became a widely played and massively influential work, one frequently cited to this day among designers. The less ambitious but more commercially palatable adventure The Seven Cities of Gold followed, and was a rare strong seller for Bunten, spawning the successor Heart of Africa. Continuing with her multiplayer innovation, Bunten released the modem-compatible Modem Wars, which suffered due to low modem penetration at the time. Two more networked games followed, Command HQ in 1990 and the four-player landmark Global Conquest in 1992, both at friend Sid Meier's studio Microprose. In 1992, Bunten--born Daniel Bunten--underwent a male-to-female sex change operation and took the name Dani Bunten Berry. Around that time she became less publicly involved in the games industry and her design output dropped. Nonetheless she continued working on games on a more infrequent basis, gave talks, and published her writings on her personal site. About her chosen field of multiplayer items, she remarked, "Art, animation, sound, music, and people playing together! Who could ask for more in a medium!" In 1998, Bunten passed away at the age of 49 due to lung cancer. Bunten's legacy remained strong in the development community, particularly PC design circles, during and after her life. Just prior to her passing she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Computer Game Developers Association. Will Wright dedicated his 2000 hit The Sims to her. The award will be presented at the annual D.I.C.E. summit on February 8. Legendary designer Sid Meier will accept the award on her behalf.