Rockstar and GTA IV honored at Develop Awards 2008

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Jul 31st 2008 at 2:50PM }

As if those billions upon billions of sold copies weren't reward enough, Rockstar has now had its efforts in Grand Theft Auto IV recognized by the Develop Industry Excellence Awards, the UK's annual ceremony which doles out awards for ... excellence. In the industry.

Rockstar's excellence was acknowledged with four awards -- Rockstar North received gongs for "Visual Arts," "Audio Accomplishment" and "Best In-House Developer", while Rockstar Games walked away with the special Grand Prix prize, "not only the commercial and creative powerhouse Grand Theft Auto IV, but also Rockstar's much-envied studio network which regularly pushes the creative boundaries of gaming."

Award recipients which didn't bully said boundaries include Lost Winds for "Best ~~Sedative~~ New IP," LEGO Indiana Jones for "Best Use of a License" (to make money!) and Nintendo for "Publishing Hero." Check out the complete list of winners after the break, and the complete list of whiners in the comments.

Best New IP:

Lost Winds (Frontier Developments)

Best Use of a License:

Lego Indiana Jones (Traveller's Tales)

Visual Arts:

Rockstar North (Grand Theft Auto IV)

Audio Accomplishment:

Rockstar North (Grand Theft Auto IV)

Publishing Hero:

Nintendo

Tools Provider

Epic Games

Technical Innovation

NaturalMotion / Image Metrics (Grand Theft Auto IV)

Creative Outsourcing

Richard Jacques Studios

Services

Babel Media

Recruitment Company

OPM

Games:Edu New Talent Award

University of Abertay & Dare to be Digital

Business Development

Realtime Worlds

Best Mobile Studio

Ideaworks3D

Best In-House Developer

Rockstar North

Best New UK/European Studio

Doublesix

Best Independent Developer

Splash Damage

Grand Prix

Rockstar Games

Tags: Awards, Develop, Develop-Awards, Grand-Theft-Auto-IV, GTA-IV, Rockstar

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Heh {XBL: P4nic 4tt4ck} @ Jul 31st 2008 2:54PM

Hey, Rockstar, that's nice you won an award and all but can we be serious for a moment? When the hell are you gonna port GTA 4 to the PC?

Xoviet chiK @ Jul 31st 2008 3:04PM

Where's their prize for most convoluted game-ruining control scheme? Sprint Buttons are on the cutting edge of next generation creativity.

Mr.ESC @ Jul 31st 2008 3:36PM

Well after buying SA (I regret buying it) GTA IV was actually great.

I never was into GTA.I played GTA 1 and 2 and they were ridiculous, for me GTA was like Carmageddon, violent and ridiculous.

GTA 3 well I played a bit and it was good but I was more into RPGs back in the day.

GTA 4 was more serious (In some weird way) and I liked it,a lot. The only thing I dislike about GTAIV is the online gameplay.Classic deathmatch modes with horrible aiming and is variants.

The co-op missions are a nice touch but too f*cked up. Some of them require you to play with just 1 other person and since you can’t create a group or set a limit you have to boot people for 5 minutes if they don’t boot you first.

I wish it had split screen.

Serious face:

When developers started to ditch Split screen and local co-op? I have 2 other xbox 360 controllers that I have never used since Gears of war. Crackdown and GTA IV would be better with local co-op instead of randomly choosing between xbox live tards until you find some serious party of people who aren’t douchebags (Time aprox 2 hours) because again Ranked matches are effing bullsh*t. The fact I want the achievements doesn’t mean I don’t want to play with my friends.

Developers get rid of ranked matches; they suck, clans cheat the scores and no one gives a f*ck.

Nick the Hero of Canton @ Jul 31st 2008 3:43PM

I had no problems with the controls, cover system, etc.

philmcphail @ Jul 31st 2008 9:08PM

@ Mr. Esc

lol Am I like the only person that thought GTAIV was too serious for its own good? I still think GTA: SA was the best GTA ever. I mean you didn't like the crazy over the topness of it? For an example, did you do the mission for Area 69? Where you had to stealth your way to the underground military base to steal an experimental jetpack? Or the mission at the gas station where some construction worker hits on your sister and you bury him alive in a portable restroom thing under cement. Or stealing Jetfighters and parachuting? That kind of missions were fun, stuff I can really remember. I can't recall any that good in GTA IV, maybe the bank mission with the McReary's (which was more annoying than fun). It's not the aspect of the gameplay or features that made GTA IV very underwhelming for me, it was also like the stuff they took out. EX: Car modding, Stealth mode, shit load of weapons (chainsaw in particular), odd cars, boats/watercrafts and airplanes, even like random objects like night vision goggles or fire extinguishers. I remember beating some pedestrian in the game to death with a bouquet of flowers.

Its not just to frivolous things that they (GTA devs) took out it was like useful things to like the damn fast forward button that would come up if that would take you halfway in a mission if you failed it back in San Andreas. Thats all I can come up for not since like its been such a long time since I've played GTA SA.

Donald @ Jul 31st 2008 3:05PM

"Rockstar's much-envied studio network which regularly pushes the creative boundaries of gaming."

How in the hell did GTA4 push the creative boundaries?

Heh {XBL: P4nic 4tt4ck} @ Jul 31st 2008 3:15PM

Drunk driving.

Mr Khan @ Jul 31st 2008 3:30PM

I can see it. It's more pushing creativity through technology, but it's still creativity. It was technological achievement to so densely populate the world of that size, but it was a creative one to make that population compelling

Jakka (Not sure why he got banned?) @ Jul 31st 2008 4:03PM

Frankly, I'd rather choose less pop-up over all those USELESS graphical and gameplay quirks anyday.

MxPxP86 @ Jul 31st 2008 5:20PM

Amen to that. Creative how? Using Cellphones to get new missions? A GPS to get us to our location...? Wow. Because all the decade+ before this, other methods always broke that buggersome fourth wall of knowing what was going on, and I couldn't play anymore?
oh, no the creativity shown through on that that first date, you go bowling! With non motion controlled controls... groundbreaking! Sorry, after playing Wii Sports Bowling, bowling was a less than inspired choice here. they should've chosen darts. haven't seen that on wii yet... And that first date in the game was the last one I took on that ride. Sorry, but no dice on creativity. Humongous and sprawling, more alive and beautiful than most (if not all) npc populated games yes. But creative? My opinion, no.

The Fatass of Kickassness @ Jul 31st 2008 5:24PM

I'm sorry, but if you don't boot up the game and immediately see loads of creativity, you're fuckin' blind. Too many examples to list, but when someone speaks of creativity, it doesn't always have to be a gameplay element, and the devs got more creative with GTA4's world than almost any other game I've ever played.

Donald @ Jul 31st 2008 7:05PM

So I'm assuming if it's not a gameplay element it's the world you're talking about? Well since so much of it (if not all, I don't know) is based off New York I can't say they were being to original there.

Let's take a look at the story then. It's hard to call this original. It's nothing special. I can't speak for all of it as I got 25% in and then stopped playing, but it did NOTHING to draw me in. I was just doing random errands for random people. And then my apartment was on fire, WOW, how engrossing.

And isn't the gameplay what it's supposed to be about? It totally failed to do anything "creative." Unless doing that shitty social life aspect of the game was interesting to you (I have no idea how, you do the same things over and over that aren't fun.) So yes, please list those things that are so creative to you, because I'm having a hard time seeing them.

The Fatass of Kickassness @ Jul 31st 2008 10:14PM

During my playthrough of that game, I'd seen an absolute bevy of creative shit. Ranging from the fake ads to the small details (like the jokes between radio songs or the TV commercials) to the character design/dialogue... there was plenty that one would consider clever, or creative.