Rockstar, Media Molecule lead 2009 Develop Awards nods

by Jason Dobson { Jun 5th 2009 at 11:00AM }

Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North, together with LittleBigPlanet dev Media Molecule have netted an impressive eleven nominations for the 2009 Develop Industry Excellence Awards, the UK's annual prize patrol for all things excellent in the industry.

The Rockstar houses pocketed six of their own for work on GTA: Chinatown Wars and GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned, including nods for visual arts, technical innovation and audio. Rockstar Leeds is also up for the award for best handheld game studio, while both are in the running for being recognized as the best in-house team. Media Molecule is up for five awards as well, including best indie studio and best new IP. The Guildford studio is also up for the technical innovation award, where it's not only up against the Rockstar folks, but the teams behind Killzone 2, PlayStation Home, Football Manager Live and Fable II.

We wish all nominees the best of luck and remind them not to forget to thanks their moms should they take the stage and accept an award during the July 15 ceremony.

Tags: develop-awards, dlc, grand-theft-auto-4, grand-theft-auto-chinatown-wars, grand-theft-auto-iv, gta, gta-chinatown-wars, gta-iv, gta-iv-dlc, gta-iv-the-lost-and-damned, gtaiv, littlebigplanet, lost-and-damned, media-molecule, rockstar, rockstar-games, rockstar-leeds, rockstar-north, uk

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jose @ Jun 5th 2009 11:20AM

Wtf, is that Forrest Whitaker?

baby sea tuna @ Jun 5th 2009 11:32AM

Holy shit, Ghost Dog in da house!

harvsorrow @ Jun 5th 2009 3:32PM

And is the The Most Interesting Man In the World next to him???

He must be thirsty...

ThornedVenom (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Jun 5th 2009 11:20AM

Killzone 2? I thought that it was developed by the Dutch development team Guerilla Games (despite the DIE awards being from the UK.) Or are these awards international?

Ezio Auditore de Firenze [PSN SniperChameleon] @ Jun 5th 2009 12:48PM

"all things excellent in the industry"

that's the explanation for your confusion.

Ridgecity @ Jun 5th 2009 11:43AM

Rockstar is turning into the Kanye West of gaming award shows.

samik @ Jun 5th 2009 11:47AM

Isnt the technical innovation award a bit of a one-horse race? Because Killzone 2 just destroys the other nominees, amazing how till late 2007 Guerilla were being laughed at, but what a game engine they have produced.

Trev @ Jun 5th 2009 11:57AM

I was kind of thinking the same thing. I've played Fable 2 and GTA, used Home to join some games and watch some trailers, haven't used the Football Manager thing, but I really don't see a remarkable technical achievement* in anything but Killzone and it's slew of graphical filters. I've seen some machinima done in KZ and god damn, it is a good looking game. Maybe the other games/apps did something more behind the scenes.

*Before anyone gets touchy about it, I'm not trying to make a qualitative judgment of the games as a whole, I just don't see the super fancy technology.

samik @ Jun 5th 2009 12:56PM

There was a presentation on this, makes interesting reading even though cant understand half of it
http://www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/dr_kz2_rsx_dev07.pdf

What is most interesting is slide 45 onward where they show SPU useage, they barely used 40-50% of their power (this was before final build though, way back in early 2008 I think)

Bones3D @ Jun 5th 2009 12:12PM

Rockstar deserves any and every nomination they get for Chinatown Wars. I've spent about a week just playing around with the game just as a sandbox just seeing how far it can be pushed. The level of detail is just insane for a game running on the DS and is destined to become a standard by which all other titles on the system will be compared with.

And this was my impression even before going into the story! (which in turn unlocks even more elements in the game itself...)

I can't even imagine what it would take to top it...