The 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards has given its coveted Pioneer prize to Valve's Gabe Newell.
The Pioneer Award - which originated at the Game Developers Choice Awards 2008 - celebrates individuals 'responsible for developing a vital technology or game design at a crucial juncture in video game history, paving the way for the many who followed them'.
Newell will be on stage to collect his Special Award at GDC 2010 in San Francisco this March.
Over 3,000 of the industry's top developers will be present at the Choice Awards ceremony to honor him.
Newell is being awarded 'for his work in co-creating the PC key digital download service Steam, and helping to make possible some of the most important video games of the past two decades - from the Half-Life series through Portal to Team Fortress and beyond'.
This year, the Choice Awards Advisory Committee includes notables such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), Clint Hocking (Ubisoft).
Half life was a revolution in FPS, Steam was a revolution in Digital Distribution. No one deserves it more than him. Unless they wanted to give it to me for my hello world app i did a few years ago.
Has he been given it before, but I'd go for Miyamoto as a rather more obvious (and more deserving, in my opinion) choice. It might be a bold thing to say, but I doubt anyone else will have the same effect as him over such a long period in this industry. Although different times and conditions will play a huge part, not that nobody else will 'be as good'.
As he said himself, he doubts he'd even get a job at nintendo now. Most other long term staff members/directors end up being like annoying mouth pieces like Balmer or Kaz, without actually having any direct effect on the games.
I can't argue with that. Although, when it comes to inspirational developers, Shigsy and Kojima immediately spring to mind, rather than Newell.
Maybe that's because I am not a PC nut though.
Anyway, congratulations.
Now please make some games for the PS3 and stop being a stubborn sod.
i dont think mr newell is actually a dev, think he is just a business man that left MS to setup a games dev. the best thing he did was suppport modders and employ the best ones - cheap yet effective way of finding talent.
its hard to think of another dev that has come from nowehere in the last 12 years and produced such quality games and one that changed a genre for the better in 1998 and then another that did it again in 2004.
please what the hell? they havent made a decent game ever, i played the orange box on xbox and its so dull and boring. one other thing how did half life 2 get so many awards for its story? anyway there are much more deseving peeps/devs that deserve this
please what the hell? they havent made a decent game ever, i played the orange box on xbox and its so dull and boring. one other thing how did half life 2 get so many awards for its story? anyway there are much more deseving peeps/devs that deserve this
Just because you were to thick to understand the story of the Half Life series dosen't mean it wasn't good. And you have clearly never played any of VALVe's games on PC (which you need to do to appreciate them fully).
please what the hell? they havent made a decent game ever, i played the orange box on xbox and its so dull and boring. one other thing how did half life 2 get so many awards for its story? anyway there are much more deseving peeps/devs that deserve this
please what the hell? they havent made a decent game ever, i played the orange box on xbox and its so dull and boring. one other thing how did half life 2 get so many awards for its story? anyway there are much more deseving peeps/devs that deserve this
You played it on xbox........so you probably weren't aware that people were playing the same game in 2004, which was probably about 3 years before you had even heard of the game, along with HD resolutions, online multiplayer and game modifications....all of which were available back then to PC Gamers and had been for a long, long time before that.
Back in 2004, it was great..however it did lose some of the impact later in its life after poor conversions especially the PS3 version.
This is exactly why console only gamers wax lyrical about their favourite games. PC Gamers has had everything that a console gamer has now....but only 10 years ago, some of it just isn't impressive to PC gamers like it is to console gamers...
What next? 3D games and head tracking lol? Like that isn't over 7 years old either!
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Now how about some Ep3 news ?
