Ever since 2008, the CEDEC has handed out awards to video games (or any type of media) and developers for being the best among the crowd at what it does. Today, the awards ceremony was held yet again, naming PlayStation VR, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, NieR: Automata and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi as the winners for their own respective categories.
To those unfamiliar with the CEDECÂ (CESA Developers conference), the conference is essentially the Japanese version of the GDC (Game Developers conference) in the United States. And just like how there’s an awards ceremony at the GDC, the CEDEC hands out awards for various categories, such as Engineering (Programming and Development), Visual Arts, Game Design and Sound. In addition, there is a Special Award handed out to influential members of the video game industry.
To top things off, PlayStation VR won the Engineering Award for offering a low-cost and high-performance VR solution, and contributing to the spread of VR technology. Past winners of this award include MT Framework (Capcom) and Kinect (Windows/Microsoft development team).
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild actually won two awards: Visual Arts and Game Design. For the former, the committee said it was because the game created a vast and highly flexible world, combined with the natural presentation which helped it achieve worldwide acclaim; while the for the latter, they said it was because the game offered an open world which offered unprecedented levels of freedom and fun. Past winners for Visual Arts include Street Fighter IV and ICO, while previous recipients for the Game Design award include Puzzles & Dragons and Demon’s Souls.
Next, the NieR: Automata (development team) won the Sound Award for creating a soundtrack deeply linked to the game’s world wiew, with production that was regarded as both unique and impressive. Past winners of this award include The iDOLmaster series (music team) and The Legend of Zelda series.
Lastly, the Special Award went out to Hironobu Sakaguchi for his role in bringing the JRPG genre to the worldwide stage and attracting players all over the world throughout his career. Of course, this award might seem a bit overdue (and it is to some extent), but the winners circle of this category is dominated by various powerhouses in the industry such as Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto and NAMCO’s Masaya Nakamura.
There were other categories included in the awards ceremony, such as Books and Online Services/Networks. Follow this link if you want to see all the winners and more on why each one won in their respective categories.
