Half-Life 2 dominates nominations for GDC Awards

Valve's long-awaited PC opus Half-Life 2 has picked up six nominations for this year's Game Developers Choice Awards, with the final winners to be announced at a ceremony in San Francisco on March 9th.

The nominations, which were announced last night by the International Game Developers Association, saw Half-Life 2 leading the pack with nominations for Best Game, Character Design, Game Design, Technology, Visual Arts and Writing.

Hot on its heels were three titles which picked up four nominations apiece - Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Namco's Katamari Damacy and Blizzard's World of Warcraft, all of which were nominated for Best Game along with three other categories.

The final nomination in the Best Game category was Criterion Games' Burnout 3: Takedown, which also received a nomination in the Technology category. Other games with more than one nomination were id Software's Doom 3, Nintendo's Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

One interesting category is the award for the best New Studio, which saw nominations for Cryptic Studios (creators of City of Heroes), Crytek (Far Cry), inXile (The Bard's Tale), Obsidian Entertainment (Knights of the Old Republic II) and the Behemoth (Alien Homonid).

This year marks the fifth anniversary for the Game Developers Choice Awards, which have become a high profile fixture of the Game Developers Conference, and will be presented at an awards ceremony during the conference next month.

The full list of nominations is as follows...

Best Game

• Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games / Electronic Arts)
  - Paul Glancey, Chris Roberts, Paul Ross, Fiona Sperry, Alex Ward
  
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
  - Leslie Benzies, Adam Fowler, Aaron Garbut, Sam Houser, Alexander Roger, Obbe Vermeij
  
  
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Ken Birdwell, Gabe Newell, Jay Stelly
  
  
• Katamari Damacy (Namco)
  - Keita Takahashi
  
  
• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
  - Mark Kern, Mike Morhaime, Rob Pardo
  
  

New Studio

• Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes)
  - Michael Lewis
  
  
• Crytek (Far Cry)
  - Avni Yerli, Cevat Yerli, Faruk Yerli
  
  
• inXile entertainment (The Bard's Tale)
  - Brian Fargo, Matthew Findley
  
  
• Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)
  - Chris Avellone, Chris Jones, Darren Monahan, Chris Parker, Feargus Urquhart
  
  
• the Behemoth (Alien Hominid)
  - Tom Fulp, Brandon LaCava, Dan Paladin
  
  

Audio

• Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Spark Unlimited / Activision)
  - Jack Grillo, Caleb Sweazy
  
  
• Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
  - Christian Antkow, John Carmack, Tim Willits
  
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
  - Craig Conner, Allan Walker
  
  
• Halo 2 (Bungie Software / Microsoft Game Studios)
  - C Paul Johnson, Marty O'Donnell, Jay Weinland
  
  
• Katamari Damacy (Namco)
  - Yu Miyake
  
  

Character Design

• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Ted Backman, Dhabih Eng, Bill Fletcher, Bill Van Buren
  
  
• Katamari Damacy (Namco)
  - Keita Takahashi
  
  
• Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Entertainment)
  - Nicolas Bouvier, Mickael Labat
  
  
• Sly 2: Band Of Thieves (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Computer Entertainment America)
  - Travis Kotzebue, Dev Madan
  
  
• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
  - Brandon Idol, Chris Metzen
  
  

Game Design

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
  - Leslie Benzies, Adam Fowler, Aaron Garbut, Sam Houser, Alexander Roger, Obbe Vermeij
  
  
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Gabe Newell, Jay Stelly
  
  
• Katamari Damacy (Namco)
  - Keita Takahashi
  
  
• Pikmin 2 (Nintendo)
  - Masamichi Abe, Hino Shigefumi
  
  
• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
  - Chris Metzen, Rob Pardo
  
  

Technology

• Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games / Electronic Arts)
  - Alex Fry, Ciaran Rooney, Paul Ross, Hamish Young
  
  
• Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
  - John Carmack, Robert Duffy, Jan Paul van Waveren
  
  
• EyeToy: AntiGrav (Harmonix Music Systems / Sony Computer Entertainment America)
  - Eran Egozy, Eric Malafeew
  
  
• Far Cry (Crytek / Ubisoft Entertainment)
  - Timur Davidenko, Vladimir Kajalin, Andrey Khonich, Anton Knyazyev, Cevat Yerli
  
  
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Yahn Bernier, Brian Jacobson
  
  

Visual Arts

• Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
  - Andy Chang, Seneca Menard, Kenneth Scott
  
  
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Viktor Antonov, Randy Lundeen
  
  
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
  - Hiroyuki Hayashi, Chie Kawabe
  
  
• Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Entertainment)
  - Mickael Labat, Patrick Limoges
  
  
• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
  - Sam Didier, William Petras, Justin Thavirat
  
  

Writing

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
  - Dan Houser, James Worrall
  
  
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Marc Laidlaw
  
  
• Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (High Voltage Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Matt Entin, Ed Kuehnel, Eric Nofsinger
  
  
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
  - Nate Bihldorff, Ryota Kawade
  
  
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Obsidian Entertainment / LucasArts Entertainment)
  - Chris Avellone