Destiny Takes GOTY, Confuses Audience, at This Year's BAFTAs

[Sight Unseen]

Wait, Last of Us: Left Behind, as in the DLC, not the rest of the game? How in balls did that win best story on its own? That's an ass pull if I ever saw one. Half the thing was a combat level, and the other half had the "story" part, which heavily relied on the main game for you to actually give a shit and know what the fuck is going on, and was essentially teenage angst + zombies = tragedy. I'd honestly love to hear the reasoning on this one.

Poor Valiant Hearts gets another pity award because it got shafted in the one category it should have won. Shame how quality can only be rewarded in offhand ways.

And oh yeah, Destiny won an award again, despite not doing anything exceptionally save for the music. And they fired the composer who made it.

Having played and thoroughly enjoyed Left Behind, I agree that it doesn't really deserve story of the year award. My thoughts on this is that it's one of two things:

1. They just wanted to award The Last Of Us again even though it came out last year.
2. The industry just REALLY loves gay love stories and thinks that they deserve every prize ever (remember Gone Home?)

 

[Peregrin130]

League of Legends is a "persistent game"? I have no idea what criteria they applied to come to that conclusion, because whatever I can think of would also make Chess into one.

The less is said about their "GOTY" choice the better ...

I'm confused too about their definition of a "persistent game"... The term's precise meaning is debatable, but I'm pretty sure LoL isn't one of those.

As for that GOTY snafu, it's pretty obvious where it came from.

 

[Timeless Lavender]

Well, I am not surprise with the results. Do any awards show do justice at all. LOL Destiny should not even touch this GOTY list

 

[Sight Unseen]

A piece of DLC won Story, "Best family game" is a port, Innovation was a walking simulator and Destiny won GOTY ._.

BAFTAs are nothing if not sellouts sometimes. Or eagerly trailing behind the Oscars >_<

To be fair, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter didn't win the innovation award for its gameplay but for its graphical technology, which was AMAZING for a small indie studio. I forget exactly what they did, but they essentially took real life pictures and used them to make the in game visuals, and the result is one of the most realistic looking games I've ever seen. For a team of 8 people, it's amazing.

 

[Jamash]

"British game"? That seems so deafeatist. "We know nothing made in Britain is gonna get on the list, so let's just make sure we get *something*.

It's not defeatist at all, it's just that the British Academy, whose sole purpose is to promote and support such things in Britain, wants to additionally recognise the achievements of it's native developers and support it's home video game industry.

In 2013, the BAFTA for British Game was awarded to a little know title called Grand Theft Auto V, which I can assure you wasn't a defeatist sympathy award because they thought that the record breaking game which generated $800 million in its first 24 hours alone, needed a "at least you tried" award because otherwise it wouldn't be recognise at all that year... indeed that plucky little British game also took home the awards for Game Design and Online Multiplayer and it's British developer was awarded a Academy Fellowship as well as other awards and accolades outside the BAFTAS.

In pretty much every British Academy Awards for Video Games since it's inception, British games and developers have won awards without the help of the relatively new and specific "British Game" category (with some years having so many nominations and taking so many titles you'd be forgiven for thinking that the awards were only open to British developers), so the award is probably just to generate more interest in the British games industry and games development as a whole, and to possibly fight the misconception that games which are made in Britain by British developers but are published by American or multinational companies (like a lot of Microsoft's and Sony's first and third party studios) aren't British and nothing of worth ever gets produced by the British games industry.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

....god damn you Brits must have some really awesome mind-altering substances.

this, Far Cry 4 was the actual game of the year. Destiny just sounds to me like Borderlands so I've already done it.

So... You haven't played it? Are you just parroting what someone once told you about it?

i played it. and it IS borderlands, except more terrible. it had the skeleton of a good game, but it's obvious that the game needed another year in development at least to create the game they promised.

destiny is bad. it was fun until the content became grindy. i've done each of those stupid strikes many dozens of times. in fact, go back in time and look at everything that they promised Destiny would be, and then look at what we got. it's bland, it's boring, and most importantly, it's not the game they promised us.

 

[EHKOS]

There was music in Far Cry 4? Who cares if Destiny won now, that just proves the award is a sham.

 

[Areloch]

A piece of DLC won Story, "Best family game" is a port, Innovation was a walking simulator and Destiny won GOTY ._.

BAFTAs are nothing if not sellouts sometimes. Or eagerly trailing behind the Oscars >_<

To be fair, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter didn't win the innovation award for its gameplay but for its graphical technology, which was AMAZING for a small indie studio. I forget exactly what they did, but they essentially took real life pictures and used them to make the in game visuals, and the result is one of the most realistic looking games I've ever seen. For a team of 8 people, it's amazing.

The process is called Photogrammetry. The basic process is you go out and take a metric crap-ton of pictures of the object you want to have as 3D from all various angles. Doing a simple person-sized rock could require a hundred or so images for the best results.

Then they used a program called Photoscan(which is also being used by Kojima's team for MGS5, incidently) which processes the images to figure out the relative position of the camera for each photo and uses point recognition to build a 3d model of the object being scanned.

After that you clean up the results in a traditional modelling program and bake down the textures in a usable format. For the Vanishing, they also did some manual artist work on the textures to give them a blended feel of a realistically done painting.

The interesting part of this technique is that it scales up incredibly well. You can scan a paint can all the way up to entire mountains as long as you have enough pictures.

For a more in-depth explination of their process, you can hit up their dev blog here:
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/

It's a very cool technology. It's not "new" but it's only recently actually become viable to use. You're likely going to be seeing more and more games with realistic graphics using this for stuff rather than entire art teams to hammer out a single environment.

I've done this system myself and it's very compelling stuff. I'd agree that they deserved the innovation/graphical award there for being the first game to utilize this system in such a way. Say what you will about the Vanishing's gameplay, it definitely pushed the graphical envelope, and did it with an incredibly tiny team.

The More You Know.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

The BAFTAs have always been confusing with what they award; I still remember when they have the terribly forgettable Brink a writing award years back. Oscar winners at least have a logic behind them, the BAFTAs' gaming awards have none.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

My, my, the reasons behind giving this game an award can be seen a mile away...

By the way aren't the BAFTA awards the ones sponsored by PR or am I getting cross-eyed with ANOTHER british game award show?

That GIF...Oh my i must have. Brilliant!

OT. Yeah i see where that half a million budget is going now. They really could at least be subtle about it though.
I love the way the OP just dropped the news with little more than bare facts. Not even a question to the readers on what we may think of this. He KNOWS already what we will think of this. Hehe!

Hang on...there was music in Far Cry 4? I still play that now and i hear little more than ambient drums now again. Ohhh Ubi...put your cash away! Dont embarrass yourself again.
Best game design? How is that NOT best game? "Design" is a pretty broad term in this sense.

Lastly the BAFTAs are a joke. Even compared to the other circle-jerk awards. I didnt know they do games now. Trying to get in with the cool kids, are we?
I believe we should make an award ceromony for the most shamelessly corrupt award ceromonies. Whodya think would win?

 

[Vigormortis]

Everyone's caught up on Destiny and The Last of Us DLC winning. But my question is: How in the ever-loving hell did League of Legends win best persistent title? Dota 2 and SMITE did SO MUCH MORE over the year - for their respective player bases, communities, and for e-sports in general. Hell, I'd even argue that World of Tanks did more last year. What the fuck did LoL do to top them?

Gads, and here I thought the BAFTA's were one of the few awards shows that occasionally "got" what made great video games great. How wrong I was, apparently. Oh well.

 

[cikame]

I don't like Mordor, Alien: Isolation is likeable but has issues, Destiny is not good... choices choices...

 

[Soviet Heavy]

So the out of nowhere teenage lesbian asspull Left Behind is the best story?

In what way was it an out of nowhere ass pull? We already had an idea of what happened in the mall.Or is it just the lesbian part that bothered you?

Being a lesbian has nothing to do with it. It just felt like lazy storytelling to me made solely for publicity.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

A piece of DLC won Story, "Best family game" is a port, Innovation was a walking simulator and Destiny won GOTY ._.

BAFTAs are nothing if not sellouts sometimes. Or eagerly trailing behind the Oscars >_<

To be fair, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter didn't win the innovation award for its gameplay but for its graphical technology, which was AMAZING for a small indie studio. I forget exactly what they did, but they essentially took real life pictures and used them to make the in game visuals, and the result is one of the most realistic looking games I've ever seen. For a team of 8 people, it's amazing.

The Order 1886 employed similar technology (3D photo scanning, right?) yet it didn't get mentioned

Point being that "Innovation" is such a flimsy category that you have to specify where. "Innovation In Games Mechanics", "Innovation In Interactive Storytelling", "Innovation in Graphics", etc. would be required.

But I doubt anyone needs clarification on why the VG BAFTAs are kind of dumb.

 

[RaikuFA]

BAFTA: The sound everyone makes when they see the winners.

 

[Vykrel]

ive definitely got a problem with it winning Best Game, and i say that as someone who still plays it. its fun, but mostly just with friends. Borderlands is much the same way. a game with bare bones story that isnt particularly fun and exciting unless youre playing with a group of friends should not be getting GOTY awards. whenever i play Destiny alone, i just feel like im grinding.

also, to everyone who has a problem with the other winners and nominees, please remember that 2014 was the first year after the release of the new consoles. this always results in lackluster and disappointing titles that have been a bit rushed out of the gate. this year will have some real contenders like The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, Batman: Arkham Knight, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Halo 5: Guardians, Below, Inside, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Quantum Break, Star Wars: Battlefront, Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division, No Man's Sky, Mortal Kombat X, the next Zelda title, etc. and Ori and the Blind Forest recently came out, which has gotten great reviews.

point is, they didnt have a whole lot to work with this year. the only travesties i see are Destiny's victory and Transister (like Bastion a few years ago) not being nominated for Best Music.

 

[hermes]

Everyone's caught up on Destiny and The Last of Us DLC winning. But my question is: How in the ever-loving hell did League of Legends win best persistent title? Dota 2 and SMITE did SO MUCH MORE over the year - for their respective player bases, communities, and for e-sports in general. Hell, I'd even argue that World of Tanks did more last year. What the fuck did LoL do to top them?

Gads, and here I thought the BAFTA's were one of the few awards shows that occasionally "got" what made great video games great. How wrong I was, apparently. Oh well.

One better question is: what a hell is a persistent game? Because, if all it takes is to have a user account that persists among play instances, then COD is also a persistent game. I would say MMOs are more of persistent games, since they exist outside anyone's playthroughs.

If they only invented the words to award someone in the genre, I would guess what LoL did is money. Lots of money. Not that the other ones were not successful, just that they didn't make as much money... Or (and that would also explain the LoU DLC and Destiny awards), the judges are a handful of people with a pretty narrow view of the industry, so they awarded LoL because that is what they knew.

 

[Vigormortis]

One better question is: what a hell is a persistent game? Because, if all it takes is to have a user account that persists among play instances, then COD is also a persistent game. I would say MMOs are more of persistent games, since they exist outside anyone's playthroughs.

If they only invented the words to award someone in the genre, I would guess what LoL did is money. Lots of money. Not that the other ones were not successful, just that they didn't make as much money... Or (and that would also explain the LoU DLC and Destiny awards), the judges are a handful of people with a pretty narrow view of the industry, so they awarded LoL because that is what they knew.

This could be true, but given how much games like World of Tanks and Dota 2 rake in, I'm dubious that that was the sole factor. Hell, the amount of money Dota 2 made during TI4 alone is staggering.

I feel the 'narrow view' hypothesis is more likely.

 

[r0seyp0m]

I still confuse why Monument Valley was in it since didn't it came out a year ago?

Well, League of Legends made it into the awards and that came out 6 years ago. In other words, these awards mean absolutely nothing.

 

[jhoroz]

BAFTA? More like DAFTA!