God of War won several awards for its performance as Game of the Year Now at the Game Developers Choice Awards. Now Sony’s PS4-exclusive action game has scored another top prize.
“God of War earned accolades for its mature narrative, dazzling visuals and refined combat gameplay,” according to a statement on the Game Developers Conference’s website.
Of course God of War was not the only game that picked up awards at the conference. Celeste won the award for best audio, while Into the Breach won the award for best design. Red Dead Redemption 2, which has often competed with God of War over the last year, won the award for best technology, while Australia-based developer Mountains scored the title for best debut for Florence, which was also selected as the best mobile game. The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Amy Hennig, who directed Uncharted.
“The Game Developers Choice Awards represent the most refined games of the year, and the sheer variety of games honored tonight showed that games can still represent wholly new and unique creative visions,” GDC general manager Katie Stern said in a statement. “A number of independently developed titles like Celeste, Gris, and Florence helped prove how internal or deeply personal turmoil can make for massively appealing games for millions of fans. While games like God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 capture our imagination with poignant moments juxtaposed against epic tales of staggering scale and technical prowess. We embrace and accept all these amazingly creative works, and we’re proud to recognize these nominees and winners alike for the imagination and hard work that brought them here.”
This year’s GDC also introduced the future of gaming from Google. The search engine giant announced its new game-streaming technology called Stadia, which is expected to launch this year. Phil Harrison, a former Microsoft and Sony executive, is joining the Stadia team with the strong belief that latency, an issue that arises with video game streaming services, “won’t be an issue.”
Video game streaming should introduce an entirely new generation of game experiences, especially because streaming should reduce the cost of expensive gaming equipment in order to be able to play games. The only issue might be the aforementioned latency, as the experience now depends on internet connectivity.
This is not the first Game of the Year award for God of War. The PS4 exclusive won the Game Awards in December and the DICE Awards this February. If you missed the GDC 2019 awards, you can catch up on the ceremony and the full presentation at the Games Festival Awards on the official GDC Twitch channel.
