Telltale Games' The Walking Dead runs away with Spike TV's Game of the Year

Leading publisher of digital entertainment Telltale Games and Robert Kirkman, the Eisner Award-winning creator and writer of The Walking Dead for Skybound and Image Comics, announced December 11 that the winner of 2012 Game of the Year at the 10th annual SpikeTV Video Game Awards,The Walking Dead, is now available for purchase from North American retailers on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC.

The Walking Dead also earned Game of the Year honors from editorial outlets including Cheat Code Central, and is currently nominated for top honors in IGN.com's annual awards. IGN gave the final episode of the season an Editor's Choice Award and a score of 9.5 out of 10 saying, "People will reference the series over and over as the benchmark for story-telling in games," and summed up the game's emotional impact by stating, "I cried in the final minutes, sat silently through the credits, and was speechless after the epilogue."

 

The Walking Dead is set in the world of Robert Kirkman's award-winning comic book series. Players experience life-changing events, meeting new characters and some familiar to fans of the comic book series, in events that foreshadow the story of Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes. The Walking Dead offers an emotionally-charged, tailored game experience -- a player's actions and choices affect how their story plays out across the entire series.

 

The Walking Dead is rated 'M' (Mature) for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes and Strong Language by the ESRB.

The Walking Dead is also available to download for Macintosh Computers from the Telltale Online Store and other digital outlets and is available for compatible iOS devices from the App Store.

 

For more information on the game, visit the official website, Facebook, and follow Telltale Games on Twitter. For more information on The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, and all of his titles, visit www.Skybound.com.

OIAF adds new category for video game animation

Cyanide Studio's Game of Thrones

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) has announced the creation of a new category, specifically created for video game artists. The Best Non-Gameplay Animation category is the first of its kind to be featured at any animation festival.

The OIAF created the Non-Gameplay Animation category in response to industry needs from video game animators, who lacked a competitive forum to display their work.

"Since the mid-1990s, we've been trying to find a way to seamlessly integrate videogame animation into OIAF competitions, ” says Festival Artistic Director Chris Robinson. “We found that the best way for us to acknowledge the outstanding work being done in gameplay animation was by encouraging the submission of non-game play components.”

Examples of non-gameplay animation include:
• Trailers previewing a new video game 
• Cinematic cut scenes, a break in the gameplay action that is used to further the plot of the video game

All entries for this year’s competition must be received by May 18, 2012. The deadline for preview DVDs is June 1. There is no entry fee.

Industry professionals are hailing the creation of the new category.  Yves Bordeleau, studio director at Montreal’s Cyanide Studios, the company behind the upcoming release of Game of Thrones, says that the artwork present in video games plays a vital role in promotion of the product and deserves to be recognized.

“I am really happy to see this new category addition for competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival,” says Bordeleau. “As video games evolve, the need to immerse the player into complex worlds is now mandatory; hence the importance of high quality cinematic cut scenes. Be it in-game or pre-rendered, the value of these ‘non-gameplay’ sequences is so great that they are very often part of key promotional activities like game launch trailers and viral videos.”

Cyanide is an independent and privately held video game studio. Based in Paris, it was created in 2000 and has risen to become one of the most productive game development studios in France. Since 2007, the company has maintained a facility in Montreal.

The OIAF is one of the world’s leading animation events providing screenings, exhibits, workshops and entertainment since 1976.  OIAF is an annual five-day event bringing art and industry together in a vibrant hub and attracting more than 28,000 artists, producers, students and animation fans from around the world. For more information, visit the OIAF website at: www.animationfestival.ca.