The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has awarded top honors to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock and Orange Box. Each of the titles won four statues last night at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Call of Duty 4 took Overall Game of the Year.

The Academy also inducted Mike Morhaime, president, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, into the AIAS Hall of Fame and bestowed Ken Kutaragi, former president and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

A full list of Awards follows the break.

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This week will see the release of David Jaffe’s new studio Eat, Sleep, Play’s first game release in Twisted Metal: Head On – Extra Twisted Edition for PlayStation 2. In a phenomenal interview with Game|Life, Jaffe explained the reasoning behind his studio’s first title being a Twisted Metal game versus something entirely new and goes in-depth in talking about Twisted Metal; what makes a good level, what was done with the levels from Twisted Metal Black 2, and the seemingly casual focus of the game.

My personal favorite part of the interview was in regards to Shigeru Miyamoto’s comments to Retro Studios when they revealed to him that they wanted to do a car combat game. Miyamoto said, “Why would you make that? Why would you put a gun on a car?” Development was ceased on the project as a result. So, Chris Kohler found it only natural to ask Jaffe that same question – Why would you put a gun on a car?

His response?

“You know, honestly, I’ve been too busy recently trying to figure out why the **** go-karts shoot banana peels.”

Touché, Mr. Jaffe. Touché.

Issue 1,000 of Japanese magazine Famitsu Weekly features a revealing interview with Shigeru Miyamoto to talk about Nintendo’s past, present, and future. He harped on why he saw the GameCube controller as a failure (and how that subsequently led to the development of the Wiimote) and how one of the main problems tackled during development of the DS was to make it “something Mom won’t hate.”

It’s not a game, but maybe the GameCube’s controller. We made it as a culmination of everything leading up to it, but it really underwhelmed. ‘This line of thinking doesn’t give us anything else to shoot for, does it?’ That’s how I felt.

The GameCube controller is a product of us feeling that, without this or that, people wouldn’t be able to play the games we make. But then we realized that was a problem,that we were thinking based on that controller as the premise.

For GameCube software across the board, we weren’t able to predict the sales figures as well as before. It was around then that it hit us: the market was disappearing.

When discussing the DS, Miyamoto said, “The first was ’something Mom won’t hate.’ It had always been that if your mom caught you playing Mario she would frown, but if she walked in while you were watching a Disney movie she’d be all smiles. Both give kids something to dream about, if you ask me.”

He continued, “The other theme was ‘making it so you could bring the system to school.’ Why can’t a game system help out at school, right?

“I wanted to make titles like [the Japanese/kanji dictionary released only in Japan] even if they didn’t sell. If we could succeed in getting them out there and take that next step, people might be able to take their DS’s out into public or to school.”

Reading that, I couldn’t blame you for worrying that Miyamoto is ready to leave Mario, Zelda & co. behind, but when asked about those series, he replied with a laugh: “I’m making ‘em all.”

via 1UP

Newly released financial documents indicate that, among other games, Animal Crossing and Wii Music will see a release in Japan sometime in 2008. Neither game had been officially announced, and both titles are listed as “temp.,” but we all know what Animal Crossing is, and presumably Wii Music will be something in the vein of the orchestra-conducting game that we saw Shigeru Miyamoto play a while back.

Other games are mentioned as well, including a new Kirby game and Super Mario Stadium Family Baseball. Unfortunately, there’s no indication of when many of these games will be released in either North America or Europe; there’s simply no mention of them in either region’s listings. My only guess is that games with a different release date were listed under NA and Europe. Yeah, I know it’s a stretch, but I’m dying for Animal Crossing Wii, and I want some hope.

via Shacknews

The prestigious Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame has announced that it will be inducting Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime during the D.I.C.E. Summit. He joins the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux and Will Wright as the 11th inductee.

Morhaime is being honored for his work on the MMO space via some game you might have heard of, World of Warcraft, in addition to the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo games.

“In particular, World of Warcraft has cemented Morhaime’s influence and impact on the multi-billion dollar interactive entertainment industry; it is the world’s largest online game, with more than 9.3 million subscribers.

“Morhaime and Blizzard Entertainment are recognized for creating an MMOG that expanded the traditionally hardcore audience of the genre to also include the broader casual-gaming audience,” the Academy said in a statement.

“This is a great honour, and I’m proud to receive it,” said Morhaime.

“The success that Blizzard Entertainment has had over the years would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and support of players around the world, and the passion and dedication of our employees, so I thank all of them for contributing to this achievement.”

The award will be presented on February 7, 2008 in Las Vegas.

Retro Studios president and CEO Michael Kelbaugh and game director Mark Pacini took time to discuss the evolution of the Metroid Prime series with Gamasutra. The two talked about the difficulties of converting the title to 3D and the challenge of integrating the Wii controls into Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

The series had a rocky start, beginning with strong criticism from Nintendo’s Miyamoto of game ideas for Metroid Prime. Once they had the go ahead from Nntendo, they had to translate the spirit of the Metroid games into first person 3D.

“We didn’t want to make just another first person shooter,” said Kelbaugh. “We wanted to bring the morph ball into 3D. We wanted to bring the screw attack into 3D. Making a first person shooter would have been a cheap and easy way to go. But making sure the themes and concepts in Metroid were kept was something that we wanted to do. And translating those things into 3D was a real challenge. For example, translating the morph ball was one of the hardest things to do.”

Challenges didn’t end with Metroid Prime’s success. Read the entire article at Gamasutra.

Last night, famed Nintendo developer and creator of Mario and Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, was awarded with The Economist’s Innovation Award for Consumer Goods. The ceremony took place at London’s Science Museum. Awards are selected by an independent judging panel of industry experts.

“No one is more identified with modern video games than Shigeru Miyamoto,” said Tom Standage, business editor at The Economist. “His pioneering vision and creativity truly created a new category of entertainment.”

Congrats, Shiggy.

via MCV UK

According to David Jaffe, famed developer behind games like God of War and Calling All Cars, the reason he decided to leave Sony to form his own company had nothing to do with creative control. In his estimation, he had 95% of the control over his games, so that was never really an issue. Instead, it had more to do with the way he was being compensated for huge hits like God of War.

But the struggle at the time was like, “You know, I’m never going to make much more money than I’m making now.” And it’s not that I was poorly compensated; it was that I was looking at what the titles that I had played a significant role in were contributing to Sony’s bottom line, and then I was looking at my bonus checks—which were very lucrative compared to other companies to be sure. But there was still such a significant discrepancy that I was like, “You know this just doesn’t sit well with me,” you know, in a soulful way.

It was like, “Okay now, Jaffe, come into work and do it again. Give us another title that makes us that much money,”—not that it’s all me, but in terms of my contributions—and I was like, “I can’t.” I couldn’t do it anymore. It was literally a sort of depression where my spirit or my brain was like, “Yeah, we’re going to kind of shut you down a little bit because there’s no f—ing way you’re going to do that again.”

When interviewer N’Gai Croal suggested Jaffe didn’t care if people accused him of simply making the move over money, Jaffe stopped him in his tracks.

I do care. That’s not accurate. Sure, I care what people think. I’d love it if I could find a way to be honest and truthful and not give people the PR spin and at the same time be as liked as [Nintendo design legend Shigeru] Miyamoto and Cliffyb [Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski]. I’d love that. That would be awesome to have people who don’t take swipes at me every five f—ing sentences I say. But I’d rather be honest than give you a bunch of PR bulls–t because that stuff makes me physically ill.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview.

Games Radar has a cool little feature up right now, called “101 Things You Didn’t Know About Games.” It’s basically a long list of trivia that relates to the gaming industry, but there are a few little factoids that are pretty interesting. Most of them deal with explanations of obscure references developers inserted in their games, like the fact that the titular “Pikmin” were named after Shigeru Miyamoto’s dog. Others relate to some odd events, like how the main voice actor for Silent Hill 2 ended up being cast while taking his daughter to another audition. My personal favorite is the revelation that Raz, the protagonist of Psychonauts (shown right), was originally going to be an ostrich. Hmm, guess they kept the legs. There’s really something interesting for everyone there.

Via Games Radar

Ken Levine has been eclipsed by such video game greats as Miyamoto, Kojima, Carmack and Molyneux. That could all change. As his brain child, BioShock, is poised for launch Levine teeters on the brink of becoming a gamer household name.

An article in GameAlmighty follows Ken Levine from his humble beginnings to present as he prepares to unleash his magnum opus upon the gamer populous. Levine is a fairly recent comer to the video game industry. He joined Looking Glass Studios in 1995 where he worked on his first major game, Thief: The Dark Project (1998). Award winning System Shock 2 (1999) soon followed. Then he helped to break the “comic curse” with Freedom Force (2002) released by Irrational Games. Levine also worked on Swat 4 (2005) which was known for introducing that necessary evil, in-game advertising.

Levine’s latest, greatest project is BioShock this innovative game is an example of the best that video gaming has to offer. It’s the one that will make Roger Ebert eat his words. Video games can be art. While the critics already love BioShock, it remains to be seen whether consumers will share their enthusiasm. However the stars seem to be aligned and all the signs point to BioShock being a run away. Levine’s time has finally come.

BioShock releases August 21 in North America and August 24 in Europe. 

via GameAlmighty