Last Friday night the Games Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) held their annual industry awards ceremony at the Game Connect Asia Pacific Conference here in Brisbane. The awards focus on games that are developed exclusively by Australian companies.

de Blob for the Nintendo Wii from Melbourne-based Blue Tongue cleaned up, taking home five of the nine awards - you can see the full list of awards on the press release.

It was good to see Australian gaming continue to grow and become a serious industry, although some of the big names - like Krome, Pandemic and Creative Assembly, arguably some of Australia's most renowned game developers - were noticeably absent from the proceedings.

AusGamers was actually present at the event as a sponsor, which is a bit of a new thing for us - we sponsored two of the award categories. As always we're keen to do whatever we can to encourage the growth of gaming in Australia and make life better for Australian gamers, and helping grow the industry at its source seems like a good idea as well, so we're hoping to work a bit more closely with Aussie game developers in the future.

Interesting that Krome, Pandemic etc were absent! Seeing as though they are fairly large!

Hmmm who made rugby league 1 + 2 for ps2?

#2 is fun yet so goddamn buggy. #1 is an absolute joke.

Despite this gogo australian game devs!

last edited by JakeG at 14:20:16 25/Nov/08

I thought that pandemic at least was essentially a us developer with an Australian studio?

Is there a list anywhere of who all the nominees were in each category?

There were apparently more nominees for each category, but they only confirmed to us who the "finalists" were (winners bolded).

Best Game
De Blob, Nintendo Wii - Blue Tongue
MX vs. ATV: Untamed, Sony PSP - Tantalus Media

Best Console Title
De Blob, Nintendo Wii - Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, Nintendo Wii - Torus Games

Best PC Title
Monster Jam, PC - Torus Games
Space Chimps, PC – Redtribe

Best Handheld Title
Zoo Hospital, Nintendo DS - Torus Games
MX vs. ATV: Untamed, Sony PSP - Tantalus Media

Best Mobile Title
Dung – Firemint
Pink Slip 3D - Firemint

Best Gameplay
De Blob, Nintendo Wii - Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, PS2 - Torus Games

Best Graphics
De Blob, Nintendo Wii - Blue Tongue
Monster Jam, Microsoft Xbox360 - Torus Games

Best Audio
De Blob, Nintendo Wii - Blue Tongue
Zoo Hospital, Nintendo Wii - Torus Games

Best Unsigned Game (Indie)
QANTM College Brisbane/Fighter Creative - Debug