Her Story, The Witcher 3 top IGF, Game Developers Choice 2016 awards

By Danny Cowan Published March 17, 2016

her story and witcher 3 top gdc awards witcher3gdc header — Image used with permission by copyright holder

CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt claimed top honors at the 16th annual Game Developers Choice Awards this week, earning the event’s coveted Game of the Year award during a ceremony held at the 2016 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Organizers of the Independent Games Festival also hosted an awards ceremony during GDC this week, naming Sam Barlow’s Her Story as this year’s winner of the IGF’s Excellence in Narrative award as well as the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game.

Recommended Videos

The annual Game Developers Choice Awards honor innovation and quality among commercially released console and PC games. In addition to winning the event’s Game of the Year award, The Witcher 3 also took home the Game Developers Choice Awards’ prize for Best Technology.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Xbox One and PC platformer Ori and the Blind Forest also earned multiple awards at this year’s ceremony, including Best Debut and Best Visual Art. Her Story, in addition to its cross-category wins at the Independent Games Festival, earned Game Developers Choice Awards in the Best Narrative, Best Handheld/Mobile Game, and Innovation Award categories.

Other Game Developers Choice Awards winners include Rocket League (Best Design) and Life is Strange (Audience Choice). This year’s event also granted its Ambassador Award to USC Games Program director Tracy Fullerton and honored Bethesda’s Todd Howard with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. Pioneer Award honors went to Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson.

The annual Independent Games Festival Awards highlight independently produced and unconventional games, including 2016 award winners Mini Metro (Excellence in Audio), Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (Excellence in Design), Oxenfree (Excellence in Visual Art), Cibele (Nuovo Award), and Beglitched (Best Student Game).

Developer Girls Make Games received the event’s ID@Xbox Rising Star Award, while Toby Fox’s Undertale won the IGF’s Audience Award. All IGF reward winners receive a $3,000 cash prize for each category won.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…

Computing

The Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop with RTX 4070 is $500 off

The Alienware m16 R2 on a table in front of a window.

The gaming laptop deals of the holiday season aren't over yet, as there are still some excellent offers, such as Dell's discount for the Alienware m16 R2 with the Nvidia RTX 4070. From its original price of $2,600, the machine is down to $2,100. It's still pretty expensive, but it's actually a steal at that price, and the $500 in savings is huge. You're going to have to be quick in completing your purchase though, as there's no information on how much time is remaining before this bargain expires.

Why you should buy the Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop
We highlighted the Alienware m16 R2's great gaming performance in our review of the gaming laptop, and this configuration that's on sale comes with the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. Combined with the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor and 64GB of RAM, which doubles the recommended specification from our guide on how much RAM do you need, the Alienware m16 R2 won't have trouble running the best PC games at their highest settings. It's going to be ready for the upcoming PC games of the next few years as well -- it will be a while before you need to start thinking about making any upgrades.

Computing

I’m a Steam Deck apologist. Here’s why I’ve been using the ROG Ally instead

Elden Ring running on the Asus ROG Ally X.

Since its launch, I'm a bit of a Steam Deck apologist. It doesn't need the advocacy, as the Steam Deck is easily the best handheld gaming PC you can buy, but even in the face of competition from the ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw, I still use my Steam Deck for gaming on the go. A couple of apps have been slowly changing that story, however.

I like playing on my Steam Deck OLED due to the convenience. SteamOS isn't perfect, no, but it allows me to pick up and play my games quickly, which I value more than the higher performance available on Windows handhelds. A couple of key tweaks to the Windows experience can unlock that pick-up-and-play experience, and ever since configuring the ROG Ally X properly, I've been gravitating toward it more and more for my handheld gaming.
A proper sleep

Gaming

The Nintendo Switch 2 rumor mill was a comedy of errors in 2024

Nintendo Switch OLED and Joy-Con.

For a video game console that didn’t even come out in 2024, the Nintendo Switch’s successor left quite an impact.

Colloquially known as the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo’s follow-up to its hit console-handheld hybrid had rampant speculation surrounding it the entire year. Even once Nintendo eventually confirmed it would talk about Switch 2 on its own terms, the rumors did not slow down. While it now seems highly unlikely that Nintendo will discuss Switch 2 again before the year is over, 2024 will, in my mind, forever be tied with ludicrous Switch 2 speculation.