Game of the Year went to "Metroid Prime". Check the link to see the list of the other games that won.

I'm still not entirely happy with the award categories, since they're very much skewed towards shelf-based games. The longrunning online games (disclaimer: my own included) are almost never eligible, since there's a core requirement in the award categories, which is that they can only go to games which were released over the last year.

Though I can see the wisdom in that requirement for some categories, I also think that it's equivalent to saying that television's Emmy Awards could only be awarded to shows which premiered over the last year, and that all series which had been running for more than one year would be ineligible -- the paradox is obvious: TV shows which were popular enough to keep going for more than one year, would be ineligible for prizes because they'd been running for too long??

I'm still not sure what the ideal solution to the problem is. The IGDA board has discussed it extensively, but not come to any agreement. Since I'm on the "Online Games" steering committee of the International Game Developers Association though, it's something that I do have the power to try and address.

One suggested solution is that there be a new category added, for something like "Excellence in Online Game Design", which wouldn't have the "new this year" requirement. Another possibility is to change the existing category rules such that online games are exempt from the "newness" requirement, or perhaps re-word the rules so that newness would apply to development within the game, but not to the game title itself.

If any Memestreams members have other suggestions on how to address the problem, I'm listening!

Elonka