Super Mario grabs a Bafta

[dhilipkumar]

On Tuesday, one month after the British film industry toasted Slumdog Millionaire at the film Baftas, it was the turn of the British video game industry to pat itself on the back at a ceremony hosted by the comedian Dara O'Briain.

The GAME British Academy Video Games Awards are awarded in 15 ascending categories, leading – like the film awards – to the climax of the evening, the Best Game of the year, and the awarding of a fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

This year, the award for best game of 2008 was presented by Kirsty Gallagher. It went to Super Mario Galaxy, a three-dimensional platform game on the Nintendo Wii.

Whereas in previous years, the winner of each category has been easy to predict, this year the competition was exceptionally strong, and even industry observers had no clue as to which way the academy vote would go. In the end, Nintendo's veteran cartoon star Mario beat Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Rock Band to the coveted Bafta mask.

The academy vote is a safe choice for an industry that is looking to move away from its image as a purveyor of bloodthirsty shooting games aimed at teenage boys. The public vote, by contrast, went to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The Call of Duty series is remarkably similar to Steven Spielberg's TV series Band of Brothers. Not that the great man was feeling too frustrated last night. Spielberg walked away with a game Bafta for Boom Blox, the first of the three games that he has agreed to produce for Electronic Arts.

The ceremony was the fifth since the Academy decided that the UK video games industry was worthy of separate recognition in 2003. There was no ceremony in 2005 or 2008.

Since the last awards took place, interest in video games in the UK has hit an all-time high. In defiance of the gloom sweeping other industries, Removeds of video game software and hardware in 2008 were up 23 per cent year on year, breaking through the £4 billion barrier for the first time. Of this figure, over £1.9 billion was spent on games, the remainder on consoles and accessories. The UK has now overtaken Japan to become the world's second biggest market for video games, after the United States.

Although Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft are reaping the benefits of this buoyancy, it is Nintendo that has so far led the way, in both hardware and software. With its motion-sensitive Wii and handheld DS consoles, the Japanese company has redefined the market for video games, extending their appeal across the generations.

Its Brain Training program for the DS, a series of mental exercises aimed at older players, has sold over 17 million copies worldwide. Last year, in the UK alone, the market for software for the Wii was worth £481 million, a rise of 112 per cent on 2007. Nintendo claims that there are 9 million DS consoles in the UK alone.

But the figures do not tell the whole story. These awards are not simply an opportunity for self-congratulation, but part of a broader quest for recognition and respectability. Now that video games have shaken off their image of being exclusively for lonely, spotty youths in anoraks, the industry is hoping that acknowledgement as a genuine cultural and artistic form will come next.

Industry insiders have long resented the artistic praise heaped on animated films such as Ratatouille or Toy Story, which are constructed in a similar manner to games that tell a more complex, non-linear story. The games receive little of the same acclaim that routinely greets the films.