MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
As revealed last week, we are now accepting nominations for this year’s MCV/DEVELOP Awards, which include among them three entirely new awards and changes to a couple of older categories:
Creative Partner of the Year (Development Essentials)
This award replaces two previous awards, ‘Creative / Co-development Partner of the Year’ (Development Essentials) and ‘Creative Agency of the Year’ (Reaching Audiences). The renewed focus here is on agencies and organisations that provide creative services such as art, audio, videos, animation, and the like.
Service Partner of the Year (Development Essentials)
This award replaces ‘QA / Localisation Partner of the Year’ (won in 2023 by Keywords, pictured above), in that we didn’t want to exclude other technical providers in service to specific titles.
Strategic Partner of the Year (Development Essentials)
This new award is one that aims to honour the organisations that work on a more strategic level than other partnerships, such as legal services, investment funds and accelerator schemes, accountancy services, corporate communications and networking.
Co-development Studio of the Year (Studios & Publishing)
We award ‘indie’ studios and ‘major’ studios that put their name to a game, but not the under-the-radar hero studios that the small and big studios increasingly rely on. Hopefully this award fixes that.
Ongoing Innovation of the Year (Innovation in Games)
The Innovation in Games awards are for individual titles (or items of hardware in the case of ‘Hardware Innovation of the Year’) made wholly or partially in the UK that were launched in 2023. This new award is an effort to reward innovative games released prior to 2023 that have received support equal to or exceeding that of a new game. Think MMOs, live service games and other titles that have enjoyed major updates or new content during the year.
Distributor of the Year / Retailer of the Year
The final change from last year might not be immediately apparent, but you may recall that we had one award for ‘Physical Distributor / Retailer of the Year’ and the other for ‘Digital…’ We’ve reverted the distinction back to being between distribution and retail rather sticking with physical and digital, which will hopefully invite a broader range of nominees.
Note that while we accept nominations from studios, publishers, agencies and other organisations based on game innovation and success during 2023, we will also consider nominations based on, for example, efforts to increase diversity and improve working practices and conditions. After all, how you make games and treat the people that make them is just as important as how the games are received!
The process of getting your nominations to us couldn’t be simpler and is detailed here. If you have any questions about the process or any of the awards, new or old, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
The 2024 MCV/DEVELOP Awards will be held on June 20th at the Royal Lancaster Hotel near London’s Hyde Park. Tickets are available now.
