Krakow becomes the European gamedev capital on May 22 through 23, for the duration of the Digital Dragons conference, the yearly summit of game developers, publishers, investors, media, and other people professionally involved in this most prolific branch of the entertainment industry. Like every year, the sixth consequent conference will see the gala of the Digital Dragons Awards handed out to those achieving exceptional feats in game design. In this year’s edition those most prestigious accolades presented in Poland will be awarded in eight categories. The list of nominees has been made public!
As the event tradition calls, the Poland based developers will compete for the accolades in the Best Polish Game, Best Polish Mobile Game, Best Polish Game Design, Best Polish Game Art, and Best Polish Game Audio. The eighth category – Best Foreign Game of 2016 – will give the Polish gaming professionals community a chance give due recognition to the notable titles from around the world, that have made a splash in 2016. The brand new Best VR Game and Best Polish DLC categories complete the lineup for the sixth edition of the Digital Dragon Awards. Here are the nominees:
Nominated to Best Polish Game of 2016:
- Bound (Plastic)
- Shadow Warrior 2 (Flying Wild Hog)
- Sky Force Reloaded (Infinite Dreams)
- SuperHot (SUPERHOT team)
Nominated to Best Polish Mobile Game of 2016
- 60 Seconds! (Robot Gentleman Studios)
- Crush Your Enemies! (Vile Monarch)
- Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator (Vile Monarch)
- Sky Force Reloaded (Infinite Dreams)
Nominated to Best Polish Game Design of 2016
- Book of Demons (Thing Trunk)
- Bound (Plastic)
- Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator (Vile Monarch)
- SuperHot (SUPERHOT team)
Nominated to Best Polish Game Art of 2016
- Book of Demons (Thing Trunk)
- Bound (Plastic)
- Shadow Warrior 2 (Flying Wild Hog)
- SuperHot (SUPERHOT team)
Nominated to Best Polish Game Audio of 2016
- Bound (Plastic)
- Detached (Anshar Studios)
- Layers of Fear (Bloober Team)
- Lichtspeer (Lichthund)
- Shadow Warrior 2 (Flying Wild Hog)
- SuperHot (SUPERHOT team)
Nominated to Best Polish DLC of 2016
- Dying Light: The Following (Techland)
- Superhot VR (SUPERHOT team)
- This War of Mine: The Little Ones (11bit studios)
- The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine (CD Projekt RED)
Nominated to Best VR Game of 2016
- Bound VR (Plastic)
- Detached (Anshar Studios)
- SuperHot VR (SUPERHOT team)
- The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR (The Astronauts)
Nominated to Best Foreign Game of 2016
- Doom (Bethesda Softworks)
- Firewatch (Panic Inc.)
- Inside (PlayDead)
- Overwatch (Activision Blizzard)
The expectations of gamers, the technology, the market dynamics – all is subject to change. The Krakow Technology Park, the event’s organizing party, along with the awards board introduced two new categories, keeping Digital Dragons Awards aligned with the pace of the industry. First of them, the Best Polish DLC of 2016 is meant to reward the creators of the best downloadable content package for a published game. The dreaded three letters – DLC – have been spawning controversy and polarized reactions for years. For some fans, the downloadable content is a welcomed extension of one’s visit to their favorite game for a reasonable fee. Others deem it an unhealthy practice leading to the crippling of dissected products for extra profit.
In recent years, the Polish studios such as CD Projekt RED or Techland, arguably working against the current of the market trends, redeemed the DLC in the eyes of the global gaming community delivering expansions for games such as The Witcher 3 or Dying Light, so elaborate and thought-through that they launched into a new tier for gamers’ expectation of what the publisher might want to sell as content separate from the base product. Just two years ago, the introduction of the DLC category to an award programme might have been an unpopular call. This year, lack of such category would be nothing but unfair.
Even though the year 2016 that is subject to the jury’s consideration can hardly be deemed „the year of VR”, as the expected revolution in electronic entertainment, announced by many virtual reality kit manufacturers, did not detonate like a megaton bomb, it’s still hard to ignore the market building up towards a breakthrough. VR is no longer a thing of the R&D departments, nor the hardcore tech enthusiasts. It has graduated into the consumer electronics sector and found its way – in one form or another – into the hands of millions of gamers worldwide. Calling the VR gaming market ripe for the picking would be a bit of a stretch, but the hardware producers and tech evangelists have done a terrific job of preparing the soil for the game creators to plant their quickly sprouting ideas.
The Best VR Game of 2016 category for the first time observes titles taking much of what the developing medium has to offer and turning it into viable commercial titles fit to satisfy the high expectations of the consumers anxious to explore the new horizons of digital entertainment.
As usual, the nominations were placed by the most renowned Polish gamedev professionals. The Digital Dragons Awards jury, with the Editor-in-Chief of the Gry.Onet.pl portal as the chairman, in 2017 is: Mariusz Borkowski, gamemusic.pl, Jerzy Poprawa, Editor-in-Chief of the CD Action magazine, Krystian Smoszna Editor-in-Chief of the GRYOnline.pl portal, Grzegorz Marczak, owner and Editor-in-Chief of the Antyweb.pl tech blog, Piotr Mańkowski Editor-in-Chief of the PIXEL magazine, and Paweł Węgrzyn, the Head of Games Technology Department at the Jagiellonian University. The awards gala will inaugurate the first conference day afterparty.
