‘Journey’ Wins Numerous VGA Awards Including Indie Game of the Year

As many of you likely know, tonight was the night of the Spike Video Game Awards hosted by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. As with every year the VGAs bring great recognition to many games across the industry, but one award always lies near and dear to our hearts (for obvious reason), Best Independent Game. This year we saw Journey from thatgamecompany edge out Dust: An Elysian Tail by Humble Hearts, Fez by Polytron, and Mark of the Ninja by Klei Entertainment. In addition to this great award Journey also took home Best PS3 Game, Best Original Score, and received nominations for Best Downloadable Game, Best Graphics, Best Song in a Game and Game of the Year.

[Riderz1337]

Well deserved. I would have raged hard if it didn't win best original score considering the soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy haha =P.

[NewMonday]

hopefully this game goes on to influence and inspire game design, it is absolutely magical

[iamnsuperman]

Which is a shame to not see it win their GOTY

[Jaydepps]

I was honestly surprised The Walking Dead won Game of the Year. I was expecting them to pick something more mainstream such as Assassin's Creed III or Mass Effect 3. I never though The Walking Dead had a chance.

[Jaces]

Yea, The Walking Dead was a surprise. I honestly had Dishonored winning GOTY. VGA's are getting worse each year.

[MikeMyers]

I'm glad these smaller games are outshining the big blockbusters that are often just sequels. It's time for the big guys to take more chances.

[AKS]

Journey may be my favorite game overall of 2012.

[NBT91]

For what it is yeah. I think the reason it wouldn't win any official awards is that, well a video game should be fun to play right? And while journey is a stunner aesthetically and in terms of design, the actual core of it is not fun in the traditional sense of the word.

I mean I loved Journey and it deserves all the praise it gets for it's artistic flare but it's still more fun to mindlessly shoot aliens than it is to walk across a desert.

[AKS]

"...it's still more fun to mindlessly shoot aliens..."

Perhaps for you. I'm bored out of my mind with that type of game. I haven't been buying many shooters unless they offer something unique and interesting (Far Cry 3, for example, as I can play it in a variety of ways, including using stealth, in a gorgeous open world setting with lots of exploration). I ignore most of the rest of them. Unique games like Journey are actually the ones I look forward to most. The only game I was looking forward to more was The Last Guardian.

[Tewi-Inaba]

Journey wins over Mark of the Ninja
Walking Dead wins a GotY award

2012 is truly the shittiest year in gaming history.

[Silly gameAr]

May be a dumb question but, what is Mark of the Ninja?

Nevermind. I hit up youtube to find it. Looks pretty cool, but I see why Journey beat it.

[Jaydepps]

It is an adventure game from Klei Entertainment: http://store.steampowered.c...

[Hicken]

I hope you mean it's crappy because Journey didn't win GotY. Cuz it DEFINITELY had the quality to do so.

... or should Mark of the Ninja, which wasn't good enough to be nominated for GotY, somehow have beat Journey in a lesser category? (Though that didn't stop The Walking Dead, I suppose...)

Edit: "Interactive flash games." So, in other words, you have a limited, pathetic taste in games. Can't speak on The Walking Dead, as I haven't played it, but Journey is ABSOLUTELY deserving of the nomination, if not the win.

I imagine you haven't played any of the games you're complaining about. Which is no surprise.

[Tewi-Inaba]

No I'm saying 2 Interactive Flash Games shows won a gaming award

[doogiebear]

U dont even own a ps3.

[Jaydepps]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Journey receive so much recognition from the VGAs. The game is an awesome game.

[BanBrother]

Agreed. Can't stress enough how much I think they deserved it. I think a lot of people were on the fence about buying it, hopefully this spreads the word more and some other people get to experience it.

[grailly]

SO much recognition? hum barely! as much as it did get awards because the internet voted, the writers of the show just didn't care. You remember how they said "one of our game of the year nominees is nominated for a grammy" and never ever proceeded to say which one? I was just disgusted with that lol

was I the only one surprised that jenova chen didn't go and get the award?

[imt558]

I hope Journey will win GOTY at BAFTA.:)

[knifefight]

Well it sure takes top spot at The Knifeys: Knifefight's Gaming Awards®

[hennessey86]

Has to be dust, amazing achievement.

[Zha1tan]

And lets just ignore the miriad of better indie games on PC shall we VGAs?

oh yes thats right you barely have a cateogry for PC games were you just nominate multiplatforms and no PC exclusives.

[Irishguy95]

This was the VGA's....not a competition of the best games on each system.

[grailly]

aside of the fact that you wouldn't be saying that if you played journey, I agree, FTL and hotline miami could easily be on that list.

[Zha1tan]

I have played Journey, its nice and artistic but after a while quite boring.

[Sizzon]

Nice, glad it won best PS3 game.

[grailly]

I'm just a bit affraid of trolls that'll say that the best PS3 game is "only a downloadable"

[Sizzon]

A downloadable better and more unique than most retailers this year! :)

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Maybe I should finally try it out

Or just wait for a discount

[NBT91]

There's a demo on the store

[HorrorGod]

I was going to be happy with the outcome of tonight's show as long as Journey or The Walking Dead won GOTY. Either deserved it. And so many people said a "downloadable game doesn't stand a chance at winning game of the year." Those people obviously didn't play these games.

[from the beach]

I'd like to further bestow it with my prestigious Most Boring, Best Use Of All Stages Are A Desert Stage, and Worst Thing I Downloaded In 2012 (Apart From That Update That Can Brick Your Wii U) gongs.

[G20WLY]

I could decide to bestow your comment with some 'hilarious' mocked-up award names, but it's not worth the effort. Nice trolling though; shame nobody cares :(

Instead I'll join the countless others in congratulating thatgamecompany for such an outstanding achievement. It really was a great experience and a refreshingly different take on co-op online play.

[from the beach]

You could, but since I did the joke first it would only have made you look like an idiot.

It's true that many people have congratulated Crap'game'company, but there are many others who are absolutely outraged by the praise they've got.

'Nobody cares', lol. You're nobody.

[G20WLY]

Which is why I chose not do that...please try to keep up ;P

You're saying things like "Crap'game'compan y" and calling me a nobody? Sadly wrong on both counts.

I have no idea why you're so angry, and again, I don't really care. It's disappointing though, as you seem relatively articulate, yet decide to resort to immature comments and personal attacks.

I can only assume that the "many others" you mention are, in fact, a moderately miffed minority, as I don't see the evidence to the contrary.

Journey, as an experience, is wasted on the irrational, angry types, who need guns to have fun.

[from the beach]

I'm not angry, I'm actually feeling kind of giddy right now. Too many sweets.

[G20WLY]

Ha, well they're making you hyperactive, so slow it down!

Your picture looks like he had too many sweets and is about to barf (sick-burp?!), now you mention it :P

[Picnic]

I couldn't really get excited about a game that was a mix between Flower and the desert stage of Uncharted 3, hyped up to the skies by pseudo intellectuals who seize on any opportunity to point to a game that looks like 'art'.
I'm not saying that it's a bad game (although the demo didn't excite me), just that I think that it is always predictable that a game that appears in some way to be 'organic, ethnic etc' will get high praise. I'd rather play Aladdin on the Megadrive for that!

If I wanted to praise an arty game, I'd reserve it for Heavy Rain or Jet Set Radio HD.

I think that some people overcompensate for the time that they spend with bloodlust games by using a game like Journey as some kind of sanitiser.

Personally, I regard a game like Uncharted 2 as being amongst the best of the generation for incorporating puzzles, clever gunplay and AI, fantaastic visuals, a variety of locations, set pieces, story and characterisation. I know it's not this year but surely there must be something like that to choose from.

[ginsunuva]

You don't know what "art" means. You think it means asthetically artistic. No. That is an ARTISTIC game, not a work of art. The game design, sound, and visuals all have to be so well done that they create an impact on the viewer.

[Picnic]

You're not considering the possibility that Journey did not have that effect on me. I can make a choice whether something has an effect on me by whatever criteria I choose, I don't have to be manipulated in to it by the idea that not knowing who other players are is somehow more meaningful than knowing and liking who they are.

For what it matters, Limbo did impress me. The slight gradations in light, the puzzles and movement, the slow motion ending.

[Sketchy_Galore]

For someone so quick to defend their right to like or dislike things for their own reasons you're awfully quick to pass judgement on people who tell you they like this game. The entire game does not involve just wandering through a desert, maybe that's all you see in the demo but that is not indicative of the entire game. This really isn't the type of game you can judge by a demo. You wouldn't go to see the first fifteen minutes of Blue velvet, leave then write up a review about how it's a boring movie about a young man wandering around a nice small town.

Maybe you wouldn't like the full game. I loved it and consider it my game of the year but then I didn't like Flower for the reasons you allude to. I found it a bit self consciously artsy but I'm sure some people genuinely liked it, it just wasn't for me. That whole, 'you're just pretending to like this thing to try and look smarter than me' is one of the oldest and worst criticisms in art.

[grailly]

Flower is awesome :D

I didn't like flow, though...

[Picnic]

People are allowed to expand on their criticism as you have but look above - I got 8 disagrees and 0 agrees on a post that praises Uncharted 2, a game that surely that ratio of people can't hate. People are generally not balanced in the slightest on this site about the content of posts. They find 1 thing that they disagree with and then they click disagree. So the longer the post the more likely to get a disagree even if the post contains some information that they might agree with. I can even see people above who didn't like the game either but do they click Agree? No. And they don't bother saying exactly what part of the post they disgaree with and why.

Journey was not my cup of tea from what I played in the demo. It just seems like the WALL-ee of videogames- and I didn't like that.

And what is ginunuva going on about? Who says that, if 'The game design, sound, and visuals all have to be so well done that they create an impact on the viewer' that was not done better in Uncharted 2, for example?

It's opinion. It's all about how much your personality allows yourself to be seduced by what you are seeing.