Journey has won the GameCity 2012 prize which is an event that rewards creativity in games. Last year’s winner was Minecraft and considering the event has been running for two years in a row, this is not a bad achievement after all.
Jenova Chen, creator of Journey, was obviously pleased and said (Via GamesIndustry.biz): “I really like the goal of GameCity, to get people to notice games and talk about games, particularly for people who don’t encounter many video games in their daily life.”
“Thatgamecompany has always focused on making games for everyone,” Chen added, “so it’s nice to see GameCity recognize our game and give us an award. In the end, we believe that games are a mature media that deserve to be enjoyed and loved by everyone, by people. Thank you very much for this prize.”
One of the judges also revealed why they chose Journey for the prize.
“Journey was a unanimous choice for the GameCity Prize 2012, many of the jurors were un-experienced in playing videogames and it confounded their expectations of what videogames were.”
“Of all the shortlisted titles, Journey presents the player with an especially coherent vision,” Puttnam continued, “simultaneously fantastic and familiar. All of the Jury commented on the art direction in particular, the extraordinary sense of size and scale it portrayed.
“Whilst it was a short game, it was in no way small. It’s a focused, detailed piece of work – challenging you to measure it in terms other than just the length of gameplay.”
Journey is an amazing game, our review just confirms it. Give it a read over here.
