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Fresh voices and media pros alike took home key accolades at the Games Media Awards tonight.
The journalist-voted prizes acknowledge the best new and established talent working in the UK games media.
Dan Douglas was named Games Writer of The Year, winning for his piece "Play The Pain Away", which discussed using games to cope with mental illness. The piece was praised by award judge Tim Lott, novelist and newspaper columnist, for being "a fascinating piece that countervailed the popular wisdom that video games are chewing gum for the mind".
Meanwhile, up and coming writer Francisco Dominguez won the Games Media Academy – and with it, guaranteed freelance contracts from a group of publishers including IGN, GameSpot and Future Publishing – for ‘A Useful Death’, about indie game The Swapper.
Paul Presley, former PC Zone leader and games journalist for over 20 years, was named Games Media Legend.
In the mainstream games coverage camp Keith Stuart was named best newspaper writer for his work in The Guardian, while New Statesman deputy editor Helen Lewis won mainstream magazine writer. Digital Spy won best coverage by a mainstream website.
On the broadcast front Videogamer TV won for best video, while Guy Cocker’s independent games podcast won best radio/podcast.
Specialist outlets and writers also scooped key prizes.
Edge won two awards – for best magazine and best specialist print writer in features editor Jason Killingsworth. They were two of Future’s three wins overall – Official Xbox Magazine writer Jon Blyth took home the specialist writer online prize.
Elsewhere, Eurogamer won best website and Cara Ellison won Rising Star. Best blog award was claimed by Average Gamer, while Steve Hogarty was named ‘Top Tweeter’.
This year’s event was supported by Gold Partners Nintendo 3DS, Xbox, PlayStation, Battlefield 4, NCsoft and Watch Dogs; Drinks Reception sponsor Deep Silver; Top Tweeter award partner Green Man Gaming; Games
Writer of the Year award partner Sega; Rising Star award partner Disney Infinity; and event partner Gamescom.
