The Game Developers Choice Awards are the other side of a coin that also contains the IGFs. Sure, indies are allowed into this GDC organised awards show, but they have to promise to be on their best behaviour. And wash behind their ears.

The nominations for this year's award - chosen by a panel of game developers - have been announced, with The Walking Dead and Dishonored scoring plenty of nods. Not the most, though - that honour goes to Journey, which is apparently a PS3 game about collecting scarves. Or something.

Dishonored picked up four nominations, including Game of the Year, Best Game Design, Best Narrative and Best Visual Arts. The Walking Dead also received nominations for Game of the Year and Best Narrative, as well as a chance to nab Best Downloadable Game. Wait, aren't all games downloadable?

Other PC relevant nominations include Game of the Year nods for Mass Effect 3 and XCOM, a well deserved Best Audio mention for Hotline Miami, and a Best Technology listing for Planetside 2. FTL also did well, being nominated for the Innovation Award, along with a shot at Best Debut for its developer, Subset Games.

Here's the full list:

Game of the Year
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)

Innovation Award

Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment)
ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)


Best Audio

Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games/Devolver Digital)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)


Best Debut

Humble Hearts (Dust: An Elysian Tail)
Polytron Corporation (Fez)
Giant Sparrow (The Unfinished Swan)
Subset Games (FTL: Faster Than Light)
Fireproof Games (The Room )




Best Downloadable Game

The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull)
Trials: Evolution (RedLynx/Microsoft Studios)
Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)




Best Game Design

Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Mark Of The Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)


Best Handheld/Mobile Game

Gravity Rush (SCE Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment)
The Room (Fireproof Games)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (Sora/Nintendo)


Best Narrative

Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Entertainment/2K Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Virtue's Last Reward (Chunsoft/Aksys Games)


Best Technology

Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
PlanetSide 2 (Sony Online Entertainment)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Treyarch/Activision)
Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)


Best Visual Arts

Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software/2K Games)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)


The winners will be announced at GDC on March 27. Can you think of anything that's been unfairly missed out?

Zombie sells. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal (via Eurogamer), Telltale Games co-founder Dan Connors said The Walking Dead adventure series has sold over 8.5 million episodes in total.

Platform-specific breakdowns of Telltale's achievement weren't shared by Connors beyond a quarter of sales occurring on mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad. The Journal's own number crunch showed a roughly $40 million haul at $5 per episode. Connors also noted that players spent an average of $16 on the franchise, which equates to three episodes out of the season's five.

Connor's plans for Telltale's next projects looks like it'll springboard off The Walking Dead's success, as the studio head expressed interest in "building out a deeper story to a great game franchise" similar in scope to Half-Life or Star Wars.

Can Telltale's lightning strike twice? The Walking Dead's presentation and excellent writing was a refreshing improvement from Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, and we'll have to see if Telltale can live up to the higher expectations it earned with future games, such as its Fables adaptation.

What other stories should Telltale turn into games?

The adventure veterans at Telltale Games are keeping themselves busy fashioning the second season of The Walking Dead (which earned our Best Writing of 2012 award), but they're making it clear that they want to develop a narrative-driven game for another major franchise. Telltale co-founder Dan Connors told Red Bull UK he'd like the studio to work on something larger in scale, citing Half-Life and Star Wars as examples.

"Coming from LucasArts, we always felt we could do a great Star Wars story game,” he said. “We also love the idea of building out a deeper story to a great game franchise—something like Half-Life stories or Halo stories."

Telltale Senior Vice President of Publishing Steve Allison later elaborated to VentureBeat that the examples Connors used didn't confirm any intention to contribute to those franchises. "Will we do this? Yes, we believe we will sometime very soon,” Allison explained. “But the franchises mentioned are totally speculative and used only as an example to frame the idea.”

Allison and Connors' words may not necessarily represent a new direction for Telltale as much as a reiteration of its strategy. Before The Walking Dead, of course, Telltale released Jurassic Park and Back to the Future adventure games, both of which were panned. It's also currently at work on an adaptation of the comic book series Fables.

What do you think Telltale should work on next? I'd love to see a Deus Ex adaptation benefit from the same quality of writing and characters as The Walking Dead did.

Questions surrounding the portrayal of women in games, and the treatment of women in the games industry, have been with us throughout the year. Encouragingly, the resulting discussion, and events like #1reasonwhy, managed to rise above the vomitous whirlpool of anonymous abuse that characterises lowest dregs of internet discourse (which exist far away from here, of course). The issue is here to stay.

With that in mind we decided to take a look back across the year and celebrate the games that have done a good job of intelligently portraying a broad range of characters in terms of gender, race and sexuality. I'm happy to deliver an official PC Gamer fist-bump to Telltale games for their work on The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead derives its dramatic momentum from the frictions that spark among its diverse cast members. It succeeds not because it brings together such an interesting group of human beings, but because it simultaneously elevates them above the race and gender cliches that, under the pens of a less thoughtful writing team, could easily come to define them.

In The Walking Dead we meet men and women, young and old, black and white, cowardly and proud, angry and mistrustful. Every trait is a feature of each character's personality, not a direct symptom of their race, gender education or background. In Lee Everett we have a rare example of an african american main character. He's a professor. He's a killer. Kenny is from the deep south but he's not a hick. Young Clementine is vulnerable, but intelligent and independent. In a medium where lazy characterisation based on race and gender is the norm, The Walking Dead represents a breath of cool air. Every character resists cliche. The result is one of the most engrossing and surprising stories of the year.

Props go out, too, to Mass Effect 3. A close runner up. Bioware have gathered a fine team of interesting and capable women, men, androids and space toads for the glorious finale and for the first time in the series they introduced fully written same-sex relationships. The writers blogged about it too.

"I’m fortunate to have gay and lesbian friends at BioWare who were willing to take a look at Traynor for me and help me edit a few bad lines that played into negative stereotypes. As for the fans, the reaction has been very positive so far – I think the nicest thing I’ve heard was, “I think I’ve actually had that conversation in real life," said writer Patrick Weekes.

BONUS AWARD: Most adroit three point turn out of the mindset and values of the 21st century - Hitman Absolution

The fact there have been so many gender-related gaming scandals this year may be a good thing: in previous years these sorts of things have gone largely without comment or complaint. This year’s cavalcade of calumny is proof, at least, that there is an increasing will to change things.

Change things like, say, a game trailer in which the male protagonist brutally murders a host of sexy BDSM nuns in graphic slow-motion. Or the atmosphere of an industry in which women are routinely patronised or abused as evidenced by the #1ReasonWhy Twitter movement. Or games in which female characters appear only to be objectified or killed. Take Black Ops 2’s cast of speaking roles for women, for instance: one (“probably some whore”) gets burnt alive and then blown up with a grenade. Another gets her throat cut (though, in fairness, this can be avoided through the game’s branching paths). The third is a pilot - promising! - although she gets shot out of the sky and our character jumps in and is able to fly the plane with no prior experience.

The longest, loudest facepalm of the year was triggered by the sight of Hitman: Absolution's rubberised nunssassins, and the Facebook campaign that invited friends to order Facebook "hits" on girls for having “awful make-up," "strange odour" and "small tits," and on guys for having a "hairy back," a "big gut" or a "small penis," which at least gave men and women equal opportunites to offend one another. The Facebook campaign was quickly pulled. Hopefully we'll see less of its like next year, and all the years beyond.

Writing is as much about structure as conversation and character. This year Telltale's experimentation with the episodic format has finally worked. Their survival horror adventure game, The Walking Dead played to the strengths of its format beautifully, tearing its characters out of each situation just as they started to settle in. It's an apocalyptic road trip that delivers satisfying, self-contained two-to-three hour plot arcs, but always quietly builds to a grand finale that, for many, provided the emotional payoff of the year.

There are lot of layers to storytelling in an interactive medium, especially in an adventure game in which you spend most of your time talking to folk. Walking Dead's structure means it has more opportunity than most games to show off, but that also means plenty of opportunity to offend with a momentary lapse in sense, a sudden unexplained right turn in a character's motivations, or the sudden introduction of a cavernous plot hole.

There's a difference between a character behaving unpredictably, but within the range of plausible action, and a character stepping out of themselves entirely. It's a line Telltale walk finely with Lee's companions. Making friends and gaining their loyalty requires you to juggle their motivations and constantly assess their perceptions of you.

Then, just when you think you're in control, something explodes and you must choose which relationship is more valuable, sometimes at the behest of a ten second timer.

It's cruel, but that's what the Walking Dead does so well - the bait and switch. It offers you scraps of security, and replaces it with sudden, violent calamity. And into the chaos they thrust a young kid who needs a helping hand. It's traumatic, but quite brilliant.

A second season of The Walking Dead is expected next year. I can't wait.

Telltale's episodic Walking Dead series of drama-laced survival hit shelves today as a boxed edition compiling all five episodes of the first season. Retailing exclusively at Best Buy stores for $30, the collection charts the struggles of Lee, Clementine, Kenny, and other memorable characters as personalities clash and mesh during a widespread zombie outbreak.

Previously available as individual digital downloads through Steam and Telltale's Season Pass, the boxed Walking Dead provides a means to scoop up the entirety of the first season's cliffhangers, moral ambiguity, and bloodstained shovels. Seeing as the culminating fifth episode alone yanked enough on our heartstrings to include the series in our Game of the Year selections, it's definitely a worthy buy for those seeking the entire experience.

When facing the end of time as we know it through a cataclysmic prophecy, it's time for a sale to mark history's end with a bang. To wit, GameFly's End of the World event nixes 75 percent off select titles for the next 12 days, providing valuable buys such as a $15/£9 Witcher 2, a $25/£15.50 XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and $12.50/£8 for The Walking Dead, among others.

More games will appear throughout the sale's duration, but current offerings include Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.50/£1.60, Batman: Arkham Asylum for $10/£6, and Crysis for $7.50/£4.70.

If you haven't yet taken shelter in your fallout bunker cheered at the increasing arrival of awesome holiday sales, Origin's Green Monday sale are still around for just one more day with 40 percent off on tons of noteworthy titles such as Battlefield 3 ($24/£15), Crusader Kings II ($24/£15), and The Sims 3 ($18/£11). Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a couple of asteroid-repelling planks to board up.

At the end of each year we hand out awards to honor the experiences that live in our best memories of the preceding months—the games that moved us with their ambition, quality, and pioneering spirit. None of the decisions are ever easy, and there's no secret formula: we pit opinion against opinion with straightforward, old-fashioned arguing until one winner is left standing in the GOTY battle cage. Look below for the first landmark of that exciting week-long debate: a list of our eligible winners in 11 categories, including Game of the Year.

Beyond recognizing what games we loved most this year, though, it’s crucial to call attention to a truth that connects them all: PC gaming is exploding. Our hobby is many-tentacled and unbridled—practically every niche, genre, and business model mutated in a meaningful way this year. Two shooters built on new, PC-only technology released (PlanetSide 2 and Natural Selection 2). Dota 2 grew into its adolescence. League of Legends’ Season 2 Championship drew an audience of 8.2 million—the most ever for an eSports event. Modders resurrected content that was thought to be lost. So many remakes and spiritual successors to old school PC games got crowdfunded that we're sure we’d miss some if we tried to list them all.

That said, the following list marks the peaks of this mountainous year, and you'll find out which games won in the next issue of PC Gamer, and here on the web soon.



Dota 2
Dishonored
Mass Effect 3
PlanetSide 2
The Walking Dead
Tribes: Ascend
XCOM: Enemy Unknown



Crusader Kings II
FTL: Faster Than Light
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
XCOM: Enemy Unknown



Guild Wars 2
PlanetSide 2
Rift: Storm Legion
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria



Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
Diablo III
Mass Effect 3
Torchlight II



Borderlands 2
Dishonored
Far Cry 3
Max Payne 3
Spec Ops: The Line



Hawken
Natural Selection 2
PlanetSide 2
Tribes: Ascend



Dota 2
League of Legends
StarCraft II




Black Mesa: Source
Crusader Kings II: A Game of Thrones
DayZ
The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod



Lone Survivor
The Walking Dead
Thirty Flights of Loving
Resonance




FTL: Faster Than Light
Hotline Miami
Legend of Grimrock
Thirty Flights of Loving



Euro Truck Simulator 2
aeroflyFS
XPlane
Football Manager 2013

Lock, load, and roll out with T.J., Logan, Evan, and Tyler as we share our experiences on the war-torn battlefields of PlanetSide 2, and bring you news from every wavelength of the PC gaming spectrum. Far Cry 3? XCOM? Ron Gilbert? We've got it all. Plus, is talking about whether or not games are art, in itself, art? Were we too hard on Telltale's The Walking Dead? Why am I still typing when there's science to do? Just hurry up and listen to...

PC Gamer Podcast 339: Designated Marksman

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Leave a voicemail: 1-877-404-1337 ext. 724 or email the MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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@logandecker (Logan Decker)
@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler Wilde)
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While speaking to Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert at a preview event for The Cave today, I asked for his thoughts on Telltale's The Walking Dead, and if he might consider an episodic format for future adventure games. Though he hasn't played The Walking Dead yet, Gilbert bravely plans to run through all five episodes on a 10 hour flight to Europe tomorrow, and had a few comments on its success and episodic gaming.

"I really like the episodic format," said Gilbert. "I would love to do episodic stuff—I think it’s really neat. It allows you to react to what players are experiencing, much like a TV show can react.

"I think, with The Walking Dead, it’s kind of proof of the mass marketing of adventure games. Things like Sam & Max are wonderfully fabulous games, but they’re a little nichey in a way. But I think The Walking Dead really proved that there’s a large number of people out there who, if you build a game that’s accessible to them—build an adventure game that’s accessible to them—they will just flock to it."

When I mentioned that the level of patience and carefully budgeted entertainment time in the mass audience may be a factor, Gilbert acknowledged that "people’s time is pulled in so many different ways today with social media, movies at home, and all these other things," that allowing players to "dabble" in concise segments and still have a good experience broadens the audience.

Gilbert's current project, The Cave, is similar to other recent Double Fine productions in that it can be completed in several hours, rather than after several days or weeks of head-scratching. For Gilbert, it's about "the evolution of adventure games"—bringing them to a mass audience without losing their basic appeal.

"I think there will always be people who enjoy the classic adventure games, and I think there’s a whole lot that is really cool and neat and interesting about those," he said. "I think there’s also a whole bunch of people that would enjoy adventure games if there was that kind of more visceral moment-to-moment gameplay. And it’s not to say that it’s action. There’s nothing about playing The Cave that you’re going to fail doing jumps, or you’re never having to time double jumps or anything like that. It’s just that act of being able to run around and jump on stuff—it keeps one part of our brain really engaged the whole time, and it frees up the other part of our brain to puzzle solve a little bit more."

The Cave is set to release in January—look for impressions of the hands-on demonstration soon, as well as more from my interview with Ron Gilbert. In the meantime, we wish him luck making the hard decisions on tomorrow's flight. He says he's been warned that "it’ll be a pretty intense 10 hours," and might have to break for a movie. May we suggest a comedy?