Mass Effect 2 Wins Interactive Achievement Awards’ Game of the Year

In what the New York Times calls an “upset”, Mass Effect 2 has taken the Interactive Achievement Awards prize over favored Red Dead Redemption, voted by members of the industry at the recent DICE convention.

LAS VEGAS In an upset victory for Electronic Arts and its BioWare studio, the science-fiction adventure Mass Effect 2 won game of the year here on Thursday evening at the 14th annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony. Voted on by members of the video-game industry under the auspices of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the Interactive Achievement Awards are the most prestigious in video games and are the industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. The awards are announced each year at the academy’s DICE conference, which stands for Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain.

While well received by critics, Mass Effect 2 was not generally considered a front-runner for the top prize in the face of competition from the other nominees: Red Dead Redemption, God of War III, Angry Birds HD and Call of Duty: Black Ops. In addition to game of the year, Mass Effect 2 also won for outstanding achievement in story and role playing/massively multiplayer game of the year.

The western epic Red Dead Redemption, by Rockstar Games, had been considered the front-runner for the top prize. Instead, it took five individual awards, more than any other title: outstanding achievement in game direction, action game of the year, outstanding achievement in art direction, outstanding character performance (for the lead character John Marston, voiced by the actor Rob Wiethoff), and outstanding achievement in game play engineering.