In what is being considered a bit of a shock in the video game industry, House House’s quirky puzzle platformer, Untitled Goose Game, has won the prestigious Game of the Year award at the 23rd Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. The Goose game beat out other big name titles such as Death Stranding, Control, Disco Elysium, and Outer Wilds. The game also won two separate awards that night, Outstanding for an Independent Game and Outstanding Achievement in Character.
This win is very significant mostly due to the fact that the studio House House is only comprised of four people. Whereas other studios are filled to the brim with hundreds of developers, House House managed to snag one of the most esteemed awards in the industry with arguably the smallest staff ever. This in an of itself is a monumental achievement, and truly shows just how much the ever changing video game landscape can be.
To put this in perspective, the winners of the last few years have been God of War, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Overwatch, and Fallout 4. All of these are AAA titles that have gone on to have enormous success in their own right. Untitled Goose Game, while an extremely successful Indie title, is pretty far from what’s generally considered a AAA game. Regardless, it did grab the number one selling position for digital game when it launched on the Nintendo Switch in North America few months back, and it’s already surpassed one million in total sales as reported last month.
Now that it’s reached what is essentially the highest echelon of technological achievements for a video game, there are sure to be a lot more gamers, and people in general, looking to see what this insane Goose game is all about. The developers themselves were quite shocked when it was announced, going to Twitter to voice their surprise and excitement to winning the biggest award that night.
While the Goose developers may have claimed the top prize, Remedy Entertainment had themselves an amazing night and took home four different awards for their game Control. The awards included, Action Game of the Year, Game Direction, Art Direction, and Music Composition. Kojima Productions was the only other studio to have more than one award at the show for their game Death Stranding, winning Technical Achievement and Audio Design. Other winners included Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which took home Adventure Game of the Year, Mortal Kombat 11 won Fighting Game of the Year, while Role-Playing Game of the Year went to The Outer Worlds and Outstanding Achievement in Story was won by Disco Elysium.
You can watch the entire 23rd D.I.C.E. Awards Show here:
Another highlight of the evening was longtime video game producer and Sony Executive Connie Booth being inducted into the Academy Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Booth has been part of Sony’s video game division for the better part of 21 plus years and has worked on PlayStation titles such as Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and Marvel’s Spider-Man. She’s currently working with Sucker Punch to help produce their upcoming title Ghosts of Tsushima, as well as Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II.
You can check out the full list of winners here.