There is still much to write about last week's GDC 2007, but right now we'll take a lucrative break in order to announce the winners of the 7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. This is supposed to be "the only
peer-based, open nomination awards program in the industry where honors are
bestowed to developers by developers", and as usual the ceremony took place at the Game Developers Conference. The finalists were announced over one month ago, with five games battling it out for the "Best Game" distinction: Gears of War, Okami, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports.

From these, Oblivion was the only one to walk away without a single award in the end, in any of the other categories. The latest Zelda game for the Wii (and GameCube) won a single award, for "Writing". Okami and Wii Sports won two awards each. But ultimately they were no match for Gears of War, who garnished a total of three awards, including the highest distinction of all: "Best Game".

Other winners were also Guitar Hero II and Line Rider, along with Iron Lore as the best new studio, and Shigeru Miyamoto for his lifetime achievements. The complete list of winners is as follows:

Best Game

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)

- Cliff Bleszinski, Michael Capps, Rod Fergusson

Audio

Guitar Hero II (Harmonix Music Systems / RedOctane)

- Jeff Allen, Eric Brosius, Izzy Maxwell

Character Design

Okami (Clover Studio / Capcom Entertainment)

- Mari Shimazaki, Sawaki Takeyasu, Kenichirou Yoshimura

Game Design

Wii Sports (Nintendo)

- Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiaki Yamashita

Technology

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)

- Michael Capps, Ray Davis, Tim Sweeney, Daniel Vogel

Visual Arts

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)

- Jerry O'Flaherty, Chris Perna

Writing

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo EAD / Nintendo)

- Kyogoku Aya, Nate Bihldorff, Mitsuhiro Takano

New Studio

Iron Lore Entertainment (Titan Quest)

- Paul Chieffo, Jeff Goodsill, Brian Sullivan

Innovation

Line Rider

- Bostjan Cadez

Okami (Clover Studio / Capcom Entertainment)

- Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya

Wii Sports (Nintendo)

- Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiaki Yamashita

Recipients for the evening's special awards were:

Lifetime Achievement

Shigeru Miyamoto

First Penguin

Alexey Pajitnov

Maverick

Greg Costikyan

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)