14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Rockstar will receive a special British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship award during this year’s ceremony, as recognition for the huge contribution it has made to the video game genre since it was founded, mainly using the grand Theft Auto franchise.
The special award was first introduced in 1971 and the first ever recipient was the legendary Alfred Hitchcock.
Since then, it has been awarded to personalities as Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese.
Since 2007, the BAFTA leadership has decided that it should also be open to figures coming from the video game industry, and the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Will Wright, and Nolan Bushnell have received it.
Dan Houser, Leslie Benzies, and Aaron Garbut will attend the official British Academy Games Awards event in London on March 12 to accept the award given to Rockstar Games.
Dan Houser, the leader of the studio, is quoted by CVG as saying that “We have long believed in the potential for videogames to become a new form of cultural expression and worked to show that in our games, so for us accepting the BAFTA Fellowship is incredibly humbling. This honour reflects the creative vision and dedication of a huge number of people over many years, and we look forward to accepting the Fellowship on their behalf.”
Harvey Elliott, the leader of the BAFTA's Games Committee, adds, “The creativity and passion exhibited by the Rockstar teams have inspired a generation of game developers to raise the bar in every aspect of game development.”
He says the team at Rockstar Games has managed to deliver impressive achievements linked to world design, game mechanics, storytelling, cinematics, and audio.
The company is best known for creating the Grand Theft Auto series, which has repeatedly revolutionized the open world genre and delivered some of the most mature titles for each console generation.
It has also worked on Bully, Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Manhunt, and Max Payne.
Their most recent release is GTA V, which arrived in the last few months of last year and has managed to be a huge commercial and critical success.
Since then, the company also delivered an Online mode, which constantly gets events and constant updates from the team, some of them build around community-made content.
Fans are expecting to hear information about single-player expansions for GTA V before the end of 2014.