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Black & White (computer game)
Encyclopedia
Black & White is a 2001
video game developed by Lionhead Studios
and published by Electronic Arts
and Feral Interactive
for Microsoft Windows
and Apple Macintosh. A god game
, it includes elements of artificial life, strategy, and fighting game
s.
The player acts as a god and takes control over villages across several islands. Black & White features a unique gameplay element, a creature that the player can raise and teach. The game was highly anticipated and overall well received.
It was followed by an expansion, Black & White: Creature Isle
, and a sequel, Black & White 2
.
A port for the Sega Dreamcast
was in development but was canceled due to the end of the system's production life.
The player discovers a massive Creature, who tells of a god known as Nemesis, his former master, who desires to destroy all other gods and reign supreme as the one true god. Nemesis becomes the principal antagonist in the game. The player is told of the Creed - an energy source with the ability to destroy gods. Nemesis then destroys his former Creature and attacks the player's village. A mysterious vortex
opens that the player enters to escape Nemesis.
The vortex transports the player onto a second island. The player is greeted by another god, Khazar, who sent the player the vortex and asks for the player's aid against another god Lethys, who is Nemesis' underling, in exchange for the resources to rebuild the player's village. However, Nemesis destroys Khazar and steals Khazar's piece of the Creed. Lethys then kidnaps the player's creature, taking it through a vortex to another land.
In the third land, The Creature is being held in stasis
by three magical pillars. The player must take over three villages to free the Creature. Then Lethys gives the player a piece of the Creed and opens a vortex to a land where another can be found.
The player returns to the first land, which is now cursed by Nemesis - fireballs and lightning rain from the sky. The player must complete three quests to deactivate the curses. Finally, when a piece of the Creed is claimed by aiding a cursed village, Nemesis appears and invites the player to his realm.
On the last island, Nemesis curses the player's Creature, causing him to slowly change alignments, shrink, and grow weaker. The player must take over villages to undo the curse and defeat Nemesis. When the final piece of the Creed is obtained, the player destroys Nemesis once and for all, leaving the player as the last remaining god in the world.
ruling over an island populated by various tribes. The player's control over the island is manifested in the Hand, an animated on-screen hand which can move or throw people and objects, tap houses to wake their occupants, cast miracles, and do many other things. Use of the keyboard and buttons in the game is deliberately low; to add to the sense of realism, the (usually) mouse-controlled hand can perform every function in the game. In later patches, the Hand can also be controlled by an Essential Reality P5 Glove, a consumer-level virtual reality glove that is no longer for sale.
Generally speaking, the goal of a level is to gain control over every village on the island. This is accomplished through the performance of impressive acts that will cause the villagers to believe in the player. Villagers can be swayed by everything from helping them with day-to-day tasks to terrorising them with fireballs
and lightning
storms. Another important element of the gameplay is the player's Creature — a pet of sorts that can be trained to do almost anything, thanks to the game's complex AI
, developed by Richard Evans
. This Creature is trained by being placed on a leash while the player demonstrates the action the Creature is to learn using the Hand. With time and repetition, it can perform complex functions that will allow it to serve as the player's avatar
in the world.
The principle behind the game's name is the conflict between good and evil. Nearly every action (or lack thereof) will count towards the player's image in the people's eyes. As such, the player may be seen as a heart wrenchingly good god or an utterly evil one. The land and interface
will shift according to the player's alignment. A good god will have a white marble temple, a shining white hand, and a peaceful village filled with light. Conversely, an evil god will have a charred, clawed hand, a black temple sprouting venomous red spikes, and thoroughly terrified villagers. Good players try to win over villages through constant help. Common tactics are to donate food and wood, construct buildings, protect the village from other gods, send missionaries, and use the Creature to entertain the villagers. However, villagers become bored with the same attempt to impress them being repeated. In other words if boulders flying overhead become too frequent, they will lose their effect. This forces the player to mix up the methods he uses to convert a village. One can use a balance of good and evil, trying to stay in the gray area. The game presents so many different ways to please a village, however, that the player is never forced to use evil or forced to use good.
, for example, an ape being intelligent and proficient at learning new tasks, but lacking strength, whereas a Tiger is strong but a slow learner.
As a god, the player can teach their creature to do simple tasks, such as, keeping the village store full of food and wood; performing miracles; performing a range of beneficial, benign, or violent acts - anything from what and when to eat to how to attack enemy's villagers using trees as weapons. The Creature may also be taught fighting skills in one-on-one battles with other creatures; the Creature's attack and defence abilities can be trained and improved. The Creature is taught by using a Reinforcement learning
system - if the Creature does something the player does not want it to do, the player can slap
the creature. On the other hand, if the Creature does something the player approves of, the Creature can be stroked
. The player's Creature will remember the player's response to various actions and will gradually change its behaviour accordingly.
The game reinforces the choices and learning of the creature by providing visual feedback, for instance, the Creature will change its appearance based on its alignment: an evil wolf will sport glowing eyes and massive fangs and claws, whereas a good one will turn a startling shade of purple and glow gently.
Lionhead Studios used the Belief-Desire-Intention model based on work of Michael Bratman
to simulate creatures learning and decision making. A creature forms an intention by combining desires, opinions and beliefs. Beliefs are attribute lists that store data about various world objects. Desires are goals the creature wants to fulfil expressed as simplified perceptron
s. Opinions describe ways of satisfying a desire using decision trees
. For each desire, the creature selects the belief that it has the best opinion about — thus forming an intention or goal.
ly, bearded old man seated on a cloud who refers to the player as "Leader", and the other a slightly tubby demon
who calls the player "Boss". They offer conflicting advice on how to play the game; depending on which option the player chooses, his or her reputation
as a good or evil deity is established (see below).
A player can leave the area of influence up to a short distance (for example to pick up a tree outside the area), and for a very short time, usually no more than a few seconds.
Objects thrown from within the area of influence can be sent far away to other villages. In addition the player's creature is able to do anything outside of the area of influence.
s create multiple one-shot miracles. Other miracles can be cast from worship sites. Worship sites can be powered by villagers worshipping, or sacrifice
s. Players can sacrifice trees, animals, and villagers. Spells that are charging will require prayer power, and will show its progress by how fast the rings are flowing into the player's hands. Miracles can also be upgraded through quests, or already available. Upgrades cost more worship prayer, but are much stronger. Fireballs are bigger and come in more numbers. Upgraded food dispenses more food. To upgrade, the player must make the gesture for the upgrade, similar to casting miracles without activating them from the worship site or town center. Upgraded miracles can be hidden in miracle bubbles, which is shown if the bubble has a ring in it.
, Missionary
or Craftsman
.
has their own wonder, and it can be built in other towns. Some wonders' effects will double with more wonders. Each wonder is named after a contemporary or ancient polytheistic society. Wonders require huge amounts of wood, but usually pay off to the player in another way. If the town is taken, the wonder will convert to the new owner. Most wonders do not benefit the Creature. In addition, the size of the wonder is set when it is built and is decided by the village's influence and belief.
and GameRankings, based on preliminary gameplay. Some critics, after spending more time reviewing the game, altered their judgment: Black & White was selected by GameSpy
as the most overrated game of all time in an article published in September 2003. and IGN
mentioned the game in one of their podcast
s discussing overrated games. Some of the game's awards and accolades include:
2001 in video gaming
-Events:* Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts John Carmack of id Software to the AIAS Hall of Fame...
video game developed by Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios is a British computer game development company led by industry veteran Peter Molyneux, and acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in April 2006. Lionhead started as a breakaway from the developer Bullfrog, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a...
and published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
and Feral Interactive
Feral Interactive
Feral Interactive is a publishing company founded in 1999 that publishes games and other software that did not fit in with the release programs of the large established publishers. It publishes Macintosh games and has relationships with publishers such as Electronic Arts, Eidos Interactive,...
for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Apple Macintosh. A god game
God game
A god game is an artificial life game that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine/supernatural powers, as a great leader, or with no specified character , and places them in charge of a game setting containing autonomous characters to...
, it includes elements of artificial life, strategy, and fighting game
Fighting game
Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
s.
The player acts as a god and takes control over villages across several islands. Black & White features a unique gameplay element, a creature that the player can raise and teach. The game was highly anticipated and overall well received.
It was followed by an expansion, Black & White: Creature Isle
Black & White: Creature Isle
Black & White: Creature Isle is an expansion pack for the PC game Black & White by Lionhead Studios. This expansion pack focuses on the creature and there are no levels as there were in the original game...
, and a sequel, Black & White 2
Black & White 2
Black & White 2 is a video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts and later in January 2009 by Feral Interactive as a port to Mac OS X. It blends real-time strategy, city building and god game elements...
.
A port for the Sega Dreamcast
Sega Dreamcast
The is a 128-bit video game console which was released by Sega in late 1998 in Japan and from September 1999 in other territories. It was the first entry in the sixth generation of video game consoles, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube.Dreamcast sales were...
was in development but was canceled due to the end of the system's production life.
Plot
The player begins the game as a newly created god, born from the prayers of a family. After saving the family's drowning son, the grateful family leads the player to their village. There, the player chooses a Creature. The plot advances as the player completes main "Gold Story Scrolls" and side "Silver Reward Scrolls" quests.The player discovers a massive Creature, who tells of a god known as Nemesis, his former master, who desires to destroy all other gods and reign supreme as the one true god. Nemesis becomes the principal antagonist in the game. The player is told of the Creed - an energy source with the ability to destroy gods. Nemesis then destroys his former Creature and attacks the player's village. A mysterious vortex
Vortex
A vortex is a spinning, often turbulent,flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed streamlines is vortex flow. The motion of the fluid swirling rapidly around a center is called a vortex...
opens that the player enters to escape Nemesis.
The vortex transports the player onto a second island. The player is greeted by another god, Khazar, who sent the player the vortex and asks for the player's aid against another god Lethys, who is Nemesis' underling, in exchange for the resources to rebuild the player's village. However, Nemesis destroys Khazar and steals Khazar's piece of the Creed. Lethys then kidnaps the player's creature, taking it through a vortex to another land.
In the third land, The Creature is being held in stasis
Stasis (fiction)
Stasis , or hypersleep, is a science fiction concept akin to suspended animation. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is...
by three magical pillars. The player must take over three villages to free the Creature. Then Lethys gives the player a piece of the Creed and opens a vortex to a land where another can be found.
The player returns to the first land, which is now cursed by Nemesis - fireballs and lightning rain from the sky. The player must complete three quests to deactivate the curses. Finally, when a piece of the Creed is claimed by aiding a cursed village, Nemesis appears and invites the player to his realm.
On the last island, Nemesis curses the player's Creature, causing him to slowly change alignments, shrink, and grow weaker. The player must take over villages to undo the curse and defeat Nemesis. When the final piece of the Creed is obtained, the player destroys Nemesis once and for all, leaving the player as the last remaining god in the world.
Gameplay
The player takes on the role of a godGod
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
ruling over an island populated by various tribes. The player's control over the island is manifested in the Hand, an animated on-screen hand which can move or throw people and objects, tap houses to wake their occupants, cast miracles, and do many other things. Use of the keyboard and buttons in the game is deliberately low; to add to the sense of realism, the (usually) mouse-controlled hand can perform every function in the game. In later patches, the Hand can also be controlled by an Essential Reality P5 Glove, a consumer-level virtual reality glove that is no longer for sale.
Generally speaking, the goal of a level is to gain control over every village on the island. This is accomplished through the performance of impressive acts that will cause the villagers to believe in the player. Villagers can be swayed by everything from helping them with day-to-day tasks to terrorising them with fireballs
Ball lightning
Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, usually spherical objects which vary from pea-sized to several metres in diameter. It is usually associated with thunderstorms, but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a...
and lightning
Lightning
Lightning is an atmospheric electrostatic discharge accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms...
storms. Another important element of the gameplay is the player's Creature — a pet of sorts that can be trained to do almost anything, thanks to the game's complex AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, developed by Richard Evans
Richard Evans (AI researcher)
Richard Evans is an artificial intelligence specialist working in computer games.He is currently collaborating with Andrew Stern on an unannounced game funded by ngmoco....
. This Creature is trained by being placed on a leash while the player demonstrates the action the Creature is to learn using the Hand. With time and repetition, it can perform complex functions that will allow it to serve as the player's avatar
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
in the world.
The principle behind the game's name is the conflict between good and evil. Nearly every action (or lack thereof) will count towards the player's image in the people's eyes. As such, the player may be seen as a heart wrenchingly good god or an utterly evil one. The land and interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
will shift according to the player's alignment. A good god will have a white marble temple, a shining white hand, and a peaceful village filled with light. Conversely, an evil god will have a charred, clawed hand, a black temple sprouting venomous red spikes, and thoroughly terrified villagers. Good players try to win over villages through constant help. Common tactics are to donate food and wood, construct buildings, protect the village from other gods, send missionaries, and use the Creature to entertain the villagers. However, villagers become bored with the same attempt to impress them being repeated. In other words if boulders flying overhead become too frequent, they will lose their effect. This forces the player to mix up the methods he uses to convert a village. One can use a balance of good and evil, trying to stay in the gray area. The game presents so many different ways to please a village, however, that the player is never forced to use evil or forced to use good.
Creature
Black & White has a unique feature that allows the player to control a creature that takes the form of an animal. Most of the creatures can be obtained from completing various Silver Reward Scrolls. The player's pet starts out relatively small, and later grows to be the size of a skyscraper. Each Creature has its strengths and weaknessesAttribute (role-playing games)
An attribute is a piece of data that describes to what extent a fictional character in a role-playing game possesses a specific natural, in-born characteristic common to all characters in the game. That piece of data is usually an abstract number or, in some cases, a set of dice...
, for example, an ape being intelligent and proficient at learning new tasks, but lacking strength, whereas a Tiger is strong but a slow learner.
As a god, the player can teach their creature to do simple tasks, such as, keeping the village store full of food and wood; performing miracles; performing a range of beneficial, benign, or violent acts - anything from what and when to eat to how to attack enemy's villagers using trees as weapons. The Creature may also be taught fighting skills in one-on-one battles with other creatures; the Creature's attack and defence abilities can be trained and improved. The Creature is taught by using a Reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning
Inspired by behaviorist psychology, reinforcement learning is an area of machine learning in computer science, concerned with how an agent ought to take actions in an environment so as to maximize some notion of cumulative reward...
system - if the Creature does something the player does not want it to do, the player can slap
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
the creature. On the other hand, if the Creature does something the player approves of, the Creature can be stroked
Reward system
In neuroscience, the reward system is a collection of brain structures which attempts to regulate and control behavior by inducing pleasurable effects...
. The player's Creature will remember the player's response to various actions and will gradually change its behaviour accordingly.
The game reinforces the choices and learning of the creature by providing visual feedback, for instance, the Creature will change its appearance based on its alignment: an evil wolf will sport glowing eyes and massive fangs and claws, whereas a good one will turn a startling shade of purple and glow gently.
Lionhead Studios used the Belief-Desire-Intention model based on work of Michael Bratman
Michael Bratman
Michael E Bratman is Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. His interests include philosophy of action and moral philosophy. His work in those areas led him to the Belief-Desire-Intention model that is used in many areas,...
to simulate creatures learning and decision making. A creature forms an intention by combining desires, opinions and beliefs. Beliefs are attribute lists that store data about various world objects. Desires are goals the creature wants to fulfil expressed as simplified perceptron
Perceptron
The perceptron is a type of artificial neural network invented in 1957 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory by Frank Rosenblatt. It can be seen as the simplest kind of feedforward neural network: a linear classifier.- Definition :...
s. Opinions describe ways of satisfying a desire using decision trees
Decision tree learning
Decision tree learning, used in statistics, data mining and machine learning, uses a decision tree as a predictive model which maps observations about an item to conclusions about the item's target value. More descriptive names for such tree models are classification trees or regression trees...
. For each desire, the creature selects the belief that it has the best opinion about — thus forming an intention or goal.
Temple
At the centre of the player's empire is the Temple, the building at which tribesfolk worship and the Creature sleeps. Menus and statistics are replaced by specialized rooms in the temple. Each tribe under the player's control will construct a worship area in the temple, where magical or 'prayer' energy is accumulated that can be used for miracles.Advisors
The gameplay is often helped along by two advisors to the player (a.k.a. consciences). They are the stereotypical conscience: one is a saintSaint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
ly, bearded old man seated on a cloud who refers to the player as "Leader", and the other a slightly tubby demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
who calls the player "Boss". They offer conflicting advice on how to play the game; depending on which option the player chooses, his or her reputation
Reputation
Reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria...
as a good or evil deity is established (see below).
Area of Influence
The area of play is limited to a strict circle around temple and village centers. The size of the circle is directly determined by population in the village.A player can leave the area of influence up to a short distance (for example to pick up a tree outside the area), and for a very short time, usually no more than a few seconds.
Objects thrown from within the area of influence can be sent far away to other villages. In addition the player's creature is able to do anything outside of the area of influence.
Miracles
Miracles are spells that can benefit the player. Some miracles come in one-shot miracles, which come in bubbles. DispenserDispenser
-Containers and machines:Various machines that dispense things:* Automatic toothpaste dispenser* Cash dispenser * Hearing aid dispenser* Label dispenser* Klik Rockets Dispenser, a candy dispenser* Paper towel dispenser...
s create multiple one-shot miracles. Other miracles can be cast from worship sites. Worship sites can be powered by villagers worshipping, or sacrifice
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to God or the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artifacts...
s. Players can sacrifice trees, animals, and villagers. Spells that are charging will require prayer power, and will show its progress by how fast the rings are flowing into the player's hands. Miracles can also be upgraded through quests, or already available. Upgrades cost more worship prayer, but are much stronger. Fireballs are bigger and come in more numbers. Upgraded food dispenses more food. To upgrade, the player must make the gesture for the upgrade, similar to casting miracles without activating them from the worship site or town center. Upgraded miracles can be hidden in miracle bubbles, which is shown if the bubble has a ring in it.
Disciples
Disciples (a.k.a. villagers) play an important role in a player's progress. Villagers can be assigned to certain task created by the player or creature. These will change their daily schedule. For example, if a villager is assigned to be a farmer, they will farm, and perhaps pray at the town circle the rest of the day. Builders will sit around town until new projects have appeared. Disciples main usage is to allow the player work on gaining new towns, or work on another and have the town care for itself using this job system. Nine types of Disciples are available, such as FarmerFarmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
, Missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
or Craftsman
Master craftsman
A master craftsman or master tradesman was a member of a guild. In the European guild system, only masters were allowed to be members of the guild....
.
Wonders
Wonders can boost a player's influence, belief, and miracle powers, along with other things. Wonders are built after seven scaffolds have been combined. Each tribeTribe
A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...
has their own wonder, and it can be built in other towns. Some wonders' effects will double with more wonders. Each wonder is named after a contemporary or ancient polytheistic society. Wonders require huge amounts of wood, but usually pay off to the player in another way. If the town is taken, the wonder will convert to the new owner. Most wonders do not benefit the Creature. In addition, the size of the wonder is set when it is built and is decided by the village's influence and belief.
Weather
Weather is randomly generated unless the player sets the game to use the local weather (specified by zip code or post code). Random weather can be influenced by magic.Reception
Critics initially awarded Black & White with high praise, averaging 90% at both MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
and GameRankings, based on preliminary gameplay. Some critics, after spending more time reviewing the game, altered their judgment: Black & White was selected by GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
as the most overrated game of all time in an article published in September 2003. and IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
mentioned the game in one of their podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
s discussing overrated games. Some of the game's awards and accolades include:
- E3 2000 Game Critics AwardsGame Critics AwardsThe Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category. The nominees and winners of the awards are chosen by individual judges representing 35 major North...
: Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game, Best Strategy Game - E3 1999 Game Critics AwardsGame Critics AwardsThe Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category. The nominees and winners of the awards are chosen by individual judges representing 35 major North...
: Best Original Game - BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards 2001 for Interactivity and Moving Images
- The Electronic Multimedia Awards. (EMMA) Gold Award Of Excellence
- ECTS 2001 for PC Game of the Year Power Unlimited Benelux,PC Game of the Year CD Action Eastern Europe,PC Game of the Year PC Games Germany,PC Game of the Year KwVideogiochi.it Italy,PC Game of the Year PC Hemma Scandinavia, PC Game of the Year Solo Juegos.com Spain
- PC World (US) for Best game of 2001
- Academy of Interactive Arts & SciencesAcademy of Interactive Arts & SciencesThe Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
, Nominated for six awards. It won Computer Game Of The Year and Innovation in Computer Gaming - THE GAME DEVELOPERS CHOICE AWARDS (US) four awards. Excellence in Programming (won), Excellence in Game Design (nominated), Game Of The Year (nominated), Game Innovation Spotlight (won)
- Gamespy, Gamer's Choice Of The Year (Strategy)
- GAMES MAGAZINE (USA) Game Of The Year
- NY times, Reviewers choice of the year's best video game.
- PC Gameplay UK, Game of 2001
- Cnet's top five games of the summer, #1.
- CGW, voted number one by readers of CGW.
- Tied highest PC game review score ever on IGN.com [9.7/10](With Half-Life 2Half-Life 2Half-Life 2 , the sequel to Half-Life, is a first-person shooter video game and a signature title in the Half-Life series. It is singleplayer, story-driven, science fiction, and linear...
& BioShockBioshockBioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...
)