The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) held its awards ceremonies last year, and the omission of certain game titles in the nominations were almost as newsworthy as the games that actually received awards for outstanding achievements. The notable absences were headlined by Capcom’s Resident Evil 4, which received numerous awards and high scores from the press and fans. This year, more outstanding games–once again from Capcom–were conspicuously missing from the nominations–Okami and Dead Rising.
A Capcom representative aired his angst at the AIAS in a statement made to Gamespot. The rep said, "According to the AIAS DICE website, ‘Since 1998, the peer-based Interactive Achievement Awards are dedicated to recognizing the outstanding products, talented individuals, and ground-breaking development teams that have propelled the advancement of the multi-billion dollar worldwide entertainment software industry.’ What the site neglects to mention is that a product, individual, or development team cannot and will not be nominated for an award unless a company buys its way in to the AIAS."
Capcom’s outrage is due to its belief that the game awards held by the AIAS are not fair and are based upon a game company’s willingness to support the organization by joining the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, thusly paying the associated membership fees. They stated, "Capcom remains unsure as to the value of being an AIAS member. Does our company really need to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to present awards to our own games?"
The president of AIAS, Joseph Olin, defended the AIAS omissions by saying, "Certainly this year, there were a number of titles from Capcom [and] Eidos that were not submitted by the publisher or developer that were considered, ranked, evaluated, and voted on within our first voting process to become finalists by the academy’s members." But Olin described the situation from a different point of view. "The publishing communities and developing communities need to come together and… jointly fund the organization [AIAS] because ultimately they reap the benefits."
In comparison, the Academy Awards for the film industry makes no distinction in accepting submissions for awards as long as they meet requirements for theatrical presentation and format guidelines. However, the regular practice of excluding what are top rated games in the video game industry by the Academy of Interactive Arts for eligibility in their nomination process places a great deal of doubt as to the fairness and believability of the awards. This issue may only be reconciled through the means of opening the event to all game publishers, regardless of affiliation with–or contributions to–the AIAS.
