Scottish Games Week will be returning October 30 to November 3 2023 for its second outing. A week-long, Scotland-wide celebration of the wealth of gaming talent in region, one of the key components of the event’s bill of fare will be the full reveal of the winners of The Scottish Games Awards 2023.
Want to nominate your favourite team, creation or achievement (with a Scottish connection, of course) and make sure they get the recognition they deserve?
Here’s all you need to know
The Scottish Games Week Awards are designed to showcase outstanding work across game design and development, audio, art and animation, technical achievement and tools and technology. Plus there are individual achievement awards aplenty to make sure that no talent or outstanding achievement goes unrewarded. (Full list below.)
And this year the awards have been expanded with the addition of two new categories.
The Spirit Of Scotland category is tailor made to encourage and reward games with a special Scottish connection. This category is for games which highlight Scottish culture, heritage, language, characters or landscape.
The second new award is the Pure Quality Award for creative impact, judging criteria being to assess games that have made “a significant impact beyond the commercial return and broken new ground in terms of content, audience, downloads, or general awesomeness”.
How to enter
Entries are encouraged from all creators from full-time developers to part-time indies, student teams or individuals working across the entire games ecosystem. Companies working outside the traditional game development space in areas such as animation, immersive media, audio, and digital design are also welcome to enter their work in eligible categories.
The awards are open to work produced between August 1st 2022 and September 22nd 2023. Entries are free of charge and close at 18:00 BST on September 22 2023.
This year’s competition will be judged by a panel of experts chaired by Chris Scullion, the author and veteran games journalist, and features individuals drawn from across Scotland and the UK.
“The inaugural Scottish Games Awards last year were a fantastic celebration of the Scottish games industry,” said Scullion. “I feel such events are essential for bringing the industry together and acknowledging as a community its collective achievements, so I'm delighted that it will be returning this year and take great personal honour in being asked to chair it again. I look forward to seeing the best and brightest of Scotland's games industry coming together again for another brilliant night.”
Brian Baglow, the founder and director of Scottish Games Week, said: “The games sector in Scotland has a huge range of talented, creative and generous people, producing incredible work. From the lecturers in the classroom to the developers on the cutting edge of videogames, we have truly world-class talent.
“While many people know of the great games Scotland produced in the past, there’s far less coverage of the amazing work being created today. We plan to change that. The Scottish Games Awards celebrate the people and organisations working across the whole games ecosystem, as well as the games being developed by Scottish talent here - and worldwide.”
The 15 categories in the 2023 Scottish Games Awards are:
- Small Budget Game
- Large Budget Game
- Spirit Of Scotland
- Pure Quality
- Art & Animation
- Technical Achievement
- Audio
- Creativity
- Best Tools/Tech
- Best Educator
- Best Educational Programme
- Diversity Champion
- Community Spirit (Stewart Gilray Award)
- Rising Star
- Lifetime Achievement Award
Full eligibility criteria and entry criteria can be found on the Scottish Games Week website.
Scottish Games Week is being delivered by the Scottish Games Network Ltd. Scottish Games Week is supported by the Scottish Government’s Ecosystem Fund, delivered as part of its Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (STER) programme.
Want to know more about Scottish Games Week?
- Media/General enquiries: hello@gamesweek.scot
- Speaker enquiries: fee@scottishgames.net
- Sponsor enquiries: brian.baglow@scottishgames.net
- X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/scotgamesweek
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scotgamesweek/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/701845541217246
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scottishgamesweek
- Threads: https://www.threads.net/@scotgamesweek
