The Guildford Games Awards are presented annually to recognise, honour and reward outstanding achievement in games. The awards categories reflect the wealth and diversity of the games sector.

The Guildford Games Awards also honours individuals with awards in recognition of their contribution to the games industry.

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Award categories

Creative Award

We're looking for the individual or team who have shown their creative prowess in the workplace. This award is not just for artists, either! Your nomination could be for creative coding, creative thinking or any other form creative action you've witnessed...

Collaboration Award

This award is for the individual or team who have shown great collaborative skills in their workplace or within the Guildford games community.

Community Award

Covering Community Managers or someone from a studio organising games Dev events in the local community or charitable work which benefits the wider community. Anything that aims to strengthen the connections between Guildford studios or with video game fans around the world!

Diversity and Inclusion Award

This award will go to an individual or organisation who can demonstrate they are positively encouraging diversity and inclusion in their role/company/workforce. If you know of someone/a team striving to support and encourage marginalised communities, we want to hear from you!

Education Award

The education award isn't limited to educational institutions. Do you know of a Guildford studio who offer talks at events or who actively go out into the community to help impart knowledge? Or someone who runs events to bring people together? Have you been involved in running courses or internships in your studio? Get nominating!

Experience of the Year Award

This award is our equivalent to the Mercury Music Prize. 5 Games will be shortlisted before being presented to our independent and diverse panel to pick their winner. The awards is genre and sector (ie Indie, Amateur, AAA, student) agnostic.

Innovation Award

Have you witnessed a colleague or peer create hardware, software or a new way of thinking that has rocked your world? Do you want to shout about them? Of course you do, and this is the category for you!

Guildford Hero Award

We want to hear about developers who have done something inspirational to help the Guildford Games Community or beyond! If you know of someone who goes above and beyond on the daily and expects no fanfare for it, let us know. We have a large trumpet and we'd like to blow it for The Guildford Hero of the year!

Rules and further information

Timetable 2023

  • 21/09/2023 Guildford Games Awards - Announcements
  • 21/09/2023 Entry site opens
  • 19/10/2023 Final entry deadline
  • 23/10/2023 Judging of entries starts
  • 3/11/2023 Guildford Games Awards Nominations announced
  • 10/11/2023 Guildford Games Awards winners announced

Entries are invited for the Guildford Games Awards in 2023 from both Developers and Publishers.

Any individual or team are eligible as long as they are based in the GU (Guildford) post code.

The Individual or team must have done what they are being nominated for between 1st December 2022 and 1st October 2023.


Entry

All entries should be made via the Entry site.

Entry deadline for all entries is Thursday 19th October. Following this date, the entry site will be closed.

There must be careful consideration of who is proposed for nomination as changes cannot be made once nominations have been announced;

Guildford Games Awards are not liable for errors in listings that are the result of incorrect information submitted on the entry form.


Fees

There is no fee for entries to the Guildford Games Awards.


Voting and juries

Judging panel are made up of between eight and ten industry experts.

All voting is authenticated by the Guildford Games Awards appointed scrutineers.

All decisions made by Guildford Games Awards and its judges are final and no correspondence will be entered into as to why particular entries were or were not nominated.


Nominations and winners

The nominations for each category will always be listed in alphabetical order

Nominations will be announced approximately four weeks before the ceremony

The winners press release is the definitive source of award winners information

All individuals or teams named as award winners will receive a Guildford Game Award.

The Guildford Games Awards does not issue replicas of the Award.


Clip usage - Nominated content

An important part of Guildford Games Awards remit is to promote excellence in games to as large an audience as possible. In order to fulfil this, Guildford Games Awards intends to show clips of nominated games at the Awards ceremony and these clips may form part of its online broadcast in the UK.