This year's Game Developer Choice Awards have revealed the recipients of the Ambassador and Pioneer awards.
The Ambassador award is given to honor someone who has helped video game advance to a better place through advocacy or action. After open nominations were taken from the game development community, the GDCA Advisory Committe decided to award Anita Sarkeesian for her webseries Feminist Frequency. After a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund her videos, Sarkeesian has been identifying and deconstructing the harmful stereotypes that have targeted women in video games and gaming culture.
The Pioneer award honors breakthrough tech and setting new paradigms in gameplay design. This year, the winners are the co-founders of Riot Games Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill for League of Legends. Riot Games was created with the intent to be the most player-focused company in the world- and out of that they've created a game that has drawn a massive following, especially in the eSports community.
The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony will take place on March 19, 2014 at 6:30 PM at the San Francisco Moscone Center. It will be hosted by Abbie Heppe of Respawn Entertainment and Nathan Vella, president and co-founder of Capy. Ashley and Anthony Burch, the sibling duo behind Hey Ash Whatcha Playin will be contributing new videos to this year's Independent GAmes Festival along with the team behind Mega64.
