The Game Developers Choice Award for the Game of the Year, also known as GDCA Game of the Year is the main video game award presented at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers. The conference, usually held in or around March in San Francisco, presents the award as part of the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA), a series of awards honoring outstanding achievements in video game design for games released during the previous calendar year.
Established in 2001, the award is considered the most prestigious peer-awarded accolade in the digital games industry, as the winners are selected by votes of game developers themselves.
As of the 16th conference held in March 2016, only three studios—all of them American—have won the award more than once:
Developers with three or more nominations in the category include Nintendo EAD (6), BioWare (5), Bethesda Game Studios (4), Rockstar North (4), Ubisoft Montreal (4), FromSoftware (3), Lionhead Studios (3), and Valve Corporation (3).
As for video game publishers, the most successful to date is Sony Computer Entertainment with 9 nominations and 4 wins, followed by Nintendo (8 nominations and 1 win), Electronic Arts (7 nominations and 1 win) and Rockstar Games (6 nominations and 1 win).
2000s
Note: From 2005 to 2007 the award was titled Best Game.