Here are your MCV/DEVELOP Awards 2020 winners – with Media Molecule, Nintendo and Rare all winning big – Thanks to everyone who voted!

We can now reveal all the winners of the inaugural MCV/DEVELOP Awards 2020. Announced last night to a big crowd of 450 industry professionals at The Brewery in central London.

The big winners on the night were Nintendo, winning both the Major Publisher and Platform of the Year awards, while Media Molecule took home two trophies, Major Studio and Gameplay Innovation for Dreams.

Emily Mitchell, the creator of Fractured Minds, a game she developed as a teenager to highlight issues around anxiety, from which she personally suffers, won the Games for a Better World award.

And topping off the night was the new MCV/DEVELOP Legend award, which went to Rare for its incredible and ongoing body of work. With the award being presented by Keith Stuart from The Guardian.

NEW NIGHT, NEW AWARDS

The MCV and Develop Awards date back almost 20 years, and this year we combined the two into a single event to bring together every aspect of our multi-faceted, multi-talented industry, with every constituent part required to make it the success it is today.

That means we had 18 new categories and an opportunity to introduce a brand new system for deciding the winner.

So this year we put democracy at the core of the awards. We got rid of entries, no more fussy forms to fill out, and we got a Grand Jury of 50 industry veterans to choose the shortlist, and then we let our electorate, in the form of 5,000 MCV/DEVELOP subscribers, cast their votes. The industry spoke together and chose the winners. 

As well as returning to The Brewery again this year, we retained changes from recent MCV Awards, with an extended drinks reception with canapes and games-appropriate entertainment in the form ex-industry comedian Imran Yusuf, as well as a range of arcade games from Bespoke Arcades, plus a photobooth courtesy of Frontier Developments

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and event partners: Bidstack, Amiqus, PTW, Frontier Developments, OPM, Fourth Floor Creative, Honest PR, Bespoke Arcades & Little Big PR – plus our charity partner GamesAid. The awards simply wouldn’t happen without the continued support of the industry – thank you all for getting involved.

The editorial team would also like to thank the sales and the events teams, who make it all happen.

THE WINNERS

And here are the MCV/DEVELOP Awards 2020 winners, congratulations to you all!

DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS

Development Tool of the Year
Unity

External Development Partner of the Year
Sumo Digital

Recruitment Agency of the Year
Amiqus

OUTSTANDING STUDIOS

Major Studio of the Year
Media Molecule

Indie Studio of the Year
Hello Games

INNOVATION IN GAMES

Visual Innovation of the Year
ZA/UM for Disco Elysium

Audio Innovation of the Year
Creative Assembly for Total War: Three Kingdoms

Gameplay Innovation of the Year
Media Molecule for Dreams

Narrative Innovation of the Year
Supermassive for The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan

REACHING AUDIENCES

PR Agency of the Year
Indigo Pearl

Creative Agency of the Year
Fourth Floor

Campaign of the Year
Xbox Game Pass – Xbox

Media Brand of the Year
Eurogamer

PUBLISHING AND PLATFORMS

Major Publisher of the Year
Nintendo

Indie Publisher of the Year
Team17

Platform of the Year
Nintendo Switch

RETAIL AND DISTRIBUTION

Games for a Better World
Emily Mitchell for Fractured Minds

MCV/DEVELOP LEGEND
Rare

A big congratulations to all the winners and a huge thank you to everyone who took part by judging, voting and attending the event. We look forward to seeing you all again next year!