http://www.edge-online.com/news/halo-3-scoops-edge-award-interactive-innovation

COMPLETE TEXT:

At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today, Bungie beat competitors such as Nintendo and Rockstar to win the Edge Award For Interactive Innovation for Halo 3.

We hand out this accolade to the title released in the last 12 months that does most to further the creative culture of gaming – in other words, to mark out new directions for the form.

This year’s Edge Award For Interactive Innovation was a closely fought affair, Bungie proving victorious in a shortlist that also included Grand Theft Auto IV, Portal, Rock Band, Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit.

Ultimately it is the integration and coherence of Halo 3’s online content that makes the game stand apart. From its Theater mode to Forge, and the way a party playing through Live can seamlessly manoeuvre between them, here is an experience that demonstrates an unparalleled understanding of the potential for console online play. Outside of the game, Bungie.net has been engineered to become a remarkable resource for Halo 3 stats and communities, providing life for the game even when your Xbox 360 is switched off. Halo 3, just as Halo 2 did before it, presents a roadmap for the way online will be integrated in videogames in the coming years.

In the light of its incredible success and the number of fans it has attracted, it’s easy to overlook all of the ideas that are present in Halo 3 and the remarkably robust manner in which they are implemented, but we hope that this award serves to help credit Bungie for its achievements. Naturally, congratulations also go to the makers of the games that also made the shortlist.

COMMENTS:

If the idea is something new, then the only game that really deserves the award is WiiFit.

When you boil it down, you have an FPS, a 3D platformer, a sandbox game, and a rhythm game. All had been done before. But there really has not been anything like WiiFit -- so by default it is the most innovative.

If you are treated games like art, then MGS4 or GTAIV would probably be better choices for marking new directions.

But to each their own.

Mike from Morgantown

@reask... I assumed this would get a strong reaction from those who just aren't into Halo 3. And I was right.

It's kind of like someone saying the original Star Wars wasn't really a good space opera or Indiana Jones movies aren't really very good action/adventure flicks. Believe it or not, some people have openly declared those movies to be minor examples of their genres.

Yeah, no form of art or entertainment will appeal to everyone, but to say something as wildly popular as Halo 3 isn't really at the top of the FPS heap is like tilting at a windmill... the windmill really isn't affected by it and everyone just stares at the person riding around ranting at the "giant".

I have never played any Halo before but I may give this a shot. If my local gamestore ever has it in stock that is.

If you are willing to dig deep into the Halo 3 experience, you will see some quite neat features that Bungie has implemented.

Theatre mode: Quite nice if you and your buds just finish a match and want to rewatch something cool or something you thought was BS. Take your party into the theatre lobby, load the film you want to watch, and everybody will view the film together. The party leader has control of the timeline of the film. You cannot take pictures or save film clips while a party is viewing, but each player had control of their own camera. If you are watching a save film by yourself, you can take a picture or save a clip. Once you take a picture, it is uploaded to Bungie.net where you can do various things to the picture. You can send it to the community forums and let people more easily view your photos and get voted on. Each photo you upload can be rated by anybody(must be registered Halo 3 player) with 1-5 stars. You also have the option on Bungie.net to select anything from clips, photos, game variants, maps, etc, to download to your XBox the next time you log onto Live and play Halo 3.

Forge: Bungie created an extensive map editor(not map creator) that can be used to place objects, weapons, vehicles, spawn points, etc. Each object has various options to tweak such as respawn time, direction, etc. The best thing about the way Bungie designed their game types and map variants is their ability to alter the matchmaking playlists on a regular basis. They usually have new playlists for the weekend and there are no visible downloads involved. Very, very nice software engineering here. Another cool thing about Forge is the ability to have matches inside of Forge with players having the ability to drop items for their team and what not.

Stats: Bungie provides an extensive amount of stats for every player in every match. They even allow these stats to be gathered by non-Bungie websites. Bungie provides some very good statistics on Bungie.net on both your Ranked and Social playlist games. They provide heat maps on each map showing hot spots where you have died or killed someone throughout your Halo 3 career, etc.

File Share: File sharing is another neat thing that Bungie implemented with Halo 3. Each gamertag has a certain amount of files they can upload into their fileshare slots. You can place photos, maps, game types, film clips, etc, into your fileshare and other players can click on your gamertag in their friends list(or in a game lobby) and view whatever is in your fileshare. The player doesn't even need to be online.

Party System: Bungie tweaked their party system to perfection with Halo 3. I can't speak for anyone else but I cannot stand games without a party system now. I have 2 other guys who I usually play online with and it is awesome to be able to be matched up with different people of the same skill every other match. There is no need to try and organize with each other on what servers we are going to be on or anything. I can be playing Uno and they send me an invite, I accept, and Halo 3 launches and plops me in their party. Incredibly seamless(some of this is due to Live's seamless nature as well). We can go from playing Campaign, to viewing films, to playing in matchmaking without the least bit of hassle. This is one of the reasons why Bungie did not want dedicated servers. It would have made their matchmaking system more difficult to implement. After a match is over, players are placed in a lobby where they have the ability to party up with each other.  They also implemented a very easy way to mute players, which can come in really handy.

Balance: Bungie understands the nature of online play and made great strides to create a better experience both from a latency perspective and gameplay perspective. The altered melees, battle rifle spread, sweep sniping, spawn algorithms(you should look at an article they wrote about it), shotguns spread, etc. Everything you can think about with an online competitive game was considered by the Bungie dev teams. Each weapon serves a purpose with both negatives and positives for various situations. There isn't a single uber weapon. The balance is increbile.

Overall, the complete package that was shipped on day one provided an incredibly immense number of features for a player to use, and all provided and supported by the developer. It was incredibly refined and incredibly well layed out. Very, very good software engineering from the guys at Bungie.  The community has really grabbed onto these features and upload a ton of content daily to Bungie.net.  It really is a fantastic melding of website and game.

I really wish they at least gave away warnings to people trashing games they haven't played. It's the paragon of agenda-pushing, axe-grinding: strong negative opinions on things you haven't even tried.

I'm not trashing Halo 3. I am explaining why I disagree with Edge's decision. It's a vaguely titled award, and I don't think it meant "best online experience." I'd give that award to Halo 3 on a console, but the PC world blows it away.

But that's Edge's fault for not clarifying the criteria for the award. They said the award goes to the game that "best furthers the creative culture of the gaming world." Whatever that means, I guess in that case I'd go with Portal.

So a game that has sold millions gets an award and thats flamebaiting?

If it was mgs4 or uncharted would you not post it?

After all it is an award.

Its Edge what do you Expect?

 I'm not with you are they some sort of ms orginisation?

Im a pretty big Halo fan and to a degree I can see why ppl think Halo is more of the same. However if you don't play with a regular grp of friends than yes it can get boring. I'll tell ya tho grouping with my buddies and doing forge battles is probably the most fun I have in a video hands down.