AIAS game of the year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes home the top honor

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim took home the award for game of the year today from the prestigious Academy of Interactive Sciences. The Interactive Awards took place at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, where 700 game developers and industry professionals are gathered. The awards are like the Oscars of the game industry.

Tim Sweeney won the Hall of Fame award. Sweeney is the chief executive and graphics wizard at Epic Games, which he started more than 20 years ago. Epic has made giant blockbusters from Unreal to Gears of War, and Sweeney’s graphics technology has made them all visually outstanding. In a talk on the future of gaming technology, he predicted the game industry can still look forward to years of improvements in realistic graphics.

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Ed Logg, a former game designer for Atari, won the lifetime achievement award. He created classic arcade games like Centipede, Asteroids, and Gauntlet. Now he is part of Innovative Leisure, a startup creating iPhone games using a team of original Atari game designers.

Todd Howard, head of Bethesda Game Studios, accepted the award and didn’t say much because he had already won several awards. He had earlier thanked his parents for believing the lies he told them as a kid when he asked for an Apple II computer to do his homework. Sadly, he also dedicated an earlier award to a Skyrim team member who died from cancer last night.

Altogether, Bethesda took home five awards for Skyrim.