Game Developer

The editors of Game Developer magazine, the leading worldwide magazine for game creators, have named the finalists for the 2010 Front Line Awards, its 13th annual evaluation of the year’s best game-making tools -- adding that voting on winners is now open.

Each year, Game Developer looks at the powerful lineup of new products and new releases of favorite tools, from networking tools to middleware and engines, and selects the top five products in each category.

Front Line Award finalists represent the most innovative, user-friendly, and useful products from behind the scenes of the world’s best video games -- whether they be for AAA console titles, smartphone games or social network games.

The diversity of 2010 FLA finalists reflects the continuing expansion and shift of the video game industry into new areas.

They span key open-source tools such as Box2D through smartphone and tablet networking add-ons like OpenFeint and Plus+, to vital larger-scale game tools such as 3ds Max and Scaleform GFx.

The finalists for the 2010 Game Developer Front Line Awards by category are as follows:

Networking

Facebook SDK (Facebook)

GameSpy Technology (GameSpy Industries)

OpenFeint 2.6 (Aurora Feint)

Plus+ (ngmoco)

RightScale Cloud Management Platform (RightScale)

Middleware:

Box2D 2.1.0 (Box2D)

Havok Physics 2010.1.0 (Havok)

Scaleform GFx 3.2 (Scaleform)

Simplygon 2.9 (Donya Labs)

XaitControl 3.1 (Xaitment)

Art:

Photoshop CS5 (Adobe)

3ds Max 2011 (Autodesk)

Substance Designer 1 (Allegorithmic)

Softimage 2011 (Autodesk)

ZBrush 4.0 (Pixologic)

Game Engine:

CryEngine 3 (Crytek)

Gamebryo Lightspeed 3.1.1 (Emergent Game Technologies)

Unity 3 (Unity Technologies)

Unreal Engine 3 Build 58xx (Epic Games)

Vision Engine 8 (Trinigy)

Programming and Production:

FlashDevelop 3.2.2 RTM (FlashDevelop Project)

Graphics Performance Analyzers 3.0 (Intel)

Hansoft 6.1 (Hansoft)

Perforce 2010.1 (Perforce Software)

XNA Game Studio 4 (Microsoft)

Audio:

FMOD Designer 4.32 (Firelight Technologies)

Miles Sound System 8 (RAD Game Tools)

ProRemote 2.0.1 (Far Out Labs)

ProTools 8.0.4 (Avid Technology)

Wwise 2010.1.2 (Audiokinetic)

Game Developer’s mission for more than fifteen years has been to provide game creators with information, tutorials, and articles that pertain directly to them. The Front Line Awards are an official way of recognizing one specific aspect of the industry: the tools that all game creators need to do their jobs.

For this year’s Front Line Awards, both Game Developer magazine subscribers and Gamasutra.com community members were surveyed to nominate the best game development-related products. Following consultation with Game Developer's advisory board and editors, finalists were selected based on criteria such as utility, innovation, value, and ease of use.

"This year’s finalists represent a healthy mix of industry standards and intriguing new approaches, along with technologies of particular interest to social game developers," said Jeffrey Fleming, production editor for Game Developer. "The editors of Game Developer extend our congratulations to all of this year's Front Line Award finalists!"

The 2010 FLA finalists will be featured in December 2010's issue of Game Developer magazine, and video game professionals are now invited to vote for the winners, with one randomly picked voter receiving an all-access pass to Game Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco. Voting at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PJFRGM3 is open until Monday, November 8th.

The final winners for the prestigious awards, plus one inductee to the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame chosen for its outstanding contribution to the game development industry for five years or more, will be announced in the January 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine, available to subscribers in early January.