You can find the nominees for the 8th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Achievement Awards at their website.

A lot can be said about the list as a whole. The weirdly captivating Katamari Damacy looks poised to win a few awards. I hope it beats all the big name, big budget shooters. The dearth of RPG and Sports nominees for the PC is also worthy of mention. I’ll focus on the strategy side though, since that’s what I know best.

There are no console strategy nominees, which is both unsurprising and frustrating. As the industry moves more and more towards console gaming, we have to start seeing developers working to make strategy games functional in the console setting. There were strategy games for the Atari 2600 and the like. For some reason no one has tried to make them work for the Playstation.

On the PC side, the nominees are Rome: Total War, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War. This is a tough field. Though Rome was my game of the year, I think that Warhammer has a good chance here. It’s a new entry to the field, was bloody good fun and was a pleasant surprise to everyone who played it.

Sims 2 and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 are packed into the simulation category with Pacific Fighters, a case of apples and oranges if I’ve ever seen one. How do evaluate a rivet counting flight sim compared to a virtual family and a light business sim?

And how does Sid Meier’s Pirates! get a PC Game of the Year nomination but no genre nomination? That’s the price you pay for genre busting, I guess. I think it would qualify as a role-playing game or even action-adventure. But I guess the esteemed jurors at the AIAS didn’t have a clue where to put it so they didn’t put it anywhere.