The British Academy of Film and Television Arts now has a gaming division and they’ve announced their nominees for the British Academy Video Games Awards (October 5).

The strategy nominees are:

Age of Empires: The Age Of Kings (Nintendo/Majesco Entertainment)
Football Manager 2006 (Sega Europe/Sports Interactive)
Medieval II Total War (Sega Europe/The Creative Assembly)
Rise And Fall: Civilizations At War (Midway/ Stainless Steel)
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV Warlords (2K Games/Firaxis Games)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft/Red Storm Entertainment)

Note that a sports management game was nominated in this category (yay!), as was, Medieval 2, which hasn’t even gone gold yet (boo!). So was a first person shooter. Plus we have one handheld turn based game, one expansion to a great turn-based game and your typical real time strategy game. Who says strategy games are all the same?

(Football Manager 2006 is also nominated for best simulation and sports game.)

All kinds of little curiosities here, as there is for any award nomination list. How does a sequel (We Love Katamari) get nominated for innovation? Isn’t a category like “gameplay” kind of like nominating a song for “sounds best”? Can Guitar Hero be stopped?