About 3,500 people are packed into a sizable ballroom tonight to honor the best and most innovative game developers in the world.

The Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival is, in my opinion, the single best award show honoring games in the world, but I have had a bit to drink.

Hit the jump for the hot live blogging action. Brian Crecente

We're underway with the a dive into indie game development.

We'll be looking at the best mods first. The finalists for best mod are:

Alan Miranda. Darkness Over Daggerford (NWN)
Spawns of Deflebub (UT)
Eternal Silence (HL2)
Weekday Warrior (HL2)

And the winner is: Weekday Warrior.

Student Showcase finalists are:
Base invaders
Invalid Tangrams
Opera Slinger
Gelatin Joe
And Yet it Moves
Toblo
Euclidean Crisis
The Ball of Bastards
The Blob

And the winner is: Toblo

Wow, oh wow. The team leader for the winning game just proposed to the game's voice actor on stage. Nice, an award and a wife all in one night.

Excellence in Audio finalists:
Aquaria
Bone: The Great Cow Race
Everyday Shooter
Fizzball
Racing Pitch

And the winner is: Everday Shooter.

Finalists for Excellence in visual arts:
Aquaria
Golf?
Samorost 2
Castle Crashers
Roboblitz

And the winner is: Castle Crashers

The finalists for Design Innovation Awards:
Aquaria
Everyday Shooter
Amradillo Run
Toblo

And the winner is Everyday Shooter

Finalists for Technical Excellence:
Arcane Legions: A Rising Shadow
Armada Online
Bang! Howdy
Blast Miner
Band of Bugs

And the winner is: Bang! Howdy

Best Web Browser Game finalists:
Bubble Islands
Gamma Bros.
Samarost 2

And the winner is: Samarost 2

Now on to the first ever Indie GameTap award. The three winners of this prize will share $50,000 and have their game published on the service.

But first, a really long ad.

Second runner up: Not quite sure, sorry couldn't hear it.
First runner up: Blast Miner
Winner: Everyday Shooter

The Audience Award winner is Castle Crashers.

The Darwinia team, the winners of last year's Seumas McNally Awards, just took the stage dressed to the nines in suites decorated with sequin Darwinia symbols. They're introducing the finalists for this year's SMAs.

Aquaria
Armadillo Run
Bang! Howdy
Roboblitz
Everyday Shooter

And the winner this year is: Aquaria.

That's it for the Indie Game Fest. Now on to the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Before getting into the major awards, the show honored three people for innovation in game development:

Bostjan Codets for Line Rider
Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya for Okami (Oh man, Capcom took the stage for the award. Ouch.)
Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiki Yamashita for Wii Sports... Oh, classy, Shigeru took the stage to say thanks personally. He said he's got plenty to say tomorrow (!!) so he'll spare us tonight.

Now Double Fine's Tim Schaeffer is taking the stage to hand out the night's GDCAs.

New Studio:
Gastronaught Studios for Small Arms
Naked Sky Entertainment for Roboblitz
Iron Lore Entertainment for Titan Quest
Ready at Dawn Studios for Daxter
Wadjet Eye Games for The Shiva

Winner: Iron Lore Entertainment

Best Writing:
Bully
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Sam & Max Ep. 1: Culture Shock
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Best Game Design
Bully
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Viva Pinata
Wii Sports

Winner: Wii Sports

Best Audio
Company of Heroes
DEFCON: Everybody Dies
Guitar Hero II
Tomb Raider: Legend
LocoRoco

Winner: Guitar Hero II

Character Design
Final Fantasy XII
LocoRoco
Okami
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Viva Pinata

Winner: Okami

First Penguin, given out to an innovator who paved the way for others to follow, is being awarded to Alexey Pajitnov. He is known, by many, the man who gave birth to casual games.

Wow, he's actually here. He just strolled slowly across the stage, arms at his side, wearing a pinstripe jacket and an enormous smile.

"Thank you very very much,. I share the honor of this award with every Tetris publisher Especially I am grateful to Blue Planet software. Thank you very, very, much."

Best Technology
Company of Heroes
Dead Rising
Gears of War
Rockstar Presentes: Table Tennis
Wii Sports

Winner: Gears of War

Best Visual Arts
Final Fantasy XII
Gears of War
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Viva Pinata

Winner: Gears of War

Community Contribution Award
George "The Fatman" Sanger

Lifetime Achievement Award
Shigeru Miyamoto

"Getting this award makes me feel old and like you want me to retire soon. But I personally feel very young and like I can do this for a long time now. I've always had a certain fondness for America and the spirit of America."

Game of the Year Award
Gears of War
Okami
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Wii Sports

Winner: Gears of War

CliffyB: "Holy Shit. This is absolutely unbelievable. Thank you so much frst and formost eveyrone at home who worked so hard to make this happen. I want to thank Microsoft. I want to thank my family. My girlfriend for putting up

Thank you Shigeru Miyamoto for inspiring me to do what I do everyday."

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