Earlier this month, the Visual Effects Society honoured the winners of the 9th annual VES Awards, meant to recognise the best achievements in special effects and visuals for movies, commercials, TV, animation and, yes, video games.
While Inception was the big winner on the night, taking home four awards, we're more interested in who won the gaming gongs, as these prizes are given out not by vicious messageboard trolls, but by the peers of the men and women who do this stuff for a living.
While, like the Writer's Guild Awards, nominations are only open to members of the VES, unlike the WGAs you'll see below that the winners were truly deserving regardless of who pays an annual membership fee or not.
In all, four prizes were handed out to video games. The winners were:
Halo: Reach - Outstanding Real-Time Visual Effects in a Video Game (Marcus Lehto, Joseph Tung, Stephen Scott, CJ Cowan)
StarCraft II - Sarah Kerrigan - Outstanding Animated Character in a Video Game (Fausto De Martini, Xin Wang, Glenn Ramos, Scott Lange)
World of Warcraft - Outstanding Visual Effects in a Video Game Trailer (Blizzard Entertainment)
Halo: Reach - Outstanding Visual Effects in a Live Action Commercial (Dan Glass, Dan Seddon, Matt Dessero, Stephanie Gilgar)
Note the commercial award for Reach did not go to either Microsoft or Bungie, as the clip was made by Agency 215, Legacy Effects and Method Studios.