The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) has added two new VR-centric categories to its annual DICE Summit and Awards Show, now in its 20th year. The new categories reflect virtual reality's coming-of-age as a consumer computing platform.
The first category, "Immersive Reality Game of the Year," is reserved for the single game that "best utilizes the attributes of the platform to entertain users." To be eligible, games must be available for purchase to the public. Nominees are Eagle Flight (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR), I Expect You To Die (Rift), Job Simulator (Vive), Rift, PSVR), The Lab (Vive), and Superhot VR (Rift).
The second category, "Immersive Reality Technical Achievement," focuses on technical achievement in gameplay and visual engineering. Nominees in this category are almost the same as the previous, except the 3D drawing experience Tilt Brush (Vive) replaces The Lab in the technical category.
AIAS' 20th annual DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertainment) Awards ceremony takes place on February 23, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show will stream live online; visit the DICE Summit website for more information. Or, read lightning reviews of the nominated games and other top picks in New Atlas' roundup of the best VR games.