Rockstar Games awarded BAFTA Fellowship

Andy Payne explains the importance of BAFTA's work with the industry
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Rockstar Games is to be honoured by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for its work in the industry, with the award to be presented at the new and improved British Academy Games Awards later this month. Co-founders Dan and Sam Houser will pick up the award along with Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut.
GamesIndustry International spoke to Andy Payne, chairman of Mastertronic and partner at both AppyNation and Gambitious, about the new format for this year's British Academy Games Awards and the importance of BAFTA to the UK games industry.

Q: In what way does BAFTA support the games industry?
Andy Payne: BAFTA is a highly prestigious organisation and very trusted brand which recognises creativity in the moving image first and foremost. BAFTA have been taking games very seriously now for at least 10 years. Every year the Awards get bigger and better and winning a BAFTA shows that games are now as mainstream as films and TV shows. Having a BAFTA on the shelf is pretty awesome.
Q: How do BAFTA recognise what is creative and boundary pushing in terms of games?
Andy Payne: BAFTA have an amazing network of games industry helpers, many of whom are now members of BAFTA and all of who are involved in creating games. The games committee is headed by Chair, Harvey Elliott who sits on the main BAFTA board. Each member of the committee chairs a jury per award category and hand picks members of that jury. Each jury invests many, many hours into playing all of the long listed games and then meets to discuss and agree the nominations through a democratic voting process. This highly informed crowdsourced approach ensures neutrality and total focus on the creativity rather than the commercial success of any game.
Q: In what way has BAFTA become a recognised authority in the games industry?
Andy Payne: BAFTA have engaged with the games industry from the very start. They reached out, embraced and continue to iterate their activity and policy in games. BAFTA really is a facilitator to the games industry and has become an authority as a direct result of this approach.

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