BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts) announced last week that they will introduce a new category of awards for video games called “Games Beyond Entertainment” to be awarded to games that deliver a truly “transformational experience beyond pure entertainment.”
In a post on their official site BAFTA sites games like Life is Strange, Never Alone and Papers, Please as “powerful means to get close to challenging issues” and argues that games with a message have the power to affect real change. They also site their desire to “reflect the ever-evolving landscape of the industry as a whole” as reasoning for this new category. It will join the almost 20 other categories of Game Awards at the BAFTA Game Awards in the spring of 2018.
BAFTA is an independent arts charity that aims to promote the artistic merits of film, games and television to the public. They are based in the UK, but the yearly BAFTA awards for games have featured games from all over the world. BAFTA was originally founded in 1947 as British Film Academy, but their field of interest has expanded over the years and games were included in their awards in 2002.
