Nominations are now open for the 2014 Developers Choice Awards

Nominations are now open for the 14th annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

According to the association, the GDC awards "celebrate the skills and expertise of developers recognizing them as leaders in their craft across multiple game development disciplines." Any game professional can submit nominations via the Game Choice Awards website, however, a free Gamasutra account is required to register. Nominations will remain open until January 4, 2014.

In addition to the award categories listed below, you can also submit nominees for the Audience Award category. Voting for this category will be open to the public and it will give fans the opportunity to vote on their favorite game from 2013. Audience Award voting will begin February 19, 2014.

The nomination categories:

• Best Audio

• Best Debut Game

• Best Downloadable Game

• Best Handheld/Mobile Game

• Best Game Design

• Best Narrative

• Best Technology

• Best Visual Art

• Innovation Award

• Game of the Year

Special Awards

• Lifetime Achievement Award

• Pioneer Award: Acknowledges individuals who have developed groundbreaking video game genres, technology, gameplay design or concepts that set the foundation for others.

• Ambassador Award: Honors individuals who have influenced or helped advance the game industry to a better place by either being an advocate for video games outside the industry or generating an improved game community from within.

The winners will be announced Wednesday, March 19, 2014 at 18:30 PST at a ceremony immediately following the Independent Games Festival.

GDC will take place in San Francisco from March 17 to March 21. If you don't plan on attending the conference yourself, you'll be able to watch a number of the conferences (including a postmortem with Shenmue developer Yu Suzuki and PS4 architect Mark Cerny) streamed live here on GameSpot.

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