Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Walk of Game was an attraction inside the Sony Metreon entertainment shopping center in San Francisco, California, honoring influential video game characters and industry pioneers with permanent 24-by-24-inch customized steel stars embedded in the floor. It ran in 2005 and 2006 before being discontinued after Sony sold the Metreon to The Westfield Group in February 2006.
The 2005 Walk of Game honored Mario, Link, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Halo as game and character inductees. Shigeru Miyamoto and Nolan Bushnell received the two lifetime achievement awards that year.
Lifetime achievement stars went to Shigeru Miyamoto and Nolan Bushnell in 2005, and to John Carmack and Sid Meier in 2006. These four figures were the only lifetime achievement honorees across the attraction's two years of operation.
Sony sold the Metreon to The Westfield Group in February 2006, and with Sony's departure the Walk of Game was never updated again. No new inductees were named after the 2006 class, and the attraction eventually closed permanently.
In 2012, the space the Walk of Game had occupied inside the Metreon was converted into a Target store. The stars, the walkway, and all physical elements of the attraction were removed at that time.
Voters cast ballots through paper submissions and online entries at the Walk of Game website during a one-month voting period each October. Voting took place in October 2005 and October 2006, the only two years the attraction operated.