D.I.C.E. Award for Action Game of the Year

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The D.I.C.E. Award for Action Game of the Year began in 1998. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences gave two separate trophies that year. GoldenEye 007 won the console award; Quake II won the computer award.

  Both of those original categories are long gone. An online action award appeared briefly in 1999 and was dropped the following year. Action games and adventure games merged, then split by platform, then by camera perspective, then merged again. After a decade of reorganization, the Academy arrived at a unified format. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare won the first award under that format at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

  The most recent winner is Hades II, developed and published by Supergiant Games. What makes some studios return as winners while others collect only nominations is a question worth asking. Which franchises have come to define the award across nearly three decades is another.

• 2. A Decade of Revision

  ›

  In 1999, a third action-related award appeared: Online Action/Strategy Game of the Year. It recognized competitive online multiplayer titles. The category lasted only one year; by 2000, the Academy had compressed all online recognition into a single Online Game of the Year.

  In 2001, the Academy consolidated the separate action and adventure categories into combined Action/Adventure awards, one for console and one for computer. The merged definition covered titles that challenged players with real-time action, combat, accuracy demands, and puzzle-solving.

  By the 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in 2003, the Academy had added dedicated First-Person Action categories for both console and computer. The previous year's Action/Adventure winners had both been first-person shooters. Halo: Combat Evolved had won for console and Return to Castle Wolfenstein for computer. A Console Platform Action/Adventure category also debuted in 2003.

  Starting with the 10th Annual in 2006, the Academy eliminated the console-versus-computer divide in action categories. A single Action/Adventure Game of the Year covered both platforms. A single First-Person Action Game of the Year did the same. Gears of War, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios, took the 10th Annual's Action/Adventure prize. Action Game of the Year and Adventure Game of the Year replaced those categories at the 11th Annual in 2008.

• 3. The Studios That Won Most

  ›

  Ubisoft Montreal holds more nominations than any other developer in the award's history, with 14, and more wins, with 6. No other studio's record comes close on either count. Ubisoft Montreal is also the only developer to win more than one action-related award for the same game in the same year. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time achieved that in 2004. It won both Console Platform Action/Adventure Game of the Year and Computer Action/Adventure Game of the Year at the same ceremony.

  Infinity Ward converted 4 of its 6 nominations into wins. Bungie accumulated 8 nominations and won 3 times. Rockstar North, which competed under the DMA Design name in its earliest years, gathered 7 nominations and 3 wins.

  Electronic Arts and Sony Computer and Interactive Entertainment each accumulated 25 nominees across the award's full history, the most of any publisher. Both converted those nominations into 4 wins each.

  Activision and Ubisoft each claimed 6 wins as publishers, tying for the most in the award's history. Activision reached that total from 23 nominations; Ubisoft from 20.

  Rockstar North and Rockstar Games accomplished something rare in 2003: two separate titles won two different action-related awards at the same ceremony. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City won Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year. Grand Theft Auto III won Computer Action/Adventure Game of the Year.

  Prince of Persia: Warrior Within then won Console Platform Action/Adventure Game of the Year in 2005. That gave Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft two consecutive wins in that specific category. Only one other developer-publisher pairing had ever achieved the same kind of consecutive-year record in an action-related award.

• 4. Franchises That Keep Returning

  ›

  Call of Duty is the most-nominated franchise in the award's history, with 12 appearances across all action-related categories. Its 4 wins are also the most for any single franchise. Tom Clancy's is second in all-time nominations with 10. Its 3 wins are tied by the Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life, Halo, and Prince of Persia franchises.

  Half-Life is the only franchise other than Prince of Persia to win the same action-related award in consecutive years. Valve's Half-Life won Computer Action Game of the Year in 1999. The expansion pack Half-Life: Opposing Force, developed by Gearbox Software, won the same award in 2000. The franchise also stretched across one of the longest nomination spans in the award's history. Half-Life 2 won Computer First-Person Action Game of the Year in 2005. The Episode One expansion was nominated for First-Person Action Game of the Year in 2007. The Episode Two expansion, packaged in The Orange Box, was nominated for Action Game of the Year in 2008.

  The original Dead Space won the Action Game of the Year award at the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The 2023 remake, developed by Motive Studios, became a finalist at the 27th Annual but did not win.

  Sony Interactive Entertainment became the third publisher to claim back-to-back wins in the same action category with different developers. Insomniac Games won in 2024 with Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Arrowhead Game Studios followed in 2025 with Helldivers 2.

  The original Hades won Action Game of the Year at the 24th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in 2020. It was Supergiant Games' first nomination for the prize. Hades II took the award again at the 29th Annual. Supergiant Games remains the only developer with multiple nominations to have won Action Game of the Year with each of them.