Stormfront Studios Honored for Neverwinter Nights
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Stormfront Studios Honored at 59th Annual Emmy Technology Awards for Creating First Graphical Online Role-Playing Game!
Las Vegas January 8, 2008 - The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) honored Stormfront Studios at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards ceremony for creating Neverwinter Nights, the first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). The Emmy event was held at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 7 in Las Vegas.
Don Daglow, who led the design of Neverwinter Nights, accepted the award for Stormfront and its publishers, AOL and Wizards of the Coast. "These games are not just entertainment," Daglow said. "They build new kinds of communities and create deep people-to-people relationships. They influence peoples' lives in the same way as great books, inspiring movies and iconic television shows, and we're grateful to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for this honor."
Also honored at the ceremony for developing this new genre of entertainment were Sony Online Entertainment for Everquest, and Blizzard Entertainment for World of Warcraft.
Among the presenters at the evening ceremony were Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Peter Price, president and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
The Technology & Engineering Awards honor excellence in advances in the use, creativity and adaptation of technology that enhances or improves the consumer experience with media across multiple platforms.
All multiplayer adventure games before Neverwinter Nights were played by players reading text on the screen and typing in coded moves, and in the early 1990's adding graphics to such titles was the "Holy Grail" of online game development.
Stormfront began work on Neverwinter Nights in 1989, and the game's audience grew steadily on AOL following its introduction in 1991. The game was finally discontinued in 1997 when changes in AOL's hardware and software systems no longer supported its operation. The game's success inspired the creation of a series of hit computer games of the same name from BioWare, as well as new games like Ultima Online, Everquest and World of Warcraft.
