“Family Guy” creator to host second annual Elan Awards

Seth MacFarlane will be hosting the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts this year. The event will feature winners from over thirty categories and is scheduled to take place on February 15, 2008 at the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts. To cut to the heart of the matter, the nominees for best game of the year are as follows:

Assassin’s Creed by Ubisoft
Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces by Relic Entertainment
Mass Effect by Bioware/Microsoft Games
Skate by Electronic Arts

The field of nominees this year includes the conspicuous absence of Halo 3, and the rest of the entries are dominated by Ubisoft darling Assassin’s Creed and Bioware’s Mass Effect. While the abundance of “Game of the year” lists results in the complete lack of a definitive winner for any of the more popular titles, one of these two is sure to be the winner.

Halo 3, meanwhile, has become something of a pariah, a monetary powerhouse that no one is willing to acknowledge because of the profusion of rude miscreants who play the game. It is like the massive, heavily armed elephant in the room, and the Canadians have opted for the strategy of let’s-pretend-it-doesn’t-exist. A group of wise women and men those Canadians, to be sure.

And yet, the master chief simply will not die. Part of the reason that Assassin’s Creed will likely win out over the ponderous Mass Effect is that the main character is not an amalgam of every individual player. He’s one person, just like the master chief, and this allows gamers (especially young men) to rally behind his identity. That and the fact that there is less reading in Assassin’s Creed will clinch it for the top spot. At least this particular top spot.

Read [The Elans]