Dave The Diver is undoubtedly the most effective video games of 2023, however it discovered itself caught in a little bit of a storm throughout awards season as at The Sport Awards of that 12 months, the implausible diving sport and restaurant administration sim was nominated for Greatest Unbiased Sport, regardless of it being created by a subsidiary of the massive South Korean developer and writer Nexon.
Now Mintrocket CEO and author and director on the sport, Jaeho Hwang, has straight addressed the controversy in an interview with 4Gamer (translated by Automaton Media), stating that “it’s not like we utilized for the award ourselves.”
Hwang emphasises that the nominees for Greatest Unbiased Sport are picked based mostly on nomination system that builders can’t nominate themselves for. The Sport Awards web site states that every one nominees, no matter classes, are “chosen by a global jury of over 100 world media and influencer retailers, chosen for his or her historical past of important online game analysis”, with specialised juries arrange for specific classes.
“We didn’t intend for it to have an indie sport really feel” Hwang tells the publication, saying that “it is made by Nexon, so there’s nothing indie about it”.
“I ponder if individuals mistook us for an indie studio simply because we’re creating video games as a small staff, or simply as a result of our artwork kinds and sport programs are typically distinctive.” It’s, admittedly, fairly exhausting to place Dave The Diver in a labelled field like many different video games, however simply because one thing makes use of pixel artwork and has a unique premise and gameplay loop, does not imply it is unbiased.
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Again when the dialogue was rumbling, The Sport Awards host Geoff Keighley shared his ideas on the controversy throughout a Twitch stream, the place he mentioned “unbiased can imply various things to totally different individuals,” and that “we defer to our jury” on making these judgments. He did acknowledge that the studio itself comes from a “bigger entity” however was (most likely) created with a “comparatively small price range”.
All we’ll say is that Dave The Diver is a implausible sport, and we cherished it again on Swap. And we could be revisiting it once more quickly as Mintrocket has confirmed that the sport is getting a free Swap 2 replace “quickly”. It is also getting some DLC, however that is just lately been delayed to 2026.
What do you consider Jaeho Hwang’s feedback? Tell us down under.
