The video game industry is celebrating its first ever win at the Academy Awards thanks to Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment. The two companies co-produced Colette, the winner of the Documentary Short Subject Oscar at last night's ceremony.
The film--included for free with every copy of VR shooter Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond--follows Colette Marin-Catherine, a French teenage freedom fighter during World War II, as she visits what remains of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Her brother Jean-Pierre was captured by the Nazis and brought to Mittelbau-Dora, where he and over 20,000 others were worked to death in forced labor.
Director Anthony Giacchino accepted the award for Collete at the ceremony, saying, "I want to thank our amazing E.P., Peter Hirschmann, at Electronic Arts, everyone at Electronic Arts and Respawn, and Oculus, especially Vince [Zampella], Dusty [Welch] and Mara." The 24-minute documentary can be watched in full at The Guardian.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond released last December on VR platforms, its campaign following Allied soldiers fighting the Nazi regime in war-torn 1940s Europe. GameSpot critic Mat Paget called it an "exciting prospect" but ultimately "far too simple a shooter and far too restrictive to ever feel engaging like the series once was."
Coincidentally, the win for Colette also moves the video game industry one step away from the EGOT, or the Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony milestone. The industry has won multiple Emmys over the years--including id Software in 2007 -- and composer Christopher Tin won a Grammy for the Civilization IV theme song Baba Yetu in 2011. The only award missing from the EGOT for the games industry is a Tony Award for live Broadway musicals or stage plays, so if any prospective playwrights are working on [Insert Video Game Franchise Here]: The Musical, we're counting on you to bring the Tony home.
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