ThatGameCompany's Journey has won this year's GameCity Prize, an award given to a game that judges believe has made a contribution to popular culture, is interesting and encourages discussion and debate about the state of game design.
The competition, which is part of the independent annual GameCity festival held in Nottingham, England, was judged by a panel of broadcasters and writers from outside the games industry, including Financial Times journalist Lucy Kellaway, DJ Jo Whiley, comic book artist Dave Gibbons, and Lord David Puttnam.
Lord Puttnam said of the winning game, Journey: "All of the Jury commented on the art direction in particular, the extraordinary sense of size and scale it portrayed.
"Whilst it was a short game, it was in no way small. It's a focused, detailed piece of work – challenging you to measure it in terms other than just the length of gameplay. One of the jury commented that it was like a favourite place, a walk in the country, that she would love to go back and revisit".
The creative director of ThatGameCOmpany, Jenova Chen said: "I really like the goal of GameCity, to get people to notice games and talk about games, particularly for people who don't encounter many video games in their daily life.
"ThatGameCompany has always focused on making games for everyone, so it's nice to see GameCity recognize our game and give us an award. In the end, we believe that games are a mature media that deserve to be enjoyed and loved by everyone, by people".
Journey beat out other titles for the GameCity prize, including Mass Effect 3, Proteus, and Fez.