Squeezed somewhere in the schedules of awards bashes (from BAFTAs to VGAs) would sit a quiet, solitary nod to someone like Jonathan Blow. These were tangential trophies - prizes with meaningless titles like "best digital game" or "best indie", as if the likes of Braid couldn't compete on the same level as Mario.Today it's a different scene entirely. In December, The Walking Dead scooped the VGA Game of the Year Award while, on Tuesday at the glitzy BAFTA event in London, the indies completely took over.Only four traditional triple-A titles were handed the top prizes last night, dwarfed by smaller titles such as The Room, The Walking Dead, The Unfinished Swan and (in particular) the PS3 curio Journey.As we applauded the Journey co-creators as they took centre stage to collect their fifth award of the night, one developer sitting next to me said "we've now probably spent more time clapping Journey than actually playing it".Of course, whether one would classify Journey as an indie title is another matter entirely. After all, it was funded and published by Sony the same way Killzone is. But there was another, absolutely incredible moment that hit home the bigger issue. New Star Soccer, a beautiful iOS football game developed by one person (the widely loved Simon Reed) stole FIFA 13's thunder and took home Best Sports Game. David slays Goliath.Celebrating indie games may have been a token gesture several years ago, but today some award shows would look out-of-touch if they didn't give self-published games a sizable platform. It's a situation that leads to a difficult question: Are triple-A games becoming irrelevant?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ing-relevance/

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