The Visual Arts award recognizes the overall excellence of visual art in a game - including, but not limited to, animation, modeling, art direction, textures, etc.

9th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2008)

Recipient

• Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)

Nominees

• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2008)

Recipient

• BioShock (2K Boston/2K Australia / 2K Games)
  - Scott Sinclair, Shawn Robertson, Andrew James

Nominees

• Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft)
  - Raphael Lacoste, Nicolas Cantin, Thomas Giroux, and Team
• Team Fortress 2 (Valve)
  - Charles Brown, Jason Mitchell, Moby Franke, Ariel Diaz
• Crysis (Crytek DE / EA Games)
  - Michael Endres, Tiago Sousa, Christopher Evans, Hanno Hagedorn
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Naughty Dog / Sony Computer Entertainment)
  - Evan Wells, Christophe Balestra

 

7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2007)

Recipient

• Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)
  - Jerry O'Flaherty, Chris Perna

Nominees

• Final Fantasy XII (Square Enix)
  - Isamu Kamikokuryo, Hideo Minaba, Akihiko Yoshida
• Okami (Clover Studio / Capcom Entertainment)
  - Naoki Katakai, Kenichirou Yoshimura
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Game Studios / 2K Games/Bethesda Softworks)
  - Matthew Carofano, Christiane Meister, Istvan Pely
• Viva Piñata (Rare / Microsoft Game Studios)
  - Ed Bryan, Ryan Stevenson

6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2006)

Recipient

• Shadow of the Colossus (Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.)
  - Koji Hasegawa, Masanori Kajita, Hironobu Nakano, Fumito Ueda

Nominees

• God of War (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
  - Steve Caterson, Terry Smith, Charlie Wen
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (Bizarre Creations / Microsoft Game Studios)
  - Gren Atherton, Julie McGurren, Peter Roe, Kiki Wolfkill
• Resident Evil 4 (Capcom Production Studio 4 / Capcom Entertainment)
  - Yusuke Hashimoto, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, Yusuke Kan, Masaki Yamanaka
• We Love Katamari (Namco Limited / Namco Hometek)
  - Keita Takahashi, Takeshi Ugajin

5th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2005)

Recipient

• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
  - Sam Didier, William Petras, Justin Thavirat

Nominees

• Doom 3 (id Software / Activision)
  - Andy Chang, Seneca Menard, Kenneth Scott
• Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
  - Viktor Antonov, Randy Lundeen
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
  - Hiroyuki Hayashi, Chie Kawabe
• Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Entertainment)
  - Mickael Labat, Patrick Limoges

4th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2004)

Recipient

• Masanao Arimoto, Yoshiki Haruhana, and Satoru Takizawa for art direction in THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE WIND WAKER

Nominees

• Mickael Labat, Raphael Lacoste, Celine Tellier and team for art direction in PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME
• Akira Yamaoka for art direction in SILENT HILL 3
• Eric Kohler and team for art direction in TRON 2.0
• Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya and team for art direction in VIEWTIFUL JOE

3rd annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2003)

Recipient

• Tetsuya Nomura for art direction in KINGDOM HEARTS

Nominees

• Jonathan Chey, Ken Levine and Team for art direction in FREEDOM FORCE
• Hokyo Lim, Suzanne Kaufman, Dev Madan, Augie Pagan and Karin Yamagiwa for art direction in SLY COOPER AND THE THIEVIUS RACCOONUS
• Nicolas Cantin, Frédérick Gagné and Benoit Sokal for art direction in SYBERIA
• Jay Beard, Erik Medina, Jeff Merghart , Dan Mueller and Tim Neveu for animation in THE MARK OF KRI

2nd annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2002)

Recipient

• Fumito Ueda & team for art direction in ICO

Nominees

• Greg Griffith, Bill Harper, John Kim, Jordan Pitchon, Bob Rafei, Josh Scherr & Rob Titus for animation in JAK & DAXTER: THE PRECURSOR LEGACY
• Kazunori Yamauchi & team for modeling in GRAN TURISMO 3 A-SPEC
• Lorne Lanning & Farzad Varahramyan for art direction in ODDWORLD: MUNCH'S ODDYSEE
• Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Jun Kabayashi & team for art direction in REZ

1st annual Game Developers Choice Awards (2001)

Recipient

• Ryuta Ueda & Kazuki Hosokawa for art direction in JET GRIND RADIO

Nominees

• American McGee for art direction in AMERICAN MCGEE'S ALICE
• Tomonobu Itagaki, Hiroaki Matsui & team for animation in DEAD OR ALIVE 2
• Joby Otero for art direction in SACRIFICE
• Insomniac art team for art direction in SPYRO: YEAR OF THE DRAGON