Danial Norjidi

Developers and studios behind the most innovative video games of 2022 were recently celebrated at the 26th annual Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Awards ceremony.

Organised by the Academy of Interactive and Sciences (AIAS), the DICE awards have been taking place since 1996, recognising games, individuals and development teams that have contributed to the advancement of the multi-billion dollar worldwide entertainment software industry.

The event saw awards presented across 23 different categories, with Elden Ring winning Game of the Year, which is for “the single game, without regard to system or delivery mechanism, voted by the membership of the AIAS that best utilises the chosen medium to entertain users”. The action role-playing game by FromSoftware also won awards for Outstanding Technical Achievement, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction and Role-Playing Game of the Year, taking its awards haul to five.

In Elden Ring, players journey through the Lands Between, a new fantasy world created by creator of Dark Souls Hidetaka Miyazaki and best-selling author George R R Martin. According to the game’s website, “Elden Ring features vast fantastical landscapes and shadowy, complex dungeons that are connected seamlessly.”

Players create their character and define their playstyle “by experimenting with a wide variety of weapons, magical abilities, and skills found throughout the world. Charge into battle, pick off enemies one-by-one using stealth, or even call upon allies for aid. Many options are at your disposal as you decide how to approach exploration and combat”.

Another standout winner was God of War: Ragnarok, which earned a total of seven accolades, including Adventure Game of the Year as well as Outstanding Achievement awards for the categories of Animation, Art Direction, Character, Original Music Composition, Audio Design and Story.

A PlayStation exclusive developed by Sony Santa Monica, Ragnarok is a November 2022 sequel to the critically acclaimed and award-winning God of War first released in 2018.

Ragnarok continues the story of Kratos and his son Atreus, and sees them “embark on an epic and heartfelt journey” as they “struggle with holding on and letting go”. As the PlayStation website describes, “Fimbulwinter is well underway. Kratos and Atreus must journey to each of the Nine Realms in search of answers as Asgardian forces prepare for a prophesied battle that will end the world. Along the way they will explore stunning, mythical landscapes, and face fearsome enemies.”

Red Matter 2, a virtual reality (VR) adventure that takes place during a dystopian Cold war, won two awards, winning Immersive Reality Game of the Year as well as for Immersive Reality Technical Achievement. The game tells the story of how people trapped in a reality created by their rulers “rebel against their destiny and fight to do the right thing”.

Also among the winners was Vampire Survivors, which won Action Game of the Year.

Described as a “gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements”, Vampire Survivors is a title where the player’s choices can allow them “to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you”.

Meanwhile, tactical role-playing game Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope won Family Game of the Year. Released last October, Sparks of Hope is a sequel which sees a crossover between Nintendo’s Mario and Ubisofts’ Raving Rabbids franchises.

Fighting Game of the Year was won by MultiVersus. This free-to-play crossover platform fighter features various playable characters from Warner Bros Entertainment, such as the DC Universe, Scooby-Doo, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Gremlins and Looney Tunes, to name a few.

PlayStation exclusive Gran Turismo 7 won Racing Game of the Year.

This latest release in Sony’s long-running driving simulation series launched in March last year, features more than 400 cars from more than 60 automotive manufacturers. The title features a variety of modes, including the reintroduced GT Simulation mode where players buy, tune, race and sell their way through a solo campaign as they unlock new cars and challenges.

Kick-flipping its way to the Sports Game of the Year award was OlliOlli World, a skateboarding action-platformer title set in Radlandia, “a vivid and vibrant world” where the player meets colourful characters as they “grind, trick, and air” their way on a quest for ‘Gnarvana’.

Dwarf Fortress garnered the award for Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year. In this construction and management title, players build a fortress and try to help their dwarves “survive against a deeply generated world”.

The award for Online Game of the Year went to Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker. Set in the fictional land of Eorzea, Final Fantasy XIV is a long-running massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG), while Endwalker is the game’s fourth expansion pack.

Tunic, an isometric action-adventure title where players “explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters”, was also among the winners, earning itself the accolade of Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game. The Mobile Game of the Year award was won by Marvel Snap, a deckbuilding a card battle game in which players choose members from the Marvel multiverse to build their own teams of super heroes and villains.

The event also saw the AIAS present its Hall of Fame award to Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions. The Hall of Fame award is reserved “for individuals who have been instrumental in the development of highly influential games. These individuals are usually associated with having moved a particular genre forward”.

According to the AIAS, Schafer was honoured “for his amazing contributions to the video game industry over his illustrious 30+ year career”.

Rosa Cartagena

THE WASHINGTON POST – Here’s a riddle for you: When a book editor and political science professor downsize from a six-bedroom house in the suburbs to a 900-square-foot Manhattan apartment, how many books will they have to get rid of? For Matthew Budman (the editor) and his wife, Cristina Beltrán (the professor), the answer was a staggering 12,000.

“We had, you know, giant yard sales, and we had people carting off thousands of books,” said Budman, author of Book Collecting Now: The Value of Print in a Digital Age.

The transition was tough, but he says it allowed him to recognise that quantity isn’t everything. Now, he keeps roughly 3,000 titles at home (plus thousands more in storage).

Living with books, in Budman’s case, has meant learning how to let them go. For many book lovers, collecting is as much a practice of labour as it is love: Gorgeous shelves have become a status symbol to flex on social media, but actually managing all those volumes can be a much less glamorous endeavour.

We asked bibliophiles, with libraries ranging from 300 to 3,000, about their displaying and organising strategies.

THE STORAGE

When he furnished his house in the Philadelphia suburbs, Budman relied on a longtime favourite among book fanatics – the eminently practical and affordable Billy bookcase from Ikea. He ultimately amassed 16 of them: “There was always room for another Ikea Billy bookcase.” Three made the move to the new apartment, along with a mix of other Ikea shelves.

While Budman says he’s typically drawn to antique furniture, he sticks with basic bookcases because they don’t sacrifice storage space in the name of fussy trim or other aesthetics. The Billy can also serve as a foundation for custom projects. DIY blogger Monica Chavez in the San Francisco Bay Area, used the bookcases to design what she calls a “mega Ikea hack” for a room in her house with a vaulted ceiling perfect for a library.

Chavez and her husband, who both work full-time jobs, chipped away at the 14-foot-tall project on weekends for two years, building out the wall and trim so that each Billy bookcase would fit in seamlessly. She commissioned a custom aluminium library ladder for a fraction of the cost of a custom wood one.

When the couple finally finished, they had a minor problem: The library was so big that they didn’t have nearly enough books to fill it. Chavez found the solution at an estate sale in nearby San Jose, where a 2,000-title collection was being sold for USD10.

“The caveat was you had to take all the books,” she said. “We had to rent a U-Haul.” Chavez spent months sorting through them, finding hundreds that resonated with her, including autobiographies, cookbooks and old war books, which held meaning because of her family’s military background. Now, she estimates about 1,500 volumes sit on her shelves.

In Birmingham, Alabama, book blogger and home builder Brittany Mareno also seized on the high ceilings in her living room as an opportunity to create an epic book display. As a gift, her husband commissioned a large, custom bookcase from a carpenter who’d helped them with other projects.

“My husband said you are never going to fill these, this will be more bookshelves than you’ll ever need,” Mareno recalled. “I filled them up immediately.” Mareno uses a wooden ladder that her father made to access the upper shelves. “I’m a notorious klutz, so he wanted it to be really super, super sturdy,” she said. (Ladders don’t have to be custom-built. You can find library ladder kits online that come with both the ladder and necessary hardware.)

While there is no single way to organise a collection, there are some useful guidelines.

Typically, libraries and bookstores sort titles by genre or subject area, then stack them in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.

Chavez uses that system for shelves at eye level, which, in her house, hold contemporary titles and current reads.

She keeps her kids’ books on the lower shelves, where they’re easy to reach, and reserves the highest space for collectible and valuable books.

THE ORGANISING

Because those extra-precious titles aren’t meant to be read regularly, she doesn’t need to arrange them in a practical way. Instead, she organises them by colour for that rainbow-shelf effect.

“People get really riled up about having books displayed by colour,” said Chavez. “I think it’s a great conversation starter, but it’s my library and I’m going to do what I want with it.”

Mareno also suggested keeping special editions on higher shelves – a method that saved her books from damage when her house recently flooded.

Still, there’s no requirement that you organise your books at all. Benét Wilson, a freelance journalist, says there is no particular order to the charming library in her family home in San Antonio. Her father built the house in 1987 and designed a glass-encased library that holds about 300 books.

“Right now, it’s just random,” Wilson said. “I’m looking at a book by Donald Rumsfeld, which is a fine first edition of Known and Unknown. On one side (of it) is Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, and the other side is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

She said one of her goals is to go through the library to make a record of the titles and arrange them more thoughtfully.

When your book collection is constantly growing and changing, maintenance is key. Romance author Christine Manzari in Forest Hill, Maryland, gets so many advance copies and special editions as part of her work that it’s often a challenge to keep up.

The result, she says, is a mix of chaos and curation. In her home, you’ll find stacks of books on the floor, in boxes and on windowsills, in addition to shelves holding some 3,000 more titles.

To meet her ever-expanding needs, Manzari’s husband renovated an unused dining room into a dedicated space for her books and has continued building custom shelves elsewhere around the house.

“I’ve now requested another (shelf) in my bedroom, so we’ll see if that happens,” she said.

Still, she can’t keep them all: To manage the overflow, Manzari set up a free library at the end of her driveway and regularly donates by the hundreds.

THE SHELF CARE

Mareno also makes a habit of thinning out books she doesn’t plan to reread, often selling them on eBay.

To protect and preserve the titles you do want to keep, “Definitely think about dusting,” she advised. She recommended using an air compressor to get the job done quickly.

If you want to get really serious about it, you can use home-library software such as BookBuddy, which catalogues where each book sits on your shelves, or an app such as Evernote, which organises extensive lists of titles.

Mareno catalogues her latest finds on her blog, Tattooed Bibliophile, which she also uses to make collecting more accessible to her readers by posting ISBN numbers and pointing them to booksellers. “My theme on my social media pages is the anti-gatekeeper,” she said.

For Budman, the act of winnowing down his 15,000-plus titles underscored one takeaway in particular. Whether you maintain a library of 20 or 20,000, “ideally, you have a story about every book in your collection.”