NAKAJIMA Shinya

Entertainment Division is a new division that encompasses a wide variety of genres including games, Web, VFX, characters, play systems, and so on. Therefore, the screening results for this year will have a great impact on the future characterization and direction of this division. In the beginning, we did not have the slightest idea about which works in which genre would survive. However, as soon as we started reviewing the works, games proved predominant. In particular, those voluminous works produced by leading game manufacturers were tough to beat. These games were produced under the manufacturers' pride of representing game contents of current Japan as well as the pressure that they've got to create something entertaining and enjoyable, and as might have been expected, they were the highlight of this year.
To tell the truth, it could not be helped that works in other genres of this division did not look as good as these games. For Web arts, there were not many works with great originality, such as those found in the Art Division, and left the impression that something was missing. With VFX (special visual effects), the competition was rather painful as the works had to be evaluated in the midst of Hollywood works of dominant quality being released one after another. We, therefore, focused our evaluations not on the scale or technological level of the works, but on the author's brilliant ideas and sense of entertainment contents. Although they missed winning a prize this time, there were also some commercials that stood out in originality, which raised our expectations for their future development. For play systems, the absolute number of submitted works was small, but Pokemotion, where the audience is free to manipulate popular characters, received great recognition for its enjoyable nature and high workmanship.
Looking back on the whole screening process in the entertainment division of this year, we believe we were able to make evaluations while striking a balance between two main aspects of prizes, namely "properly evaluate works of predominant quality that symbolize the current time" and "highlight the noteworthy works that contain great future potential." On the other hand, we found many issues to be solved in the future, such as whether or not the current divisions are an adequate way to divide media arts.