The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS which is located at www.interactive.org) announced the winners of their 3rd annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The awards, given May 11th at the height of the crazy E3 expo in Los Angeles CA, featured guest appearances by Harry Shearer -- known as the Seven Fingered Man from the Princess Bride, the drummer from Spinal Tap and Monty Burns (among others on the Simpsons), Delroy Lindo (the Cider House Rules and several movies much cooler than the Cider House Rules), Leah Lail (from VIP - 'mmm boobies) and the underappreciated Ahmet Zappa (also known as "Frank's little mistake" by sister Moon Unit). NOTE: None of these people had anything to do with games... they were just, you know, there.

The winners were as follows:

Game of the Year: The Sims
Computer Game of the Year: Age of Empires 2
Online Game of the Year: EverQuest
Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering: Unreal Tournament
OA in Game Design & OA Game Play Engineering: The Sims
OA in Character or Story Development: Age of Empires 2 & Thief the Dark Project
Children's Title: Disney's Villains' Revenge
Family Title: 3-D Ultra Lionel Train Town
Action Game of the Year: Half-Life: Opposing Force
Adventure/RPG of the Year: Asheron's Call
Simulation of the Year: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Professional
Sports Game of the Year: FIFA 2000
Strategy Game of the Year: Age of Empires 2

I'll quibble with a few choices here: RPG of the Year should have been Planescape Torment, Sports game of the Year should have been High Heat Baseball 2000 and what is Thief 1 doing in there? I assume the Year they're talking about was 5/99-5/00, Thief came in 11/98 folks. Regardless, these are good games and these awards feel much less corrupt than the deplorably inaccurate CODIE awards.