Now everyone will want to be a horrible goose.

“Untitled Goose Game” scored Game of the Year honors at the 2020 DICE Awards ceremony in Las Vegas on Thursday. The game’s developer is Melbourne’s House House and its publisher is Portland’s Panic.

House House’s response on Twitter: “this is extremely weird.”

The image included with the tweet -- a list of DICE’s Game of the Year winners over the years -- shows why the Australian company finds it so weird. The prestigious award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences typically goes to the highest-profile games from the industry’s biggest players.

this is extremely weird pic.twitter.com/Tu8pmMnZyg — House House (@house_house_) February 14, 2020

The reaction on Twitter from Panic’s Cabel Sasser hit the same theme: “pardon my holy s---.”

House House tried again Thursday night, putting out this statement:

“This is such an incredible, surreal honor. We regrettably couldn’t make it to DICE in person, and we had a hard time recording an acceptance video because (looking at the other nominees) it was impossible to imagine actually winning. We’re blown away.”

PC Gamer magazine called the surprise Game of the Year result “a honkin’ good win.” (The makers of “Untitled Goose Game” are proud of their dedicated honk button.)

In the “slapstick-stealth-sandbox” game, the player is a “horrible goose” on the loose in an English village. The goose terrorizes “a town full of people just trying to get on with their day,” the game’s makers summarize, adding sotto-voce to the goose-player: “(you hate them).”

This opportunity for gamers to take on an acceptable misanthropic alter ego is one of the game’s foremost draws.

“We are used to playing as morally complex individuals in video games; even the heroes typically leave a genocidal trail of dead behind them,” reviewer Simon Parkin wrote last October. “Never before, however, have I felt so appalled by my virtual acts as in ‘Untitled Goose Game.’”

Parkin, the games critic for Britain’s The Observer, reveled in the short game’s attention to goosey details.

“The goose waddles with exactly the authentic combination of conceit and threat, the comic waggle of its tail feathers juxtaposed with the menace of its rasping tongue,” he wrote. “There’s a throb of joyful recognition when, having cowed a villager, you waddle away while issuing a belligerent farewell honk. Classic goose!”

With its DICE victory, which likely will catapult its popularity, “Untitled Goose Game” is now certain to become a classic too.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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