The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) is a non-profit organization of video game industry professionals. It organizes the annual Design Innovate Communicate Entertain Summit, better known as D.I.C.E., which includes the presentations of the D.I.C.E. Awards.
History
Andrew S. Zucker, an attorney in the entertainment industry, founded the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in 1991 and served as its first president.[2] AIAS co-promoted numerous events with organizations such as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, and Women in Film. Their first awards show program, Cybermania '94, which was hosted by Leslie Nielsen and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, was broadcast on TBS in 1994.[3] While a second show was run in 1995 and was the first awards program to be streamed over the Web, it drew far fewer audiences than the first.[3]
Video game industry leaders decided that they wanted to reform AIAS as a non-profit organization for the video game industry. The effort was backed by Peter Main of Nintendo, Tom Kalinske of Sega, and Doug Lowenstein, founder of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and with funding support from ESA.[3] The AIAS was formally reestablished on November 19, 1996, with Marc Teren as president, soon replaced by game developer Glenn Entis.[3][4] Initially, in 1998, AIAS' role was to handle the awards, originally known as the Interactive Achievement Awards. These awards were nominated and selected by game developers that are members of the organization themselves, mimicking how the Academy Awards are voted for by its members.[3][5]
Around 2000, the ESA pulled out of funding AIAS, leading AIAS members Richard Hilleman and Lorne Lanning to suggest that AIAS create the D.I.C.E. Summit (short for "Design Innovate Communicate Entertain"), a convention centered around the presentation of the awards to providing funding for the organization. The Summit was aimed at industry executives and lead as a means to provide networking between various companies. The D.I.C.E. Summit launched in 2002 in Las Vegas, Nevada and has been run on an annual basis since.[3] In addition to video games, AIAS saw these summits as a way to connect video games to other entertainment industries.[3]
Joseph Olin served as the AIAS president from 2004 to 2010; following his departure, Martin Rae was named president in 2012. Rae opted to implement a number of changes to the Summit, shorting talk times to give more attention to the speakers, and rebranding the awards as the D.I.C.E. Awards for the 2013 summit.[3][6][7] Mike Fischer replaced Rae as president in 2016.[3]
As of 2017,[update] AIAS's mission is "to promote and advance the worldwide interactive entertainment community, recognize outstanding achievements in the interactive arts and sciences, and host an annual awards show, the DICE Awards, to enhance awareness of games as an interactive art form".[3]
The D.I.C.E. Summit is an annual multi-day gathering of video game executives held in Las Vegas. Established in 2002 by AIAS, the conference is host to the annual Interactive Achievement Awards, which has since been rebranded as the D.I.C.E. Awards. The conference differs from other conferences in the industry in its emphasis on the business and production end of the industry, with a focus on trends and innovations in video game design.[8] The conference specializes in providing a more intimate, orderly venue for select industry leaders to network.[9]
Structure
In 2007, a keynote speaker was added to open the event, which had traditionally begun with recreation before the introduction of presentations and panels.
