The Diana Jones Award is an annual award created to publicly acknowledge excellence in gaming. The award was first made for the year 2000, and the first award ceremony was on August 4, 2001.

The Diana Jones Award 2001

The Winner | The Nominees | The Award Ceremony

The Nominees

The shortlist for the Diana Jones Award for the year 2000 included:

PETER ADKISON

As founder and CEO of Wizards of the Coast, Adkison has been responsible for changing the face of adventure-gaming and bringing it to its greatest-ever level of public prominence. He has also been tireless in striving to make his company's products as good as possible, whether in his efforts to make the giant toy-company Hasbro appreciate and accommodate the special needs of the adventure-games industry, or in the way he took charge of the team responsible for revising D&D3e. Without Adkison's influence over the last eight years, gaming would be very different, much smaller and much less interesting.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS THIRD EDITION

Published by Wizards of the Coast

Any revision to Dungeons & Dragons has to combine two different designs in a single game: it must have the richness and complexity to satisfy the game's existing fans, but as the pre-eminent portal into the role-playing hobby it must also remain approachable and accessible to new players. The critical acclaim and sales of the D&D3e rulebooks show that the team behind this latest edition have succeeded on all levels, producing an update of the market-leading game fit for the 21st century. Even without considering the impact of the D20/OGL initiative, D&D3e has opened up new markets and new possibilities for the games hobby’s best-known brand.

MAGE KNIGHT

Published by Wizkids

The idea of a collectible miniatures game has been tried before, but by combining a complex game with simple and easily understood mechanics, and adding visually attractive miniatures that are ready for use out of the box, the design team at WizKids has proven that it is possible to breathe fresh life into the oldest of hobby-gaming genres. By building many of the game's mechanics and monitoring activities into the miniatures themselves, they have given the game—and by extension miniatures-gaming as a whole—an ease of use that other manufacturers cannot ignore.

WIZARD’S ATTIC

Providing warehousing, consolidation, shipping and sales services to small and mid-level games companies, Wizard's Attic has changed the games industry in two important ways. As a ‘one-stop shop’ it has made many previously hard-to-find games available to a much wider market; and it has taken a huge administrative burden off the shoulders of many manufacturers, letting them get on with designing and making games. While 2000 was not its most prominent year, the company continued to grow and offered new services to its clients and customers, reinforcing its position at the heart of a large segment of the gaming hobby.