The trailer for recently-released existence sim Everything has won a jury prize at the Vienna Shorts Festival, which means it now qualifies to be nominated for an Academy Award in the “Animated Short Film” category.
It’s a nice nod to the gameplay trailer itself (which is branded a gameplay film, and aptly so given it’s nearly 11 minutes long) but, more notably, creator David O’Reilly points out on Twitter that it’s the first time a video game trailer has qualified for Oscar consideration.
The game itself has already won a handful of awards, and was nominated for multiple honors at this year’s Independent Games Festival.
O’Reilly worked on the game with a small team after making his game dev debut with the 2014 game Mountain. He’d previously carved out a meaningful career in animation, and after releasing Everything in March he joined us on the Gamasutra Twitch channel to break down (among other things) how his experiences as a game developer differ from his work as an animator.