Arcade icon Ed Logg to receive AIAS's 2012 Pioneer Award

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Classic coin-op developer to be honored at February 2012 ceremony

Arcade icon and Atari alumnus Ed Logg has been pegged to receive The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) 2012 Pioneer Award during the organization's 15th Annual Interactive Awards next February.

Logg is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of videogaming, having co-developed well known coin-op games for Atari such as Asteroids, Super Breakout, Centipede, and Gauntlet back in the late '70s and early '80s. Logg also dabbled in the home console field, writing code for Tengen's version of Tetris for the NES, and later working on Wayne Gretzky 3D Hockey and San Francisco Rush for the N64.

“Ed’s body of work is brilliant and game-changing,” said Martin Rae, president, Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in today's announcement. “His games defined an era, spurred new genres, and influenced new technology that is still utilized today and has inspired generation after generation of game designers with his vision. Without Ed, many of the games that we have today would never have existed.”

Logg currently resides in California where he continues to tinker with game development. Reflecting on AIAS's honor, he noted: "It feels a little strange receiving this Pioneer Award. Just think about it, they were paying me to have fun creating games at a time when the industry was just getting started and every game was something new."

This is the third year for AIAS's Pioneer Award. The first honors went to Activision co-founder David Crane in 2010, with last year's award falling to Bill Budge, a longtime game designer and current Google staff engineer.

The 15th Annual Interactive Awards will be held on February 9, 2012 at the Red Rocket Resort in Las Vegas.

Matt Bradford

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.