Webby_Logo_smallYesterday, the winners of the 14th Annual Webby Awards were announced, recognizing excellence in “interactive design, creativity, usability and functionality on the Internet.” This year, a trio of alternate reality gaming projects came home with accolades. So congratulations to the teams behind Love Letters to the Future (Xenophile Media), District 9 (Trigger LLC), and True Blood (HBO).

Love Letters to the Future swept the Green category, taking home both the Webby Award and People’s Voice Award for the category. The campaign sought to collect messages from the worldwide community to future generations: the top 100 messages were buried in a time capsule at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on December 13, 2009. Providing an interactive undercurrent to the already interactive campaign, Xenophile Media hid a series of clues and messages from the future on the website, culminating a series of augmented reality images hidden at locations across the globe. To read more about the alternate reality game designed for Greenpeace International, you can follow along with the game’s progress at the Love Letters to the Future blog.

District 9’s website took home the People’s Voice Award in the Movie and Film category. For months leading up to the film’s release, Sony Pictures offered viewers a number of ways to interact with and learn more about the private military contractor Multi-National United and the aliens living among us. Sony Pictures launched a comprehensive transmedia campaign promoting the film that drove viewers to the website. The film’s outdoor advertisements in particular received praise for utilizing park benches for an innovative and evocative method of storytelling. For a more extensive look at the District 9 experience, check out MovieViral.com’s coverage of the campaign.

Finally, True Blood took home the People’s Voice Award in the Integrated Campaign category for its integrated marketing promoting the show’s second season. HBO and Campfire Media built off the success of season one’s alternate reality game by “revamping” the Blood Copy blog with additional content and viral videos.  This lead to the somewhat controversial news that the vampire-run blog was acquired by Gawker Media.

Congratulations again to all the 2010 Webby Award Winners, and best of luck to designers making a bid for the 2011 awards.