2009-sxsw-web-awards Image courtesy of the SXSW Interactive Web Awards site.

It’s a big night for three campaigns tonight, as the teams behind The Dark Knight ARG, Lost Zombies and We Tell Stories have won major awards at the 12th annual SXSW Interactive Web Awards. The awards were handed out earlier tonight at the Hilton Austin Downtown, and according to The Underwire blog at Wired, the major hardware found its way into the hands of the wonderful people behind these highly successful campaigns.

One of the biggest wins of the night came for We Tell Stories. This project was a collaboration between Six to Start and Penguin Books and, as reported here in March of 2008, was a way for media-savvy designers to retell classic stories through the use of technology. We Tell Stories won in the Experimental category, but as a bonus, also walked away with the Best in Show Award. This is a monumental win for the company, formed at the beginning of 2008 by former members of Mind Candy.

Not to be outdone, the unique social networking documentary site Lost Zombies took away the honors in the Community category, as well as the Peoples Choice award. Lost Zombies sent us some very cool swag in June 2008, and showed off their sense of humor by sticking it (it, in this case, being a sticker) to another ARG campaign (prototype 161). This is further proof that the zombie phenomenon is alive and well, no pun intended.

Finally, the award for Games went to the Why So Serious ARG for The Dark Knight. The game was a huge hit for numerous articles here as far back as May 2007. chances are that the crew will be celebrating with cake, but without cell phones in the middle.

ARGNet would like to congratulate all of the winners, marking yet another big year for alternate reality gaming at the SXSW Interactive Awards.