The D.I.C.E. Award for Role-Playing Game of the Year is an award presented annually by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences during the academy's annual D.I.C.E. Awards. "This award honors a title, single-player or multi-player, where an individual assumes the role of one or more characters and develops those characters in terms of abilities, statistics, and/or traits as the game progresses. Gameplay involves exploring, acquiring resources, solving puzzles, and interacting with player or non-player characters in the persistent world. Through the player's actions, his/her virtual characters' statistics or traits demonstrably evolve throughout the game." The award initially had separate awards for console action games and computer games at the 1st Annual Interactive Achievement Awards i