After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The big winner was Rock Band from Harmonix, which won three awards: Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle. We emailed some questions to Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of Harmonix. Here's what he wrote back:

What was your reaction to winning Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle?

As you can imagine, the team here was absolutely thrilled. When we got the news, we immediately and vigorously polished off several crates of champagne--which was a welcome relief from the stress of beta.

Now that we've sobered up again, there's this small matter of finishing the game...

A rhythm game has never won Best of Show from the Game Critics Association. Were you surprised to win given the history and your competition? What do you think this means for the music game category?

Yes, honestly, it was hard to believe, given the history, and also given the other incredible games that were nominated. I think it's a sign that music games have finally "arrived" in the U.S. and have taken their place as a major, mainstream category of games.

How close is Rock Band to completion, and what major things remain to be done?

All of the major systems are complete. As is normally the case in beta, there's plenty of bug-fixing to be done, finishing off of various details, and lots of play-testing, polishing and tuning. We're dying to cross the finish line and get this thing out into the world!