The point of main category IGF judging is random sampling of a large pool of judges, such that it is statistically significant. i.e. Fair.

a random sampling of the igf judges (10 out of 150, is that really a large enough sample?) only provides a statistic that is a statistically significant i.e. fair representation of the opinions of the igf judges, who, through the insight provided by their feedback, have proven, in this one man's >>opinion<<, to be unfit for the job.

How do you prove something "in an opinion"?

How much feedback have you examined?

How do small samples of feedback alone prove anything?

If you disagree with the selection of the judges, what rules would you put in place to assure "better" judging?

(the admittedly unclear) goals of the IGF

I think this is the real issue, or at least the reason why some people are upset - is because there are different perceptions of what the IGF is about.

My guess about what Matthew/Simon/Steve do is take all the feedback and try to figure out a way to accomodate as much of it as they can. (at least in terms of the feedback that is doable, makes sense for the format, etc)

I think that's why we now have a competition that has both a larger judging pool and a separate category based around "innovation". (but given a different name, since "innovation" is like red to a bull for some people) So naturally, those with more "extreme" opinions on what the IGF should represent (purely focused on innovation vs. purely games that are fun) are upset.

I also think that one of the few things that we can all agree on about indie games is that they're not made for millions of dollars, they're made by small teams and many of the good ones are made by people who cared a lot about what they were making. (so much, that in many cases, they will make their games the way they want regardless of popular opinion)

The reason why Super Meat Boy was nominated was because a number of judges liked it for reasons that don't need explaining or justification. They liked it.

well then i'm glad the IGF judges can get away with making decisions in the very way that alec is saying i am invalidly making a point.

The point of main category IGF judging is random sampling of a large pool of judges, such that it is statistically significant. i.e. Fair.

Your opinion on it's own doesn't negate that.

You're of course entitled to your opinion, but isolated opinions about particular games are not enough evidence to make objective claims about how a competition should be run.

I thought they stopped calling the awards "Innovation in..." a long time ago, and now named it "Excellence in..."  so why do the IGF nominees need to be innovative in any way?

Regardless of what the website tagline says, this is what's actually going on. I think "fun" is a large factor in judging, especially with the main competition entries. If something is both "fun" and happens so strike a lot of judges as "innovative", odds are it'll do well.

I'd guess the website tagline is left over from the old days when everything had to be "innovative". From what I understand, they changed direction because nobody could agree what "innovative" meant. (I remember hearing about a lot of silly arguments on it back in the day)

your "contributions" to this discussion

Are you referring to this thread or the current IGF discussion in general.

I'm referring to this thread, or at least the thread in recent memory.

woids

sorry, let me preface all of my posts with the phrase "this is just my opinion, but..."

You push your opinions to the extremes quite often - to the point where it's hard to tell if you have any external perspective on them. Based on the strong language you employ, and your tendency to overlook reasoned arguments, I feel that it would be helpful to point out that - in this case at least - it really is just your opinion.

I don't wish to "write you off" as any particular label, but your "contributions" to this discussion to date aren't liable to make any kind of positive impact. Perhaps this is intentional, or perhaps not.

If you're merely aiming to be snarky, then congratulations. If you are instead trying to provide useful critical feedback, then I'd recommend that you consider a more useful approach.

i really don't know how much more i can quote my own post, it's not a very difficult post to understand. my point is exactly as posted, which is that amongst a sea of highly refined, super hyped but ultimately pretty mediocre games, it's good to see a few fresh ones to break up the monotony of nintendo remakes.

as for being allowed or not, it's not up to me. my issue here is with the process that somehow allowed a glorified N+ clone that brings nothing new to the genre besides "hurf a durf" mario references to become one of the grand prize nominees. this isn't just an issue of "nostalgic games", this is an issue with the lack of innovation, though i guess it's my fault to expecting any of THAT outside of the nuovo award.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt to look past your attitude and assume you're trying to make a point to improve the IGF as a whole.

good on you for trying something new

It certainly isn't a platform game, but is TRAUMA really "new"? It seems similar to a lot of other ideas and styles of games. I don't think this should disqualify it, but I think it touches on a point that it's really hard to define what is innovative, and even harder to agree on it. That's more the issue here, I think.

i hope people can distinguish between a good a game and a stupid game

Entirely subjective, obviously.

What makes a "stupid" game in your opinion? Which games are you specifically talking about? After you present your evidence, are we all going to agree which games are "stupid" and which games are "good"?

From what I gather, because you believe that the remaining Seamus nominees are all "NIntendo rip-offs", they should be disqualified. What rule would you invent to ensure that your views are enforced in the future?

Are games that garner more hype less worthy of being recognized for awards? If so, why? And if that is indeed a problem, how would you prevent it? Are two mentions in Edge magazine too much, or is three okay?

I don't think you've made a point other than you're upset because you don't like some of the games that were nominated or possibly because your own game wasn't nominated. (I don't recall if you've ever entered or not)

This game kicks my ass. 

Do you think nostalgic games as a rule are bad/not indie, or do you just think that they don't belong in the IGF?

good on you for trying something new, and i hope people can distinguish between a good a game and a stupid game covered in a big ball of hype and polish.

So your point is that games that you don't like shouldn't be allowed in the IGF?

I believe one of Christoffer's points was: the more categories and nominees you have, the less each one matters. The signal to noise ratio starts to degrade a bit.

If the IGF had 10 Seamus McNally's every year, would each one get as much attention as they do now?

Not everyone can be a winner for participating in this style of competition. That's not malice, it's just the way competitions work - especially with a competition that is geared towards presenting a selection of indie games to the mainstream. To be a mainstream news item, it requires the drama and the excitement of "who's going to be the big winner". There's a lot of showbiz to it.

One advantage of that showbiz is that it can be channeled at times (nuovo award is a good example) towards particular creative voices that haven't hit prominence yet, with massive positive impact.

Now you may say "fuck the mainstream", which is fine - in that case, you shouldn't care about the IGF. It shouldn't bother you in the slightest that some games are getting mainstream attention and others aren't. It's quite possible to run your own "underground" competition with whatever rules you would like, or indeed post your own list of top 10 best games of all time with justification or not.

If those competitions end up proving to be interesting to other people, they will eventually expand and become their own valuable entities. That would be a good thing for everyone.

To reiterate, if you want to see a competition that picks results in line with what you think the TIGSource community "would like", let's make that competition. Maybe TIGSource could have a "democratic" year-end awards show. Everyone could vote on a really broad selection of indie games. That would be something fun, productive and it would be beneficial for a lot of people.

(some folks may get about as pissed off at that one as the IGF, but that's no reason not to do it in my opinion)

@alec - i've offered suggestions much earlier in this thread (a few times over the course of the thread) and haven't really heard much in the way of argument against them. i don't really think the suggestions i offered are subjective in the least. having fewer judges which play more games, having a longer judging period, and having 'rounds' where games are eliminated to facilitate this process all seem non-subjective to me.

Paul, what you've been arguing for is results more in favour of what "the TIGSource community" would pick. (because for you that apparently represents the entire indie games sphere?) And yes, having a smaller judging panel would lead to more subjective results. More communication between judges would also make the findings less fair (less statistically sound) and more subjective.

If in your competition that you (may eventually) organize you happen to pick a small panel of judges that generally think the way you do about games, you will see results that you're more personally happy with than in the IGF. The IGF both samples a larger base (in response to criticism about the fairness of the bias of a small panel) and this year presents a separate category entirely based on a small panel.

[fair]

What it really boils down to in this particular thread is that many people are upset that their picks (or preferred style of games, or in some cases, their own games) weren't nominated. But instead of simply presenting that honestly as "hey, I'm not a fan of these games" or "I feel really disappointed that I wasn't nominated" or it becomes "because some games that I don't like were picked, there must be a flaw in the judging process".

I can relate to feeling upset at not getting recognized or not being a fan of the results of a competition. But some posts don't stop there - we've seen angry outbursts, attention-seeking personal attacks and a fair bit of masturbatory hand-waving.

So far I've seen very few people arguing for changing the judging process from a non-subjective point of view. It's consistently been subjective opinions with elaborately misinformed and in some cases outright ignorant stories built around to obscure the emotional, reactionary reality behind them.

If you really care about the IGF and think it's important and want to improve it, put some thought into your posts. Think critically about why you see the process as flawed or not, and present a reasoned explanation of why you think this. Cite some objective evidence.

For example, if you personally feel that there are too many platform games at the IGF, think a bit about how and why that might be changed. Should certain genres of games be banned? Should games that reach a certain level of press be banned? Once you start to actually think about these issues in depth, you start to realize that you it's not beneficial to create opinionated, restrictive rules in hopes of procuring your own personally favoured results for such a broad competition.

In fact, what might be best is a marriage between fair results (a statistically sound, random sampling of a large pool of judges) and a more opinionated view. (a small panel) That way you could balance the benefit of appealing to an audience to draw in a crowd with a spotlight on games that might not get attention in other situations. But oops - this is what we already have in the IGF this year with the new category. Actually, it's a perfectly reasonable compromise when you think about it.

If there is indeed some additional, objective way to improve the process, present it rationally and I'm sure the majority of rational people will agree with it. Otherwise, we can agree to disagree about our respective subjective views.

There happen to be a few people who organize an awards show to promote this space that we're all a part of. They do it because they believe in the value of the creative freedom this space can represent. It's done in cooperation with sponsors and larger companies so that it can reach a large audience.

It's a bit like your teacher organizing for you a field trip to the museum, and in response you stamp your feet and throw a tantrum because you preferred to visit the box factory. If you think it's valuable for the whole class to visit the box factory, present that argument with appropriate evidence.

In other words, grow up.

Much respect to Cactus for stating his views as an opinion, rather than trying to impose his views as "objective truth".

My grandpa once told me: "The only place you start at the top is when you dig your own grave". It inspired me a lot and always reminds me that good things comes from hard work. Starting with everything usualy leads to more problems.

That's slick! 

I also like the phrase "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", but mainly because it makes me think of pubic hair and then giggle. 

Huzzah! 

I've had much more creative freedom when doing the music for smaller games (indie or casual), than when working on larger projects.  And as a result, I think that my smaller works stand out a lot more.  I can also say that I've played many indie games as of late where I've remembered the music... but I can't say the same for mainstream games. 

Yes! I think "creative freedom" is a term I tend to associate with some "indie games". Maybe a more accurate association would be "small teams".

I don't think you'll have to worry about that. Social dynamics will do it's magic and you'll end up hanging out with people that has similar interests/feelings about "indie"... let's call it "chemistry".

Naw, I'm totally looking forward to hanging out with some of my best friends. (Tommy, Kyle, Adam, Steve, Matthew, Ben, Shawn, Phil, Colin, etc etc)

And yeah, I agree that the games aren't "doing poorly". (I like a lot of the games coming out, whether they happen to appear more "commercial" or not - and many indie games are getting a lot of mainstream attention)

My feeling is about the community that hangs out at GDC, and the larger indie community in general. When people with different viewpoints and a certain level of maturity get together, it can be so amazing. (exchanging ideas, seeing different perspectives, learning a lot and laughing your ass off at the same time!)

Last year I got hammered at the 10bit party and started making "human katamari balls" with friends. (just hugging in a big group of people and spinning around in circles towards other folks going "na na na na na", sometimes absorbing them into the group) A surprising number of people there were down for that.

I guess I feel like this year if I tried that, "I'd get stabbed". That's my brain overdramatizing the way I feel, and I'm not literally worried about something like that happening, but it does metaphorically represent how I feel - a situation where I could be myself and not be worried about someone trying to attack me for being me - is starting to become this dumbed down, unnecessarily contentious crap. (another visual: kind of like High School where I'd get randomly shoved into lockers for no real reason)

Again, maybe I've been reading too many pointless/irrational forum threads and when we all get together it'll just be awesome. I'm still really hoping for that. (fingers crossed) I'm also not expecting or wanting anyone to agree with me, I just thought it'd be interesting to try to explain my feelings for shits n giggles.

I'm going, but I have a bad feeling about this year for some reason.

That's a bit pessimistic.  I wonder what brought that feeling on.

Yeah, I agree it's pessimistic. I'm sure I'll have an awesome time hanging out with everyone. I think the creepy feeling I have is something along the lines of "indie" starting to become a far more contentious space.

I'm not really attached to the word "indie", but I'm very attached to the people who manage to have a certain talent + creativity + humility + great sense of fun and humour mix. It's rare to have that many rad people in one place. As the extremes of the scene get larger, dumber and more pronounced, the warm happy fun feelings start to dilute.

I feel like there are two main extremes, "indie games aren't underground enough!" vs. "indie games aren't commercial enough!". Then you mix in the "fuck all you guys for being (pretentious/different/all-the-same/too-artsy-farsty/not-artistic-enough)" people, who somehow still want to be part of the community that they claim to despise. Diversity is good, but it feels like the indie scene (at least TIGSource, indiegames.com, etc) "shits where it eats" way more than it has to. One of the things I like best about the community (when it works) is mutual respect. It doesn't mean a circle jerk. It's possible (and quite valuable) to criticize your peers' work without being a jackass. We're all doing what we want to do, so really there's no need for us to pretend like our method is somehow superior to the many other methods.

I can recognize that I probably sound like a grumpy old man or something, and I'd totally love to have my negative vibes proven utterly wrong this year.

(please, please, please, please, please)

That said, I can't resist asking the question.  Do we really want to judge games according to visuals, audio and tech?  Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but what's unique about indie games is that people can experiment and take risks that mainstream companies would never accept.  Shouldn't that be somehow reflected in the criteria?  We'll never be able to make games that look as good as AAA titles anyway.

Indie games can often look better than mainstream games. Just because indie games use different techniques, doesn't mean they look "worse".

e.g. In general I prefer inspired art direction (say Fez, Spelunky, Braid, etc) over bump-map barf (Fallout 3, GTA4, Batman, etc, etc, etc, etc).

I'm going, but I have a bad feeling about this year for some reason.

I hope I'm wrong though.

The last three years have been pretty great.