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[Alec]

Heaven forbid that people explain why they have certain opinions.

God just called. He says that people explaining why they have certain opinions is now forbidden. THANKS A LOT, ALEC. Geez.

I guess God didn't invent sarcasm.

[jeb]

I guess God didn't invent sarcasm.

... or it's time to read the Bible in a new light.

Aaanyways... It's interesting to see that one game that I gave a 100 to, didn't end up as a finalist. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the nominations.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I want to chime in on something real quick, because I'm seeing a lot of mentions about the repeat nominations.  We don't choose the finalists; they are simply the top-scoring games in each category.  There is no editorial control (we can't look at a category and say, "Oh, we should pull Game X because it's already a finalist in A and B").  The judges' scores are the sole determining factor in who is and isn't a finalist.

Thanks for clarifying this, the transparency with the voting process is really appreciated.

[Alec]

Yeah, that needs to be repeated. It seems like some folks believe there is an "IGF God" that makes judgements on who deserves which spot, but really its just a sum of a whole pile of votes from a whole bunch of people.

Hence results that might seem inconsistent if they came from one person.

[aeiowu]

Yea I fell prey to that. Thanks for the clarification matthew.

[Alex May]

I wonder if it would be worth holding the entries for longer (i.e. pushing back the submission date) to give each game more judges? It's pretty tight as it is... I took a week-and-a-half's break from the internet over the xmas period and completely missed the student judging process as a result.

[mirosurabu]

I gotta root for Meatboy, because if Tommy doesn't get a trophy this year, we're all in danger.  Joe, Danger.  SHIT.

Super Joe, Danger.

[havchr]

Congratulations to all the nominees!

When is the student nominees revealed?
I have some friends who's in it.

[Paul Eres]

I wonder if it would be worth holding the entries for longer (i.e. pushing back the submission date) to give each game more judges? It's pretty tight as it is... I took a week-and-a-half's break from the internet over the xmas period and completely missed the student judging process as a result.

i think this is true. however, it seems a lot of the judges were pretty awful when it came to rating games, i've heard some waited until the last day or so before the deadline to play any of them (and then complained when they were too long to play in one day!). if they had 6 months to judge games instead of 6 weeks, they might just wait until the last day before the deadline again. i think higher quality judges is as important as more judges, or more time to judge.

[Guert]

Then I shall ask this question: how does one become a judge?

So, in other words, I'm pretty sure it was quite hard for the IGF comittee (or whoever decides who judges)to find enough judges to look at all those games. I mean everyone is busy. And I'm pretty sure judges aren't paid to do this job. Unless I'm wrong of course.

So yeah, the IGF is a bit the victim of its own success on that topic but the guys and gals behind the event know what they are doing. There's also the fact that when you don't get picked, you tend to find ways to explain your rejection aside from admitting "the game wasn't good enough". I was rejected. My game wasn't good enough to beat 305 other games. Next year, we'll see. (of course I'm aware that some games I would have loved to see picked as finalist but that's an opinion and opinion are quite personal. but as Fish mentioned somewhere, there are some close calls and perhpas 30 or 50 other games barely made it, as non-judges we don't have all the scores that were given to all the games.)

[Paul Eres]

i believe one becomes a judge by being selected by the igf to be a judge. judges are paid in a sense, i believe they get free gdc passes, worth many hundreds of dollars.

i believe they had 150 judges. i imagine that's more than enough for 400 games. perhaps some see judging the igf as a free way to the gdc, involving little work?

also, guert, are you seriously proposing vvvvvv wasn't good enough for the igf? that's a strange proposition if so. how do you think it could have been made better, out of curiosity?

[Alex May]

i think this is true. however, it seems a lot of the judges were pretty awful when it came to rating games, i've heard some waited until the last day or so before the deadline to play any of them (and then complained when they were too long to play in one day!). if they had 6 months to judge games instead of 6 weeks, they might just wait until the last day before the deadline again. i think higher quality judges is as important as more judges, or more time to judge.

I would fix this by holding the judging in rounds. Give a judge ten games on which to feed back, in two weeks. Then in the following fortnight, give them ten more. And so on until they'd done forty. That's two months, so the new deadline for submitting games to the IGF would be (allowing one month for admin as it appears there is now) October I think. I am guessing this would come with increased administration costs for the festival and is one of the reasons the judging process is short now.

Also, I am currently unaware/ignorant of any rewards for IGF judges in terms of GDC passes.

EDIT: It appears we are offered a discount (unspecified) on GDC tickets and seats in the front row of main audience seats just behind the nominees.

[Paul Eres]

that rounds idea sounds good, i'd support that. this is all theoretical though, as the people in charge of the igf said they are perfectly pleased with how judging works and don't intend to change it.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I think they did a pretty good job judging this year, after hearing all the complaints from last year (it was a pretty lackluster selection IMO. I was walking around the booth and there were only 2 or 3 games that actually looked interesting. This year there's a ton of them, and I'm super curious about Limbo and others). Also, not too many misfit selections IMO (except in the technical category which is ridiculous to try and judge anyway), and no "joke" games like Dont Shit Your Pants or YHTBTR got in either (some might call it a travesty, but IMO as hilarious as DSYP was, having it take a spot in the igf would have been a big middle finger to the people that tried.

About VVVVVV (i havent played it btw): There will always be games that a lot of people think deserve it that don't get into the festival. Look on the comments for the announcement on various sites, there's like 10 games that keep getting mentioned, "What? No ______? WTF" This is a problem when you have 300 games and 30 slots and a lot of games that take up more than one slot (sry bout that), and they all deserve the spots they got nominated in. That doesn't mean other's don't deserve it, it just means there's a ton of quality games out there, and not enough space to show them all. There's a number of ways to remedy that problem, but I don't see how revamping the judging would do anything. To see how difficult it is, try to make a list of nominations (5 for each category) that doesn't leave someone out who deserves it.

I know what it's like to be on the short end of the stick, was there last year. Don't let it get to you, and just take it as motivation to work even harder this year for a shot in the 2011 IGF. Preparing for IGF was a HUGE motivation for me, it's almost a shame that there aren't any more big festivals for me to submit too, cause now I have to impose my own deadlines.

[Crackerblocks]

Pretty surprised that Enviro-Bear made it. Me and 4 art games in the category 

I can't find find any explanation on how the judging exactly works, but it seems they erred on the side of being democratic and accountable, and didn't worry so much about being statistically strong.