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[Paul Eres]

coincidentally both desktop dungeons and nidhogg are made in game maker, i believe

it'd be good to see a game maker game take the igf grand prize, so i'm rooting for those two

[allen]

the igf page states this:

celebrating the brightest and most influential creations to come out of the independent video game development community in the past year

i think all of the grand prize finalists fit that bill. you may disagree, but it's not really up for people like you or me to decide.

and paul, it's a bit silly to root for a game based on what it was created in. although i know you have a big gay soft-spot for game maker.

[Blademasterbobo]

allen just pretend they're made with unity 

[mcc]

Startled to see Colorbind is on there! That game was brilliant. Hoping this leads to people realizing it exists

[Paul Eres]

as i mentioned in irc, my reasons for rooting for gm in the igf are

1) bring popularity / legitimacy to the engine so that people will stop telling me 'oh that game is just a game maker game' one day, or at least a reduction in that

2) likewise to get more people using gm when they see that games made in it can compete with pure programming or any other engine, which will increase the number of indie games being made and reduce the number of abandoned projects as people attempt to code their own engine from scratch and fail repeatedly

[AndySchatz]

For me, each game has its strengths - this the the first year that for me, all are actually worthy of the prize.  I'm having a hard time deciding, and it's making me think about what I think the prize means.  This type of thought process likely goes on with each of the judges, and the eventual outcome will simply be a sum of all of those philosophies.

[SunnyKatt]

GM, and through GM, GML, is actually very powerful and flexible. My only complaint is that it's slow; and I can't do multithreading with it. But hopefully these will change in the future.  

[Paul Eres]

there's actually an unsupported/non-recommended dll which allows you to do multithreading with gm, but it's probably not worth the potential bugs it could introduce

[SunnyKatt]

I saw that, but because the GML runner isn't built for multithreading, the multithreading done with the DLL can really only be used for math; it doesn't have access to all of your object data and can't do rendering.

[JackieJay]

I don't really consider a game to be good or bad based on it's budget. I base on the sum of it's parts and how much I enjoyed the game. Just because a game has a bigger budget doesn't mean anything if it's not well used. I'd take cave story over a call of duty game any day, and the budgets involved with both are not comparable. As far as I know, for instance minecraft didn't cost millions to make. I can't imagine it having that more production costs than desktop dungeons yet I find it to be a much better game in almost all aspects.

Games are not meant to be compared with each other aspect by aspect of course, but if you take 50 people each having played both games they can tell you which one they enjoyed the most.

Like allen pointed out the seumas mcnally prize is supposed to "celebrate the brightest and most influential creations of last year". Now I wonder, how can desktop dungeons be called a bright and influential creation ? It's little more than a roguelike with a graphical interface (and far from being the first). Then again, the definition of "influential" and "bright" might slightly change from person to person but still, I don't understand the nomination. From what I've seen from nidhogg doesn't seem that "bright" or "influential" either but that's hard to guess without first playing it (and I'm yet to discover how a game can be considered influential before it's even available but oh well).

[JackieJay]

btw paul I don't think Game Maker's reputation is going to change for better or worse overnight. It's widely known for being a tool that makes game creation easy so it was predictable that most people would brand it as a noob tool and the name doesn't help.
A game made with gm winning the igf wouldn't change that, if anything I think a lot of people would be like "wtf a game maker game won the igf main prize ? i'm off to grab a unity 3 copy and make a awesome game with shaders n'shit. It's going to blast the competition away blindfolded, the judges are gonna fart with excitement and hand me over the 20 000 prize without even looking at the other games".

[Melly]

Well if the outcome did inspire people to make games with more powerful engines, all the better. More games.

In all seriousness, influence is something hard to gauge. If a lot of poeple involved with game development start talking about the game in question, then you can tell it's at least somewhat influential. Of course, the average john doe isn't gonna have the tools to determine if a game truly deserved a prize meant for the most influential games (the 'bright' part might be easier. If you can play the game, that is).

[simoniker]

The Student Showcase finalists are announced on Monday morning (10th) at 7am PT - so watch out for that, whoever asked.

In addition, the detailed rules have a short definition of each prize, and while I know people are looking at 'influential' right now because they found it mentioned in some text, the formal definition which the jury is told for the Grand Prize is actually:

"Seumas McNally Grand Prize: This Category is open to all Entered Games. Nominations will be based on the overall innovation [and/or] quality [and/or] impressiveness [and/or] enjoyability of each Entered Game."

We're continually tweaking the definitions, but in some kind of subjective manner, the Grand Prize is definitely meant to be 'the game you liked the best'.

[Dragonmaw]

I don't really consider a game to be good or bad based on it's budget. I base on the sum of it's parts and how much I enjoyed the game. Just because a game has a bigger budget doesn't mean anything if it's not well used. I'd take cave story over a call of duty game any day, and the budgets involved with both are not comparable. As far as I know, for instance minecraft didn't cost millions to make. I can't imagine it having that more production costs than desktop dungeons yet I find it to be a much better game in almost all aspects.

Games are not meant to be compared with each other aspect by aspect of course, but if you take 50 people each having played both games they can tell you which one they enjoyed the most.

Like allen pointed out the seumas mcnally prize is supposed to "celebrate the brightest and most influential creations of last year". Now I wonder, how can desktop dungeons be called a bright and influential creation ? It's little more than a roguelike with a graphical interface (and far from being the first). Then again, the definition of "influential" and "bright" might slightly change from person to person but still, I don't understand the nomination. From what I've seen from nidhogg doesn't seem that "bright" or "influential" either but that's hard to guess without first playing it (and I'm yet to discover how a game can be considered influential before it's even available but oh well).

Nidhogg is available, just not to the general internet public. Messhof has been showing it around at various art galleries and shows. I know it got very good reception from those that played it at Eurogamer and Nuit Blanche. As someone who has played it, I can tell you that it is ridiculously fucking fun, and definitely worth finalist status. It's one of the best VS games I've played in... well, like 10 years. It's just so fluid and frantic and fun.

The rest of your post is just complete nonsense. I get the very strong feeling that you either haven't played Desktop Dungeons or just don't understand the mechanics at all.

[Eric McQuiggan]

I'm going to back Dragonmaw up on that one, Nidhogg brings the crowds, I haven't seen people as jazzed about watching other people play a game in a long time.