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[AndySchatz]

@antyschatz - did you mean that there was some problem with getting dust to run besides not owning an xbox? you didn't make clear what the issue was with playing it. did fez have the same issue? fez was also an xbla-exlusive game, and it is a finalist. there have been lots of xbla-exclusive games that were finalists and/or won categories in the past, such as limbo, fez again, spelunky hd, insanely twisted shadow planet, probably a dozen more... was there some problem running it that those games didn't have?

i also wonder about why you asked for examples of great overlooked games and claimed we had no case because we could not name any if you were just going to dismiss them on the basis of taste anyway -- which is why i originally said it was pointless to name them and that they are irrelevant. the main controversy is over the fairness of the judging process, and the treatment of igf judges/staff towards indie developers, not the end result

did you play kale in dinoland, as a curiosity? i haven't, but from the trailer, it looks really great, so i'm not sure what the problem the judges had with it was that caused most of them to stop playing before finishing the tutorial was? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCre42oGpQM -- at the very least, it has a huge amount of production values put into it

also, regarding the fees 57k/53k issue, yes the igf does have sponsors: http://www.igf.com/05sponsors.html

I believe that Dust was only playable on Xbox dev kits (and with a weird setup I believe, though I wasnt on a jury that looked at it).  Fez had a PC build.

I asked for examples of overlooked games so that we could use those as a framework for fixing the problems that caused them to be overlooked.  If the reason a game was overlooked is simply differing tastes, then yes, I will dismiss the argument.  As for Dust, it may have been unfairly overlooked, but for sadly unavoidable reasons.  I'd like to be able to fix THAT problem, but I don't think we can.

I'm happy to provide other interesting cases: a friend of mine made an XBLIG game that I thought was quite interesting (Hidden in PLain Sight). While I personally did not nominate it nor do I think it should have been a finalist, I do believe it should have been looked at closely as it was doing some interesting stuff.  I don't actually know whether it was, but I suspect it wasn't.

I did not play Kale. This is why I really can't argue too much on one side or the other, because I don't think the devs are being all that forthcoming, and given the time that was spent with it, sure, maybe that's a little on the short side, but it's not egregious for the bottom half of entrants.

[Christian Knudsen]

also, regarding the fees 57k/53k issue, yes the igf does have sponsors: http://www.igf.com/05sponsors.html

I can't tell from that page if they're sponsoring any of the prizes. Do you know?

[Manuel Magalhães]

@antyschatz For the last point I think that something like a feedback could work if it's not possible to play a working copy. (e.g. "I was unable to play the game because it didn't worked") I agree that it doesn't make sense on giving the money back on these cases.

RE setup problems: When inviting judges is there a form to tell which platforms is a judge able to play? Maybe on the games that are difficult to set up due a platform should be given to a judge that only plays that platform. This is just my assumption, because I don't know the exact process, but I think that being a judge with games only for that platform makes the set up process less of a shore.

Another question that I've is if an iOS game is for, say, the iPad 2 but the judge has only an iPad 1. Does it get assigned to an another judge?

And I agree about the judging time, if I recall well someone said that the judging time was one month and with broken builds on the mix. They should raise it by one or two months.

[AndySchatz]

@antyschatz For the last point I think that something like a feedback could work if it's not possible to play a working copy. (e.g. "I was unable to play the game because it didn't worked") I agree that it doesn't make sense on giving the money back on these cases.

RE setup problems: When inviting judges is there a form to tell which platforms is a judge able to play? Maybe on the games that are difficult to set up due a platform should be given to a judge that only plays that platform. This is just my assumption, because I don't know the exact process, but I think that being a judge with games only for that platform makes the set up process less of a shore.

Another question that I've is if an iOS game is for, say, the iPad 2 but the judge has only an iPad 1. Does it get assigned to an another judge?

And I agree about the judging time, if I recall well someone said that the judging time was one month and with broken builds on the mix. They should raise it by one or two months.

Yep, that's exactly how the judging process begins.  Judges mark what platforms they have available to them and games are doled out accordingly.

I had that exact problem with an ipad game.  I did request that someone else play it via the backend judging system.  I don't know if someone else did, though as has been noted before, the games are overassigned to try to combat this problem.

[Paul Eres]

I asked for examples of overlooked games so that we could use those as a framework for fixing the problems that caused them to be overlooked.  If the reason a game was overlooked is simply differing tastes, then yes, I will dismiss the argument.

i'm not sure what distinction you're making here -- are you saying that *some* games are overlooked because of different tastes, and that others are not? that doesn't really make sense to me. how is that even possible, and, even if it is possible, how could you tell the difference?

[AndySchatz]

I asked for examples of overlooked games so that we could use those as a framework for fixing the problems that caused them to be overlooked.  If the reason a game was overlooked is simply differing tastes, then yes, I will dismiss the argument.

i'm not sure what distinction you're making here -- are you saying that *some* games are overlooked because of different tastes, and that others are not? that doesn't really make sense to me. how is that even possible, and, even if it is possible, how could you tell the difference?

If the argument is: I like this game, I think it should have been nominated, but the judges are like "nah, bro, we looked at it and didn't like it", then we have to defer to the judges.  But if the judges were like "nah bro, we didn't see that game" or "nah bro, we dont like the developer of that game" or "nah bro, that game violated some rule that doesnt actually exist" then those are problems we can work to fix.

[AndySchatz]

Also it would be nice, for the sake of civil discussion, if when we agree with the other side we could say "ah, good point I hadn't thought of that" or, "yknow, there may be some truth to what your saying" or "well I still kinda disagree with this other thing but I can see where you are coming from".  My level of frustration and civility stays within reasonable ranges when I feel like the discussion is constructive and not contrarian.

Which is why i say "you guys really do have a good point about games not getting played enough, but here, I'd like to help focus the discussion on how this might create a problem for a smaller subset of entrants".

And btw, I'm off for the day, so this is my last response for now!

[M]

An easy fix for the IGF is restricting the audience award to games that are available to the general public.

[Paul Eres]

@andyschatz - i don't think that metric is reliable: nobody would actually admit they didn't vote for a game because they were too lazy to play it for very long, or because they don't like the developer, or for whatever other reason. a judge would always claim that they didn't like a game either because it was bad or because it wasn't their thing. so i'm still not sure how you can tell the difference between the two cases

also, i'm not really claiming that judges can "accurately" judge a game's quality in some objective sense. all i'm saying is that a judge cannot know if that judge himself or herself enjoys a game unless that judge gives it a fair chance, and five minutes is not a fair chance

[Dragonmaw]

Most of the XBLA games in the IGF have a PC build. For whatever reason, Dust doesn't. Xbox Dev Kits are not exactly common among the indie community.

Anyway, I had the suggestion in a thought experiment for "another indie games competition" where each game can only win one nomination. So, for example, if a game is in Grand Prize, it can't win Visual Arts or Design. Thus forcing the judges/juries to find 25+ different games to represent in the finalist list. Might help with the "unknown games being at a major disadvantage" thing.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Indiecade attempts to do that

[phubans]

Would I be stepping on any toes if I said I thought that game always looked terrible? I remember it would be featured on YoYo Games, etc, and lauded as one of the "classics" of Game Maker, but I never really saw the appeal. Both gameplay and graphics are basic to the point of being boring (at least to me) so I'm not sure why anyone would give it more than a passing glance.

I'm surprised it even has a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiklus

Not to go off-topic, but what has this game done that was even remotely groundbreaking? The exploration platformer genre has existed forever, and it's often done with way more interesting mechanics than just moving around a world that you barely interact with.

[Paul Eres]

Not to go off-topic, but what has this game done that was even remotely groundbreaking? The exploration platformer genre has existed forever, and it's often done with way more interesting mechanics than just moving around a world that you barely interact with.

i think that's exactly it: all those other exploration platformers had mechanics besides simple exploration. so it's only groundbreaking in what it *does not* have -- the simplicity of moving around and jumping, with no enemies, no obstacles, no challenge, nothing but exploration and an optional collection (which mainly serves the purpose of keeping track of what percent of the game you've explored)

here's an analogy: why are ico and shadow of the collossus liked so much? not for what they added to games, but for what they took out of games, and showed were not necessary to games. the developers of those games call it something like subtractive design, i remember seeing a slide about it once in a talk they gave: by removing most parts of a game and focusing only on a few parts, they can focus more intently on that part, instead of doing everything well, they can do one thing very well and the others not at all. so you're exactly right that it "added" nothing to games, but its "subtraction" was what was notable about it

it also started a sub-genre (which also includes games like knytt)

[thatshelby]

So all you do is walk around and pick stuff up? If I wanted to do that, I would clean up litter on the highway.

[Schoq]

Lots of people used to call it the best GameMaker game ever made. I guess at that time we hadn't really seen many freeware games as long and with so much content as Seiklus. The music helped too I suppose.

The art is passable programmer art at best, but I'll take laboured unskilled art over some abstract silhouette cop out bullshit any day.