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[Paul Eres]

so i think it'd be preferable to have some system in place which recognizes niche games. this is probably not the igf's role however, an alternative set of awards which recognize niche games (having a lot of winners in a lot of small categories, like "best setting" and "best villain") might be best

I think a problem with such a system is that most people won't care. People seem to care about the IGF because it's a somewhat prestigious award with only a few categories and winners. An award with a lot of categories and a lot of winners won't have the same impact. How will it be different from any other list of "neat games you should play"? I also fear something like that will end up either being the MTV Movie Awards to the Academy Awards (who cares about a movie winning "best kiss"?), or the Scientific & Technical Awards of the Academy Awards (only mentioned as an aside because of a lack of prestige and being too niche).

i think some people would care because the categories would be more colorful. it's less interesting to know what the indie game with the best graphics of the year are than to know what the best villain in indie games was for the year. it's more entertaining because it's quirkier. i for one am more interested in reading about which movie has the best kiss than which movie has the best supporting actor. but it's true that *most* people would not care about *most* of the categories -- that is by design

the reason it'd be different from just a list of games to play is because there would be cash prizes and fierce competition for the categories. it would also be more interesting to people because there is something for everyone. if you're a shmup fan who plays only shmups, you might be interested in knowing what the best indie shmup of the year was. you don't have to read every single category, just the ones that interest you, so the shmup fan wouldn't have to look at the winners of the other categories if he doesn't want to

basically i think the problem with what you wrote is that it falls into the same 'if most people don't care about it, even if a few people do care a lot, it's useless' fallacy that the igf does. take the academy awards: most people don't care about the best screenplay award. but there are a large number of people who do: current and prospective writers of screenplays, for instance. or playwrights, or people who care more about good writing in a movie than anything else. now that may be only 5% of people who watch movies, but those 5% still matter

but you are then saying that *if only 5% of people care about something it's worse than something 95% of people care about*, which is exactly the idea these awards would be designed to oppose. the entire point of these awards is that most people would not care about most of the categories, but that some people do. i would see the categories as a *failure*, not a success, if there was anyone who cared about all of them, or if most people cared about most of them. the categories would be specifically chosen so that each one is something that some small group of people care  intensely about, they would not be chosen based on how many people care about a category. in other words, the idea is that the intensity of passion for a category by people who like that category is more important than how many people care about that category

@DavidCaruso - we could always have a 'best new genre' award or a 'best game that isn't really in a genre' award if people complain about the 'best [genre]' awards, so all of those niches (people who like specific genre games and people who don't) would have something for them. because those game developers and game theorists who hate genre *are* a niche (even if they're probably a very small one), and they do care about playing games which do not fit into a genre or games which subvert genres. perhaps there'd even be a category for 'best mocking of a genre' like "the linear rpg" and "progress quest" do with rpgs. and those who love genres wouldn't have to even read the winners for those categories, let alone play the games that win; they'd just go play their 'best dungeon crawler' winner or whatever

[Christian Knudsen]

Maybe I just misunderstood your intent with your award idea. I thought the intent was to bring niche or overlooked games to a wider audience, not just create award categories for the people already aware of and interested in those games?

[brog]

Paul Eres: The indievisibility awards sound a lot like what you're talking about.  Awards.  For stuff that the organisers felt deserved awards.  In categories.  The categories don't necessarily make sense.  Mostly the categories were just chosen so there would be a category that the thing being awarded would fit into (or not fit, in my case).  Hopefully they'll grow and continue?
(disclaimer: I think they're cool because I got one.)

[copernicus]

And what's stopping the IGF from having niche awards?  Microsoft handed IGF a wad of money to have a best XBOX Live Arcade award.  Can't someone put up money to pay for a best Shmup award, or a best roguelike award, and therefore get it into the IGF?

[Paul Eres]

@Christian Knudsen - both of those assumptions are false. the idea is to bring games with limited appeal to the attention of those people who would enjoy them. not everyone who enjoys a niche is aware of every game in that niche

as a simple illustration of this, there are many people who play indie games, and love RPGs, but are absolutely unaware of how many great indie RPGs there are. earlier when someone asked about them, i provided a list of the ones i knew about; he responded that he had not heard of many of them, and thanked me for mentioning them

so i think it's a mistake to assume that just because someone is interested in, say, roguelikes, or visual novels, that they then don't need any direction or guidance about what the best roguelikes and visual novels are of any particular year. being into a niche doesn't mean you play every single game in that niche and are aware of everything that is going on

as an example, i myself am fond of RTS games; i've played through the c&c series and the red alert series, the starcraft series and the warcraft series, dune 2, and various other RTS games, but i have no idea what the best indie RTS games are, and have not even heard of most of them, because there isn't much recognition of indie RTS games. so it'd be very useful to me to see recommendations on indie RTS games

so basically the purpose of these categories is to bring games which not everyone would enjoy to the attention of those people who would enjoy those games. there are some games which only a small portion of people would enjoy which don't even really *have* a niche. for instance, take spacechem: it's a puzzle game, but it fulfills a need for creative and challenging puzzles where you build up a complicated solution (one of many, each player's solution would be different). the % of people who would enjoy spacechem isn't very large; some people love it, a lot of people hate it. isn't it worthwhile to bring it to the attention of those few who would love it? it's not like everyone who would love it knows about it already

@brog - that does sound similar but that one doesn't seem to have any prizes, and doesn't seem to be very organized in its judging process, since the selections are more arbitrary by the award organizers rather than by a larger pool of judges (or even a public vote; that may work best for this sort of thing)

EDIT: the original way i planned on having voting work was to have the entry fee to the contest be 5$ per award entered (e.g. if you were entering for best rpg and best villain, you'd pay 10$). you could also opt to pay the entry fee for a game that you feel deserves recognition in a category, even if you didn't make the game -- e.g. i could pay 5$ and enter spacechem to the best puzzle category if the spacechem author doesn't do it himself. the prizes would be the sum of the entry fees for a category: if 10 games entered for 'best rpg', the prize would be $50

each category would have separate judges who are interested in that category, similar to the jury system in the igf, and they'd play all the games entered for a category and then choose among them. preferably there'd be many judges per category. i'd also prefer some requirement that the judges write something or provide feedback to each of the games in a category, just to prove they played all the games in the category they are judging

[Christian Knudsen]

Would multiple people be able to enter the same game for $5 each? Also, wouldn't that system mean that the more popular/widespread categories would have the biggest prizes? And wouldn't that in turn mean that developers were indirectly encouraged to make games that fit those popular/widespread categories? Of course, it'd also mean that the more competition there is in a category, the bigger the prize, which I suppose is somewhat fair?

[Paul Eres]

you'd only need to enter a game once per category, but i would probably also have some system where you could donate extra money to a category's prize pool; and 5$ would only be the minimum, not the maximum. but additional money for a game wouldn't affect its chances of course, that information would have to be kept hidden from the judges until the judging process is over. you could also enter a game in categories it was not entered in. for instance, if the developer of a game entered it for rpg but not best villain, you could enter it for best villain if you paid 5$

there could even be prizes other than money if people and companies wanted to sponsor / donate stuff; like a hosting company could donate a free hosting for a year to all the categories as a promotional thing, or someone who makes stuffed animals could donate a stuffed animal prize to a category. that's often how the prizes of small contests are handled

and yeah, the categories with the most entrants would have the largest prizes, but the prize pools would still be very small by the standards of the igf and even by the standards of other game contests (like the yoyo games contest which gives $2500 or was it $1000 to the best game maker game made to some specific theme)

but look at the bright side: the smaller prize pool categories also give you a better chance of winning them. if there's a category that only 3 games entered, your prize may be smaller for winning it, but correspondingly your chance of winning it is much greater! (this would also tend to balance out the categories, since categories with only a few entrants might get more entrants just because they see their chance of winning as higher, so i don't expect too great of a disparity between categories in entrant number)

and i think encouraging devs to make games for categories would actually be a good thing, not a bad thing. for instance, if one of the categories was 'best writing', and game developers intentionally added good writing to their games so that they'd have a chance at that category (perhaps getting their writer friends to write the story rather than doing it themselves, like i did with immortal defense). so it would benefit games to put more work into their writing, or their villain, or their setting, or whatever categories they're entering in

i'd also prefer if each category wasn't just one winner, but an ordered list: only the winner in a category would get the prize, but the rest of the games would be ordered by the judges, so you could see who the runner-up for best hero was, or the fourth-place for best rpg was, etc. -- that way authors would know how close they were to winning, and players who like rpgs wouldn't only have a single recommendation, but an ordered list, so that they can try out the top 3 rpgs or whatever

[Toeofdoom]

That being said, Frozen Synapse better win this shit or else I will be forced to declare the IGF judges unintelligent in my professional capacity as a world-class trained psychologist who is a TV star on the weekends. Seriously, I have the IQ charts right here:

So come on dudes, prove that you know your stuff!

While I would not dare to question the veracity of the graph you have provided, I will point out that IQs above 150 are rare enough that it is reasonable to assume no more than 1 or 2 judges voted for frozen synapse.

[brog]

@brog - that does sound similar but that one doesn't seem to have any prizes, and doesn't seem to be very organized in its judging process, since the selections are more arbitrary by the award organizers rather than by a larger pool of judges (or even a public vote; that may work best for this sort of thing)

Ad hoc is better, because you don't know what's going to be released in a year.  What most interests me is stuff that doesn't fit into any existing category, so if you have too-specific categories you're excluding it.  There's already pressure against creative invention because it's harder to explain and so harder to sell, I'd rather have less of that than more.

Prizes would be nice, but press is better.  Sure, I'd love the 20k igf prize, it's more money than I'm likely to make from any of my games, but a game that wins it also gets way more than $20k value in terms of positive coverage and recognition.  This is the main challenge in starting up a new award system - you need to get that recognition.

A public vote would be redundant, there's already a public vote with financial prizes; it's called the market.

[Paul Eres]

@brog - we can invent new categories each year, perhaps from user suggestions and public voting on which new categories they want to add. and perhaps we could also have a 'best game which doesn't fall under any of the other categories' category

i'm not sure what you mean by press. the purpose of my idea wouldn't be to connect games to the press/journalists, but to connect games to players who would enjoy those games. so if by press you mean 'more players', then my idea would provide that, but if you mean 'more mentions in news sources' then that wouldn't be a goal of it

not all games are commercial, and games on the market can usually only be bought at a set amount. how many copies a game sells doesn't always indicate its true popularity, because there's "cult classics" which are very intently loved but by a smaller set of people. this contest would sort of be a measure of the *intensity* of love for a game, not the *number* of people who love it

[brog]

By "press" I mean news media, journalists, blogs, game websites, magazines, whatever.  This is how you connect games to players; by giving them publicity through whichever channels you can.  This is why the IGF succeeds in connecting games to players; all the games journalists/bloggers/enthusiasts pay attention to it and report on the finalists.  If you start a contest with no publicity, it won't introduce anybody to the games.  More players follows from more news-mentions, and conversely I don't see how you'd get more players without more news-mentions.  Am I misunderstanding something?

Yeah, measuring popularity with the market omits free stuff, but apart from that it's a good approximation of how many people liked a thing.  And you're right, it doesn't measure *how much* they liked it, or how much they should have liked it, how much they would have liked it if they'd known about it or given it a proper chance.. it mostly measures how much advertising a product got.  But a public vote would do the same (and so does the IGF to some extent, but the "panel of experts" approach is definitely the right model in my opinion).

[Paul Eres]

@brog - i do not believe that press in the journalistic sense is how you connect niche games to players. there are plenty of niche games that i did not hear about through any news media. i feel that niche indie games are best promoted through word of mouth and social media (forums, twitter, etc.) rather than news media

i haven't discounted having a panel of experts, though. i talked about having judges per-category earlier. perhaps it could be a weighted system; where judges get half the power, and the public the other half, similar to some television contests. i feel that giving the public a voice makes people have more of a vested interest in who won, fewer people would care about such a contest if they could not vote in it. that's also probably why the igf has an 'audience award' portion

also perhaps we (or some mod) could split my discussion of an alternative contest to the igf into another thread, since i don't want to distract too much from discussion of the igf. my idea is only tangentially related to the igf (since it's designed to fulfill a void that i see in the igf)

[Glaiel-Gamer]

i feel that giving the public a voice makes people have more of a vested interest in who won, fewer people would care about such a contest if they could not vote in it.

FEZ wins IGF, every category!

[Paul Eres]

i feel that giving the public a voice makes people have more of a vested interest in who won, fewer people would care about such a contest if they could not vote in it.

FEZ wins IGF, every category!

i think you overestimate fez's popularity -- i've the feeling spelunky is more popular than fez

[brog]

there are plenty of niche games that i did not hear about through any news media. i feel that niche indie games are best promoted through word of mouth and social media (forums, twitter, etc.) rather than news media

You're probably quite right - but bear in mind that as a developer you're personally involved in the "indie games" community, and most people who play games are not so might not hear about things through the same channels.  It would make sense to use all possible means of communication, even if word of mouth is the best.

I don't think I have anything more to add, thank you for a congenial discussion.