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[peanutbuttershoes]

That's not cool. That's crossing a line. All's fun and games until someone impersonates someone else and slanders them.

<just opened himself up to slander>

[PTibz]

Today we added fans to Octodad. Now he flys around like a weird hot air balloon.  Oh also, I am the secret Phil Fish and the only reason Octodad is known by anyone is because... Oh wait no one knew us before GDC/IGF and we still got nominated... CONSPIRACY

[allen]

they obviously have to cover their asses by handing a few nominations and wins out to unknowns so no one would call them on their bullshit.

[Matthew]

For what it's worth, I don't think there's cronyism in the juries.  Just to be clear--the IGF process this year (and last) is that:

- Main judge pool are assigned a dozen games, and can nominate a game in any/all categories

- Each award has a small jury, who can see a list of what the larger judge pool is focusing on

- The juries individually discuss games on a mailing list (any games; the nominations are simply starting points)

- The jury members cast approval voting (they vote for any number of games)

- The games with the most votes are finalists

True cronyism--"I'm going to try to make my friend a finalist"--is only possible if you're on the jury.  Here are the juries this year:

http://igf.com/2011/12/igf_2012_reveals_visual_art_au.html#more
http://igf.com/2011/12/igf_2012_reveals_design_techni.html#more

I think the average passionate indie developer cares more about the medium, the craft, and therefore what the IGF stands for, than they would care about falsely boosting their friend's career.  Most indies I get feedback from, especially friends, are always blunt with me.  But maybe that's just my own interpersonal dynamic, I don't know.

However, here's the rub:  A jurist will select a game based on their opinion.  There aren't any hard metrics to go by.  There no way to "go to the tape", to get an instant reply, do a measurement, or test anyone's bloodstream.  Tastes matter:  Tastes about what makes a game good, what makes a game innovative, what makes a production or piece of polish excellent instead of obvious (and even what sorts of "obvious" are only obvious because of their brilliant-but-simplistic-seeming veneer).

And in that sense, yes, moving between entrant and jurist from year to year is certainly going to have an effect.  I can't say what, or even how to notice what and where.  But it's there.  If you work on an notoriously player-difficult game for a year, you're going to respect difficulty curves and be much more perceptive of the craft that goes into them than other judges.  If you work on procedural generation design problems, you'll probably have more respect for successful implementations than other designers.

You can see this in the judge discussion in the IGF backend.  Some games have dozens of comments! I bet if I anonymized the comments you could pick out who was who, still.  That's the way it's meant to be.

I don't think you can exploit this facet of the judging process.  And I certainly don't think it automatically makes your chances higher if you have friends on the jury.  In fact, many of my own friends strongly value originality to the point where "outsider design" is probably more valuable.  My feeling is that it all balances out.

TL;DR Yes, the IGF judging process has chaos.  Judges pick games based on opinions.  Good luck exploiting this.

[M]

When do the developers get the feedback for their games?

Sometime after GDC.

Source: Link

Is there some reason that the feedback can't be given when the nominees are announced? The IGF has posted some feedback for the finalists here: http://igf.com/2012/01/2012_independent_games_festiva_4.html

Surely the feedback for the games that didn't make it is also already available, right? That would help the people who believe that their games are good enough for nominations but they are held down by the "indie elite." They could see exactly what the judges thought about their games right now and compare that to the feedback for the nominees.

[Paul Eres]

i don't think cronyism exists in that sense either. what i think happens is more subtle, it's like

judge A: hey, dev X has a new game out this year! did you play it? it stars a yogurt monster eating a ramen monster! taste the innovation
judge B: yeah, that game is great. i'm going to nominate it post-haste!
judge C: yeah! it should be a finalist for sure! i don't know what other game can stand up to it because i am only playing this one
judge D: hey guys did you try this game by dev Y, it looks cool
judge E: HEY GUYS DID U TRY DEV X'S GAME!!! ITS HIS BEST GAME YET!!
judge A: wow dev X's game is great! i can't stop playing it
judge D: but this dev Y game... it's like it came out of nowhere
judge B: who has time to try out dev Y's game? you were assigned to it, not us
judge D: oh okay, but you're missing out on a great game!
judge B: if it were really great it'd be a finalist without us taking a look at it! you don't need us to play it.
judge E: QUIET JUDGE D! THAT GAME LOOKS BAD IM NOT GONNA PLAY IT, AND I NEVER HERD OF WHOEVER MADE IT NEITHER IM GONNA GO PLAY MORE OF DEV X'S GAME NOW OK BYE

so, the way i imagine it (and this is just imagination, i'm not been a judge, although i'm friends with a couple of them) is that i think that nominations of games by popular developers get played more often, and for longer, because they are more well known and have hype to them. the games which are less known are played less, both in terms of the number of judges playing that game, and in terms of the length of time they play that game

and there's some data to back this up; a couple of browser games recorded how long judges played them; one person reported that their game was only played for about 15 minutes total. for 95$ an entry fee i think you can expect a judge to play a game for more than 15 minutes

[MMVFM]

Thanks for the response, Matthew.

In my opinion - any system where there is a large and obvious risk for bias, will have bias. The "but these are nice people" defense is mostly irrelevant.

[Matthew]

The largest and most obvious bias is selecting for merit.

Paul: Popular games probably do get more attention from main judges. It's irrelevant in the juries, though, and the juries pick the finalists.

[Paul Eres]

are the juries influenced by the number of nominations a game gets? e.g. if one game is nominated by 3 judges for audio, and another game was nominated by only 1 judge for audio, would they take that into account when deciding who to nominate for audio?

[Glaiel-Gamer]

are the juries influenced by the number of nominations a game gets? e.g. if one game is nominated by 3 judges for audio, and another game was nominated by only 1 judge for audio, would they take that into account when deciding who to nominate for audio?

we are given a list of every game that was nominated even once, sorted by number of votes

it is taken into consideration but only as a general guide, juries were free to vote for whoever, other than IN GENERAL most of the nomination counts tended to coincide with the games that were good for that category anyway, especially for tech.

[Gabriel Verdon]

The only thing I was surprised about was the absence of Dust: An Elysian Tail in the visual art category. The fact that it didn't even get an honourable mention struck me as odd. Although, I haven't actually played any of the games so I can't really judge.

Everything else looked great though, I think most people complaining about nepotism or whatever are just bitter, or have an over-inflated sense of entitlement. But does anyone know why Dust didn't even get a nod?

Edit: Also, why isn't allen banned? His posts have no actual content, just insults and trolling.

[Rob Lach]

To me the IGF is a bit misguided. What's happening is that for some it's the "oscars of indie games", but that really doesn't coincide with what it's suggested to be about:

We wanted to create a similar event to Sundance for independent game developers - and that's just what we've succeeded in doing with the Independent Games Festival, which has awarded hundred of thousands of dollars in cash prizes (and brought major exposure and a much higher profile) to a multitude of indie and student game developers who enter.

For some betting $100 on your game to possibly win $3000 is risk a developer might take just to get their game completed.

I'm not suggesting these games aren't deserving of the praise that one associates with the IGF (they most definitely do), but it seems like the intentions of the IGF are below the quality and presence those types of games already have. I don't think the success of FEZ or Spelunky will be dictated by a $3000 cash prize, but moreso with the publicity an IGF win will give you.

Personally I believe the IGF is trying to accomplish too much. The way I see it, there should be a competition for helping developers finish their games and keep making games, and another that awards excellence. The first competition would be for in development or non-commerical titles along with the cash prizes (which would still allow entry multiple times), while the other would be for near release games with only an award.

The film industry and the game industry (especially the indie game world) are too different to be modeling award events on each other. There is this lingering thought that games are the next step up from films, with developers in the indie and AAA world clawing for the same legitimacy films have. I think we all know that the potential of what games can do is so far surpassed what games are currently doing, and film (which is an already mature medium) will never touch the artistic influence a game will have once the medium matures.

So really, the IGF shouldn't be the "Sundance of games", as games don't need a Sundance, they need their own thing.

Take for instance my game POP which hit the Nuovo honorable mentions list. I have no intention of ever selling this game (I'll just release it for free once it's done). I entered purely on giving myself a hard deadline to work for with the potential of recognition for trying something different and if I had won the prize would have freed up the time I'd normally use freelancing (so I could pay the bills) to make games.

No one entering Sundance will be releasing their film for free, they haven't evolved past that point yet. The film industry is still stuck in pre-internet times where distribution required fat stacks (hence their massive budget dedicated to enforcing copyrights).


Ultimately though, I think the IGF will continue to adjust and evolve, absorbing grievances as they come up. The introduction of Nuovo and the juries have been steps in the right direction.

[Eldboll]

The Iconoclasts :C

[Oddball]

I just read this whole discussion, it took quite a while, and I noticed something really odd. At the start there were a few conspiracy theorists saying that there is an 'indie elite' who help each other out based on their secret clubs and close knit connections, and those that were being accused of being in this 'indie elite' saying that it's not true, there are no secret clubs and that they don't have all these insider connections.

Then about half way through the so called indie elites just went, fuck it! You're right. You got us. There are indie elite secret clubs, and connections are very important in improving your games profile, but it's not exclusive. All you have to do is take a week out and have a trip to GDC and we'll choose the indies we like to join our secret gang.

It was like the president just walked out of the Whitehouse and went "Hey guys! You know that Area 51 you're always going on about? Well that thing is full of aliens and alien tech."

I'm not really adding to the discussion, I just wanted to comment that I found the way the 'indie elite' flip-floped in the middle highly amusing

[TeeGee]

You don't have to be nominated to get a lot out of GDC.

(...)

My family is not rich.  My mother lost most of what she owned to a flood in 2008, leaved her mired in debt, and my father died of brain cancer the next year.  At the time of my first GDC I was doing a $10 per hour research job, though I had the blessing of meal center food so I was able to save up.  As of today I don't know how I'll be paying the rent at the end of this month, and I'm STILL going to GDC.

Man, while I'm sad to hear you had it rough (condolences for your father, unfortunately I know how it is to lose someone close ), you have to understand that situation of someone in the US is still vastly different from the rest of the world.

For example, you throw $10 per hour as if it's little, while here I haven't earned even that much in a high-position job. The average seems to be more around $4/h. And we're not living in the ass of the world either, just a less developed economy. I may be a serious and a somewhat successful developer, but spending a quarter of my yearly salary on going to the GDC simply for the networking, doesn't sound like a viable investment. There are also many countries poorer than mine. I don't think you see many indies from Romania, Russia or Lithuania on the GDC either. And I assure you they do exist, work just as hard, and are as talented.

Really, the relative cost/gain ratio of the GDC isn't the same for everyone or even in the same ballpark. And it doesn't have much to do with willingness (even if dedication indeed goes a long way).