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[Dragonmaw]

I had never heard of Monaco until I judged it my first year. I was properly blown away.

My general rule is that you should play a tenth of a game's average length, and if it doesn't get good (or at least interesting; all games need a hook of some kind) within that timeframe then you are doing it wrong. If you have a 20-hour RPG, I should feel engaged and interested within 2 hours. Do not pace it so slow that I'm halfway through the game before I can do shit.

[Matthew]

Should your IGF build be interesting and compelling within 15 minutes of play?  Absolutely.

Should your game itself be interesting and compelling within 15 minutes of play?  Doubly so.

I'm very suspicious of any claims that "all X should do Y".  Should every game be interesting and compelling - at any point?  Should every game be fun?  Maybe append "if you're trying to win IGF / make money off it" (and these goals, though related, are not identical).

Agreed on the semantic battle; I'm not going to cling to those words.

But I do think your game needs to reveal its nature quite quickly.  If your game has a surprise, or is a long-form ambient experience, it must still somehow communicate that vibe early on--an undercurrent of tension for a surprise, a sense that I am meant to simply soak in an experience rather than goal hunt, etc etc.  The cheap in-game solution is the old "lose all your weapons in opening sequence" bit, which isn't what I'm talking about.  If your game is something unusual, you should think good and hard about the entire pipeline (title, screenshot, the tone of the very first text someone will read, your video, installation process, title screen, and so on)...

And I'm not even saying you should work super hard and long on those things, just that you have to do them coherently and consciously.  A lot of people just barf a bunch of text into the IGF submission form five minutes before midnight.

[Paul Eres]

People always ask me what the best strategy for winning the IGF is, and usually I tell them its an impossible question to answer.  But I do think there's one thing you can do that helps: release your game before the deadline or get a ton of press.  Judges might only spend 30-60 minutes with your game during the judging period, but if your game is out (and its good) they will likely have given it more time before judging even begins.  The impression of that judges would have of Spelunky, for instance, would probably be hugely different if many hadn't already spent a bunch of time with the game.

i agree with this but this is exactly what i see as the problem: the purpose of the igf, as i see it, is at least partly to bring recognition to great games which are not otherwise good at getting recognition, not to give even more recognition to games which already have recognition (and which often don't even need or notice the modicum of additional recognition that the igf provides). in other words, i feel that the igf should serve to promote indie games, rather than indie games serving to promote the igf

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Paul it goes both ways, IGF would not get the press it does without the heavy hitters being included in the competition, it would not have the reputation it does without honoring / helping some major indie games become successes.

There's a mix of knowns and unknowns included in the finalists for that exact reason.

Indiecade does a good job of recognizing the unknown indie games.

[Paul Eres]

understandable; i don't agree that it's best to do it that way, but it's at least interesting to know that it's a conscious decision to include both known and unknown indie games

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Its a conscious decision to include the BEST indie games, which consequently include both known games and unknown games.

[Paul Eres]

then wouldn't it not be "for that exact reason", but rather for some other reason?

IGF would not get the press it does without the heavy hitters being included in the competition, it would not have the reputation it does without honoring / helping some major indie games become successes.

There's a mix of knowns and unknowns included in the finalists for that exact reason.

or are you saying that the reason the best indie games are chosen is *because* it is known, ahead of time, that some of the best ones will be popular and some of the best ones will not be popular? i'm not sure i understand the causality here. here's a few things which i think you could mean:

a) igf wants to get press from popular games, and to give press to smaller games, and chooses a mix of the two. that mix is a natural result of choosing the best games

b) the igf wants to choose the best games, and consequently some of those are popular and some of those are not popular, which in turn causes the igf to get press from popular games and give press to smaller games

c) the igf wants to give press to less popular games, and as a means to that ends also includes popular games, so as to give those less popular games less press. as a means to this, it chooses only the best games.

each of those is a slightly different causal chain, and i'm not sure which you mean

[brog]

Its a conscious decision to include the BEST indie games, which consequently include both known games and unknown games.

Oh wow, isn't it lucky that that's something we can conveniently measure in a non-subjective way.

[Paul Eres]

i think game quality can be measured by the judges at least in some regards; they come to some average consensus, the same as the pulitzer prize and the academy awards. i just feel that what is measured is

a) the quantity of press a game has had / the hype that exists for a game (the likelihood of a game to be played by many judges depends on this, as well as the factor where hype increases enjoyment of a game)

b) the production quality of a game (since many of the awards revolve around judging production qualities in isolation)

c) the enjoyment of the first 15 min to 1 hour of a game, how addictive or engaging a game is in a casual sense

d) how interesting the game is to tell others about / viral or discussion quality of the game -- games which do things new which are cool

those, for some people, *mean* that a game is the best, since they value those factors in games. and those may be the factors that *most* people value in games. but they aren't really the factors that i value in games, or the factors that really define indie games

[Matthew]

It's also entirely likely that high-quality games tend to have more hype behind them.  Perhaps both exposure and IGF nomination are the result of the same thing, not of each other.

But yes, you still can't escape this formula:  Presentation affects expectation.  Expectation affects experience.  Experience affects opinion (including "objective" opinion).

[brog]

Paul: Yeah, exactly, there's a specific aesthetic which is favoured by the IGF system.  They can call it "better" if they want; but it's not always what's preferred by the market overall, and it's not always what's preferred by me; it's a function of what the judges like (which itself depends on how the judges are selected) and how their preferences are measured.

And then because the IGF has such a strong influence over which games succeed, this twists the evaluation of "what games can I make" in a particular direction (at least for those of us who don't have the wealth to have the freedom to just make whatever the hell we want and not starve).  You can choose to make something that there's an established market for outside of the IGF (e.g. old-school RPGs), or you can choose to make something that has a good chance in the IGF, or you can make something that doesn't fall into either category and probably not get paid for it.  This is why it matters: the particularities of IGF judging shape the future of our medium by warping what developers can afford to create.

[PaleFox]

matthew

that's essentially bullshit, but it makes the entire stated purpose of the igf bullshit too and i hope you can just admit it so we can all move on

yes perhaps 2010's motorcycle game which was itself a clone of nintendo games with literally nothing added except shitty 3d got nominated because it was JUST SO GOOD (this is a lie)


if you genuinely believe that, say, a text adventure could EVER be nominated if it wasn't by an already known developer (and if, were it to be, it might ever NOT be nominated) then you're mad.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

if you genuinely believe that, say, a text adventure could EVER be nominated if it wasn't by an already known developer (and if, were it to be, it might ever NOT be nominated) then you're mad.

Choice of Broadsides got an honorable mention last year in nuovo

[Chris Pavia]

"The IGF isn't what I personally think it should be, my subjective opinion is more correct than your subjective opinion, therefore the IGF is corrupt, broken, and/or wrong."

Summarizing for anyone just coming into this thread.

derp.

[Paul Eres]

It's also entirely likely that high-quality games tend to have more hype behind them.  Perhaps both exposure and IGF nomination are the result of the same thing, not of each other.

But yes, you still can't escape this formula:  Presentation affects expectation.  Expectation affects experience.  Experience affects opinion (including "objective" opinion).

you can't escape it but you don't have to build a system around it, you can also build a system which makes up for the problems that process has

in any case, the indie game market has two kinds of games: games which appeal to a large audience (e.g. super meat boy, bastion, etc.), and niche games which strongly appeal to a small dedicated audience but are often repellent to people outside that niche (e.g. spiderweb software's games, visual novels, etc.)

basically, it seems that there is no system in the igf to recognize the value of niche games. games which 10% of people love and 90% of people hate can be just as well-made, working-as-intended, and take as much skill and dedication as games which 90% of people love and 10% of people hate

this is especially egregious because one of the major "competitive advantages" that indie games have over AAA games is exactly that: niche games

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