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.)

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.

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.

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).

It is, though I got a (relative) ton of press for Monaco before it was nominated, simply from the videos I was putting out.  So that's what I meant by that comment.

But obviously that's not everyone's experience.  I've found that nobody but close friends gives a damn what I'm working on until I actually release it - regardless of whatever I do in terms of blog posts, videos, etc.

get a ton of press.

It's a Catch-22 innit?

John_wallFour: Your game was one of the ones that stood out to me browsing the list, very cool concept!
(Also: GlitchHiker got an honorable mention and is properly IMPOSSIBLE to play.  But it was made by well-known developers, YMMV.)

[at any particular time]

I can't imagine anything more tedious than taking cards out of sleeves during play (not to mention that defeats the whole purpose of sleeves in the first place, which is to protect cards from wear). It's just absolutely terrible design.

Definitely, I've read all their justifications for it and none of them work, it is just a Bad Idea.  But I guess with their business model based on continually selling new cards they don't care about cards becoming worn in the way that players do.

I could not disagree more strongly. In my set, one of the things I abolished the very first thing I did, was creature subtypes. Every single card that targets specific creature subtypes ("tribal" cards) blow up the complexity of the game exponentially. If all cards were changed to be more generic (+1/+1 to all creatures, not just merfolk, white creatures or whatever) Magic would go from 18,000+ cards to 800.

They do only have a few hundred cards at any particular time.  Sure, if you look at it as a whole, including every card ever printed, it's a bloated mess.  But that's not how they treat it, they just look at it locally and make each set play well within itself.  Magic with all cards ever printed is not "official" Magic, it's some crazy made-up game that nobody ever consciously designed.  So yes, it's over-complex, but it's totally irrelevant.  Think of it as a series of games that share the same basic rules but have different cards; looking at it like this they're doing a fine job of limiting complexity.  For example, they don't mix cards that target creature subtypes with too much other stuff that adds complexity (and when they do use them, they bound the number of types they're considering).

If you stick with completely generic effects (+1 to everything, rather than +1 to goblins), you're removing restrictions and so removing interesting choices.  Sure, if you have an identical copy for every different type there's no choice, but that's not necessary (counter to your claim), and it's not what they're doing!  (at least, not all in Standard at the same time.)  If you can only give +1/+1 to goblins, but you want some effects that are on a troll, there's a choice to make - including the troll weakens your goblin lord, how much do you want the troll?  And for casual players it actually reduces complexity ("I'll just put all the cards of the same type that go together", obvious deck).

Yeah, I'm a SOUTH-MAY-HEMISPHERIAN.

Action RPG; puzzle game; shooter. As stated in the article.

And Frozen Synapse is definitely a tactics game.  My attempt at constructive contribution has failed.

So do Bastion, Desktop Dungeons, Realm of the Mad God.  You're not claiming there are no RPGs at all right? - just that they're underrepresented.  I'm just sharing the observation that some people involved in other genres feel the same way.

I recall Soren Johnson (IGF judge, not indie, has worked on Civ and other strategy stuff) complaining about the "strategy game stigma" in the IGF.

The other day someone was pointing out on Twitter how the judging system works against multiplayer games (although some multiplayer games are present in finalists, they're ones that already had plenty of buzz, that judges upvote based on having played at other events).

Not sure it's possible for some subset of games not to be excluded whatever they do.

Why do you assume I'm rich?

Your signature labels you as a partner in Indie Fund.  So presumably you're some degree of "rich" to be able to invest in other people's projects (by the standards of people here, if not by the standards of the other guys in the fund).
(I think the fund is totally cool btw - indie games aren't the safest investment by any means so it's pretty clear you're doing it out of love, which I respect.)

Its an actual investment to go even if you weren't for a contest... Its still extremely worth it for how much it costs, there is nothing else that you could spend your money on that would get you as much long term gain as you do for going to GDC once.

I went to GDC last year.  I had a nice time, but apart from being in EGW I wouldn't say I got more out of it than, say, going to TIGJamUK or BIGJam locally.  (EGW was a cool opportunity and meant I got to know some people who I wouldn't have if I'd just gone on my own.)

Also: privilege is invisible to those who have it.  Story of our times.

iirc some payment processors will also host demo for you.. checking.. BMT micro offers demo hosting in exchange for a larger %.  not sure about others.  but yeah there's some free stuff.. see what other people are doing?

Making two games is harder than making one!  Especially if they depend on each other.
So the risk I can see with this is that if you let your position in the overgame give an advantage in the undergame, you'll get a feedback effect whereby the battles end up being trivially easy once you're in a good position around the world.  But otherwise, if the overgame doesn't affect the undergame, there doesn't seem much point.  So to (1), having the 'undergame' automated away seems good, then you'd only be trying to make one game at once (but in that case I'm not sure what the question is - you're just making one grand strategy game).

Resistance Revolution - 5 hour jam on theme "album cover of your choice".  Did the obvious thing with this Muse cover:

(it has no soundtrack, but you could listen to the album in the background!)
Arrows to move, Space to jump.

Delicious Cake - 3 hour jam, very small text adventure on theme Delicious/Suicide.

And the last one, from Monday's 3 hour jam, more of a 2 hour jam for me because I had a train booked (which I then missed).  Theme was Mysterious Enemy: Mysterious Sniper

From the theme Free/Cat: Feline Feeling

edit: my best score is 2100.  but even getting past 1000 seems to be quite hard.

just got here.  hi all!  heat is not not not doing me any favours.

Got in for this too late; I've just booked a bed in the same hostel.

If you have an idea that's "like game X only with Y feature", see if you can drop the "game X" part.  Is Y strong enough to be expanded into a whole game by itself?  How much of game X can you remove?  Building on existing games is fine, but you should subtract as much as you add otherwise you'll end up with an over-complicated game that's also more work to make (because you have to clone X first before doing anything new).

On the other hand, people will complain THIS SHOULD BE MORE LIKE GAME X I LIKE GAME X so don't listen to me.