Hey, I'm Krystian. I'm the guy who made TRAUMA, one of the Finalists. Oh boy, this is tough.
First of all, I'm sorry for being so late to the party. I just heard about this thread on TIG Radio. Obviously, I'm not really an avid forum poster. Reading through all the comments and about people who didn't make it is really heart-wrenching for me. I know I probably could be one of you guys. I actually sorta expected failure and was totally blown away that I did it after all.
I find the idea of the feedback really great. I thought it was very detailed and told me a lot about how people think about it. It some ways even more than user testing. It may be an expensive feedback for 100$ but I think the price is alright if you consider that you get a chance to get nominated. In my case the feedback was positive in general (shocker). There were a few very specific nitpicks, even some fundamental ones. I found it fascinating that the fundamental problems were offset by a majority of contrary opinions so I believe it was a polarizing general question. It had to do with fractured vs. more linear narrative. Game Design was worst. Audio was best. Which I find a bit weird.
I apologize if I "stole" a place. Uploading to IGF I certainly saw titles that I would have expected to get credit. Not seeing them is surprising to me and it makes me feel a bit uneasy of being nominated.
On the other hand, I tried to follow some of the suggestions here on how to improve the process and I believe we should be careful here. Because we don't have the whole picture. For once, we haven't actually played all the games. And the playable part isn't even that important. The important part is that some games, for one reason or another, received already a lot of attention pre-IGF. So they have a very strong hype going on. This - of course - often has to do with the fact that some developers are more vocal about their games in the community. It may also have to do with sheer popularity - some developers somehow already drew attention to them in the past and their work is regarded by many as valuable and interesting by default. This hype may create expectations that the actual game might not fully satisfy. Our image what the "strong" games are differs from the actual experience when you really are comparing them at face value.
TRAUMA didn't have much hype going on. I don't have many posts in my TIGSource profile. I posted a thread on TRAUMA but only very late and I believe in may have come off as a extended press release. I released a gameplay preview and it has been picked up in a few places but the amount of response prior to my nomination was rather moderate, I think. So Boing Boing is actually quite spot-on calling it "The biggest left-field surprise".
But even if it doesn't look like it, it doesn't mean that I didn't put a LOT of effort into that one project. I've spent over 1,5 years on this game. I wrote the first concept back in winter 2007. I had made some breaks in-between. The first level (there are 4 now) was my final thesis. I wrote a 100+ page thesis researching the development of adventure games, identifying crucial gameplay elements and carefully distilling a new concept out of it. At the same time, I experimented with different technology to figure out how to make that game happen. Hell, I've event spent more than a week building a robotic camera tripod out of LEGO Mindstorms to shoot spheric panoramas at night. It worked but then I ended up NOT using it because a different approach turned out to be more promising. And after that, it wasn't instant win either. It was nominated for a local design prize back in 2008 but didn't win. I also aimed to submit it for IGF2009 already but I realized the game simply wasn't there yet.
I'm not saying that that's why I deserve it, hell no. I just tell you all those things to remind you that not the entire tr00th is on the table.
The other thing is that while it may be easy to blame the judge, many of us may not fully realize how hard it is. The process of playing one game after another and having to compare games with each other that may be like apples and oranges. I have never been a judge in such a competition myself but I have some background in design education and I know that evaluating somebody's creative output is very, very, very difficult. The more entries there are, the more difficult it gets.
And from my experience, introducing tiered system or some mathematic solutions doesn't really help. It just gives the judges less control, makes the system more sluggish and complex, creates more ways to subvert or misuse the system and and creates more cracks for games to fall trough.
I would agree that having more categories and more memorable mentions is something that simply needs to happen if the number of entries continues to rise. I don't know about the others but for me, I couldn't care less about the actual prize money. For me being nominated and the exposure you get is the most significant prize. So maybe there is a way to increase the number of nominations on expense of the actual prize.
Finally, looking back at my experience in design education there is a certain understanding how competitions like these generally work. In oder to be successful you need to be able to see the big picture and come up with something that stands out from the crowd. Look at all the entires from this year or so, try to see the patterns. Just very broad: how do the games look like? What values do they focus on? Then do something that is exceptional.
So for example, I believe if you are doing a very niche genre (twin stick shooter, 2D platformer, tower defense), you already made it very difficult for yourself. Because now you lost one aspect in which you can distinguish yourself (genre) and now put yourself in a position where you have so much competition you need to prove yourself against. The only scenario where you can win is now "it's like all these other games but X" with X being actually being something truly awesome and something that hits you in the face in the very few seconds you even play the game.
In some ways the chances are better if you go the path less traveled but that path has it's own pitfalls and problems. For example, it is much more difficult to foresee how well your game is going to be received when there is little you can compare it to. It is no accident that I devoted an entire level of TRAUMA to exactly that topic.
So you need to stand out but that's not enough. Because now that you got people's attention, you need to add value. You need to add a reason for why your game is important and something that is worth for to be seen and discussed by others. You need to add a second, deeper layer to it. You see, the judges don't want you to fail, they want your game to be awesome. You just need to give them good reasons for why your game is awesome.
Here is a good analogy. One guy once applied to the design university I studied at. I was helping out at the judging process. Somewhat similar situation. No real genre restrictions. Everybody can send in everything they want, there is just a vague topic as a broad guideline.
A lot of people sent in websites, illustrations, sketchbooks, posters.
One guy sent in a cake.
It certainly stood out. It was a very delicious cake and something the professors who judged him welcomed because the judging sessions were often getting very long at it was nice to have break with a piece of cake.
But then there was more to it. He also included a well-designed brochure that promoted a fictitious company, that makes all the cakes. There was a special service idea behind it and a unique business model that put a spin on the the topic and made a comment on society in general. The brochure was also good quality from a technical point of view with a lot attention on corporate identity and layout.
In such case, it is very difficult for a judge to reject such an applicant.
The lesson I took from that is in competitions like this you need to make things like the cake. You need to look at the bigger picture and make something that stands out. It also needs to have value and substance that rewards the attention it gets.
The other lesson I took from that is that cake is delicious and everybody is a sucker for cake.
I have no idea if this is why TRAUMA got nominated. It's always easy to say such things when you were successful, of course. There was no actual cake involved. I might have been just lucky. I just hope the game actually lives up to the exposure it now receives. I'm very happy of course and I would certainly like to believe that it deserves the nomination but I'm not somebody who can make that call, I'm too close to my own project. And even disregarding that, I'm glad that I didn't have to make that decision, especially after reading the comments here. Being a judge in a competition where everybody has put so much heart into their entry must me like the worst job ever. Either that or killing baby seals for a living.
(sorry for the long post, I'm emotional these days
)
Show Posts
But the look & feel kept me trying. After a restart, everything worked like it's supposed to. 
Fixed. 
