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[increpare]

Yes, I totally agree, and is what I am talking about.

he was agreeing to something I said rather than glaiel.  I deleted my post because I realized I don't want to post here.  I'm sorry.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

kool the igf defenders are trolling again before it even starts!!1

need to get the jokes in before this turns into a 10 pages per hour bickerfest of bickering like last year

[Hangedman]

Well, just about all the nominees, as far as I can tell, excel in the fields in which they have been selected.

Desktop Dungeons is excellently designed, Minecraft has an interesting and complex technical base ('hurr hurr procgen don't count' doesn't fly anymore, because while anyone can do it it generally sucks unless you do it right), Bastion looks fantastic, and Nidhogg looks like hella fun and both simple and complex (a big thing for design) and Super Crate Box is tighter than a horrible metaphor for tightness. And that's just the few I recall off the top of my head.

Good games being rewarded for being good games.
So what's the problem again?

[simoniker]

But get for example some random game that noone ever heard from Africa... Unless it is 10 times better than any other games, it won't get nominated for anything, and will be played only by the judges that mandatorily had to play it (each judge receive a set of games to play, and they can play others if wanted, obviously lots of judges would play Super Crate Box, Bit.Trip, etc... but no judge would play that unknown african game).

Just so everyone understands how the judging process went this year - we _did_ allow the main set of judges to play and recommend games outside of their allotted set this year. It's certainly true that in the initial judging phase, games that people have heard of (and are also good!) might have got more 'recommendations'.

However, the smaller award-specific juries then took a close look at basically any games that had more than one recommendation - and in many cases went down into the single recommendations. These games had a pretty much level playing field - the voting starts from scratch.

So it meant that the most-recommended games were certainly NOT necessarily the finalists, and I definitely saw correction for that possible bias in the second stage. You just had to have your allotted judges in the first stage dig your game. Even if you had a great game that nobody had EVER heard of before, you can still be nominated. So... that's our fix for that.

Ta!
Simon@IGF.

[eva_]

kool the igf defenders are trolling again before it even starts!!1

need to get the jokes in before this turns into a 10 pages per hour bickerfest of bickering like last year

what about people who just want to discuss the nominees, label them as losers cos they didnt get nominated!!!!
loser

[brandonnn]

And I'll add, too, that in nearly every jury, we had at least one dark horse game come up from nowhere that wasn't a huge hit from the judges but that someone in the jury seized on and spread around -- some that made it to the finalist list/runner up, some that didn't!

Also, I'd love to hear more about that #1 Brazilian game no one in the states has heard of before!

[speeder]

Good to hear about those changes :D

But like I said, bias is inherent of how things work, everyone is biased, it is impossible to completely remove bias.

But there are no problem with that, fighting something you can't fight is pointless.

But the changes are welcome.



To those that think I am just a random IGF basher angry that my game don't got nominated:
First, what I said apply to any competition...
Second, I don't entered my game on main IGF (95 USD is hell a lot of money to me, and I really mean it).
Third, yet I still think that even biased and with all other problems, there are no problem in trying, so I did submitted my game to the Student category (and I am awaiting for the finalists :D)

[speeder]

And I'll add, too, that in nearly every jury, we had at least one dark horse game come up from nowhere that wasn't a huge hit from the judges but that someone in the jury seized on and spread around -- some that made it to the finalist list/runner up, some that didn't!

Also, I'd love to hear more about that #1 Brazilian game no one in the states has heard of before!

Erm, what? Me?

[eva_]

the only problem i have is minecraft being in technical and desktop dungeons being in mcnally but whatever igf's dum anyway

[mirosurabu]

I'm actually gratified that Cave Story got the nom in Visual, since that's one of the things that's changed since the last version.

I'm amused by this nomination, but still can't decide if it's deserved or not.

Cave Story has a relatively nice artwork, and when I say Cave Story I mean the original one. (the Wii version is just a hi-res version, so it's not a remarkable improvement) It's nice, but at this time - nothing special. There were 391 IGF entrants and 5 nominations for this category. Does this mean that 296 games have completely unremarkable visual art?

Cave Story is a good game and it probably deserves Grand Prize nomination (in case IGF wasn't focused on showcasing brand new talent). But does it really deserve "Excellence in Visual Art" nomination?

I am not so sure.

I mean, did you guys nominate because it's Cave Story and because you were uncomfortable nominating it for Grand Prize? Did you!?

[Glaiel-Gamer]

the only problem i have is minecraft being in technical

this is why there were juries. Minecraft IS incredibly complex technically, though I don't expect anyone who isn't a programmer to truly appreciate it. Read all the comments everywhere about "why can't this blocky looking game run well on my pentium 2? wtf?". Rendering THAT MANY cubes, procedurally generating an infinite and INTERESTING world, simulating it AND having networked multiplayer (all custom written) is no easy task.

Far better choice at least than picking every game with shaders and physics to be in that category.

[simoniker]

I mean, did you guys nominate because it's Cave Story and because you were uncomfortable nominating it for Grand Prize? Did you!?

Again, look at how we did things this year. There's a standalone Visual Art jury comprised solely of artists - http://igf.com/2010/12/2011_independent_games_festiva_5.html - who independently nominated that prize. A completely separate set of indie smartalecs did the Grand Prize nominations (with an overlap of two or three people).

So I think all these kind of 'mental trade-off' concepts are pretty much disprovable with our newest voting scheme, woo.

[simoniker]

this is why there were juries. Minecraft IS incredibly complex technically, though I don't expect anyone who isn't a programmer to truly appreciate it.

Oh, and it's worth noting that we actually got written statements from all of the coders of the Technical nominees that got multiple recommendations, because the jury (of coders!) wanted to know exactly what the programmers of the games thought was impressive under the hood. This was Ron Carmel's idea, and a good one.

[eva_]

"why can't this game run well on my pentium 2? wtf?"

there thats all i see

[Glaiel-Gamer]

"why can't this game run well on my pentium 2? wtf?"

there thats all i see

"why can't halo run on my snes?"

[mirosurabu]

Again, look at how we did things this year. There's a standalone Visual Art jury comprised solely of artists - http://igf.com/2010/12/2011_independent_games_festiva_5.html - who independently nominated that prize. A completely separate set of indie smartalecs did the Grand Prize nominations (with an overlap of two or three people).

So I think all these kind of 'mental trade-off' concepts are pretty much disprovable with our newest voting scheme, woo.

Oh, okay, that challenges my silly theory. I'll wait for the jury statement then.

[phubans]

I'm actually surprised Super Crate Box didn't get nominated after all the aggressive marketing on JW's behalf.

[facepalm]

I'm actually surprised Super Crate Box didn't get nominated after all the aggressive marketing on JW's behalf.

It's one of the nominees in Excellence In Design.

[eva_]

"why can't this game run well on my pentium 2? wtf?"

there thats all i see

"why can't halo run on my snes?"

why cant you shut up

[Dragonmaw]

the only problem i have is minecraft being in technical

this is why there were juries. Minecraft IS incredibly complex technically, though I don't expect anyone who isn't a programmer to truly appreciate it. Read all the comments everywhere about "why can't this blocky looking game run well on my pentium 2? wtf?". Rendering THAT MANY cubes, procedurally generating an infinite and INTERESTING world, simulating it AND having networked multiplayer (all custom written) is no easy task.

Far better choice at least than picking every game with shaders and physics to be in that category.

This.

Although Neverdaunt is also a very impressive game to me, technically. Miegakure is too, but it was nominated for an award last year (Nuovo? Design? I forget).