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[Manuel Magalhães]

I agree, aside from Dear Escher the Visual Art category was kinda "heh". Not awful*, but there were better looking games in there. (likes the ones Paul mentioned)

*that said I don't like Botanicula's look at all nor Mirage and I dislike the character design in Lume, although the later is a pretty game.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

my theory is that the visual jurists are mostly modern artists; there can't be any other explanation

The jury consists of the following:

- Steven Burgess (now indie, formerly designer of LostWinds at Frontier)
- Rex Crowle (creative director at LittleBigPlanet creators Media Molecule)
- Grant Duncan (founding member & artist on Hello Games' IGF finalist Joe Danger)
- Auriea Harvey (co-founder of Tale of Tales, the studio behind The Endless Forest, The Path, Fatale and 2009 Nuovo finalist The Graveyard)
- David Hellman (artist on games including Number None's Braid)
- Richard Hogg (artist on Honeyslug games including Poto & Cabenga & Frobisher Says)
- Liselore Goedhart (artist at Bohm creators Monobanda)
- Anders Gustafsson & Erik Zaring (creators & artists behind IGF finalist The Dream Machine)
- Mike Roush (co-founder & artist at BIT.TRIP creators Gaijin Games)
- Ben Ruiz (art director formerly at Flashbang Studios on games like Off-Road Velociraptor Safari & Minotaur China Shop)
- Patrick Smith (as 'Vectorpark', creator of games & interactive toys like Windosill, Feed the Head & Levers)

[Blademasterbobo]

Snapshot is another one

[ANtY]

i just want to point out that this game got an honorable mention for visuals, whereas dust or the iconoclasts both didn't:

fader:



c.f.

dust:


iconoclasts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv8-RZ3vljw

my theory is that the visual jurists are mostly modern artists; there can't be any other explanation

Looks like a bad joke 

[:^)]

fader looks like a joke?

[ANtY]

fader looks like a joke?

Decision to place it higher than those 2 games (and a lot more others) in the category of visuals.

I know that lately everyone loves minimalism and retro pixels but 

[Manuel Magalhães]

Fader looks neat, but The Iconoclausts and Dusk look a lot better.

[ANtY]

Fader looks neat, but The Iconoclausts and Dusk look a lot better.

The word you're looking for is acceptable  

(if there's no other art than that showed on the trailer)

[:^)]

i think i just realized that competitions are stupid.

[Manuel Magalhães]

Fader looks neat, but The Iconoclausts and Dusk look a lot better.

The word you're looking for is acceptable  

(if there's no other art than that showed on the trailer)

Yeah, acceptable sounds like a better term for it.

[Dragonmaw]

As I mentioned earlier, the juries try to have a strong varied selection in the finalists. It's been that way for each year I've judged, anyway.

[Matthew]

There is already a list of judges sorted by activity level (scores and comments).  This list is used to cull the judge pool every year.

This my personal opinion, but I think 5 minutes can be totally fine.  It all depends on context, obviously.  Here's one scenario:  You read a description of a game (that presents itself as a very genre-driven title), you watch the video, you read other comments from judges (something like "does this get better?", followed by a "no, it doesn't--here's what I found" from a judge you know and respect).  You play for 5 minutes, to see if the actual interactions match up with your impression, and don't see any reason to check that "this is awesome, jury should have a look" button.

From my point of view that's totally fine.  I actually don't know what the official IGF stance is on judge play time, but I guess that won't stop many of you from quoting me in 140-character snippets or whatever.

Keep in mind that a jury member could still bring up any game on the discussion list!  Weak judge votes just means it's farther down on the list of games each jury starts with.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Keep in mind that a jury member could still bring up any game on the discussion list!  Weak judge votes just means it's farther down on the list of games each jury starts with.

I purposely went and played one game on my jury list that had no assigned judge votes for it cause I felt sad for it.

Wasn't memorable or i'd remember what game it was.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Here's one scenario:  You read a description of a game (that presents itself as a very genre-driven title), you watch the video, you read other comments from judges (something like "does this get better?", followed by a "no, it doesn't--here's what I found" from a judge you know and respect).  You play for 5 minutes, to see if the actual interactions match up with your impression, and don't see any reason to check that "this is awesome, jury should have a look" button.

i thought the point of having multiple judges for a game was to get different perspectives on a game? if a judge can use another judge's opinion of a game as an excuse not to play it, even though it was assigned to them, that sort of defeats the purpose of having multiple judges

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

As I mentioned earlier, the juries try to have a strong varied selection in the finalists. It's been that way for each year I've judged, anyway.

that doesn't really explain it still, because there wasn't a visual category finalist with good large-character cartoony animation (which would take dust's place), or a visual category finalist with good pixel art (which would take the iconoclast's place)

[Hangedman]

Variety within a category doesn't mean nominating something for each possible visual style, as such possibilities are infinite, just that the selected nominations have varied visual styles compared to each other so a broad spectrum of styles are represented

A moment's entertainment, but I don't believe this needed explaining and yet here we are

[Matthew]

Here's one scenario:  You read a description of a game (that presents itself as a very genre-driven title), you watch the video, you read other comments from judges (something like "does this get better?", followed by a "no, it doesn't--here's what I found" from a judge you know and respect).  You play for 5 minutes, to see if the actual interactions match up with your impression, and don't see any reason to check that "this is awesome, jury should have a look" button.

i thought the point of having multiple judges for a game was to get different perspectives on a game? if a judge can use another judge's opinion of a game as an excuse not to play it, even though it was assigned to them, that sort of defeats the purpose of having multiple judges

If that's the only part of the paragraph I wanted to say, that would have been the only part of the paragraph I would have typed.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i didn't mention the other parts of the paragraph because i agree with those parts, i only highlighted the part i was questionable about. the rest is fine, i just am unsure of the purpose of multiple judges if they are going to take each other's word on how to score a game

it'd be like the four judges of an ice skating competition all following the score that one of the four gave. the reason there are four of them is so that an average of their scores is more accurate than any one individual's score. they can't be like 'oh, i didn't actually watch the ice skating thing, but my judge friend whom i trust gave it a 9.75, so i'll go with that'

[Glaiel-Gamer]

they aren't following the score, they're using it as info ("This game changes drastically from bad to good at 20 minutes" = incentive to keep playing an otherwise bad game)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the incentive should be that they are judges and that they agreed to play through the games and judge them; they shouldn't need additional incentive other than that

i feel that if a judge treats playing and judging games like a chore rather than as a privileged and an honor, they shouldn't be a judge