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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

budget has almost nothing to do with the quality of a game

i'm not sure how you read 'budget has to do with the quality of the game' out of what i said? of course i agree with you, but budget has to do with whether or not a game will benefit as much from winning. for some games, the prize of $30k/$2.5k is more than their entire budget, for other games it's a tiny fraction of their budget.

@matthew - yeah, i definitely agree that sundance has problems of its own, and wasn't trying to put it on a pedestal or anything. just that it does say on the igf site that it's intended to be a sort of sundance for indie games, and giving attention and $30k/$2.5k to projects that have 3 million dollar budgets doesn't seem to me to be something sundance would do (although perhaps they've done that; i'm not too familiar with all their winners)

[AndySchatz]

I'm entering Monaco.  Hoping for an art award this year.

(In all seriousness, I'm glad Phil is entering Fez because it's really not the same game)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you should; monaco needs to win every igf, it looks great

(i haven't been following monaco news as closely as i should have though -- is there a new trailer since the last one yet?)

[AndySchatz]

Thanks!  It's coming pretty close to done, can't wait to unleash it.  When it's out I will ABSOLUTELY find a way to release the original IGF version in some manner, just so people can see the tiny project that won the awards.

[cynicalsandel]

Is there a storytelling award yet?

[Hempuli‽]

Submitting Officer Alfred this year. I'm always kind of excited about the whole IGF thing, but then again the feeling of my games not really being good/innovative enough to win or nominate is kind of overwhelming; I'm by no means expecting to get anything out of this year's IGF since there always are much much better stuff. (Though to be honest, this year I feel more confident than before)

One interesting point I've noted that it's very rare that a game winning in some of the categories is not already known to the main indie crowd; it sometimes feels as if the games that were previously covered in indie media for being innovative and such have a higher chance of succeeding (which is probably true). On the other hand, it might be just that those games that get coverage are just plain better than the ones that don't, but I'm not quite sure if that's really true in some cases.

I'm off to sign a million dollar advertizing program --> 

[Zaphos]

@matthew - yeah, i definitely agree that sundance has problems of its own, and wasn't trying to put it on a pedestal or anything. just that it does say on the igf site that it's intended to be a sort of sundance for indie games, and giving attention and $30k/$2.5k to projects that have 3 million dollar budgets doesn't seem to me to be something sundance would do (although perhaps they've done that; i'm not too familiar with all their winners)

fwiw the average sundance film had a budget of 1 million dollars in 2010, and there was a special award category for films made for under $500,000.
ref: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/02/make-your-own-oscar-contender-on-a-low-budget/

[Kinaetron]

The issue I have with this is that if this continues it will likely lead to the IGF finals being filled with iterative projects which have been seen many times before instead of new unique games that it was created to show off in the first place. This could easily lead to the kind of stagnation issues we see in the mainstream game industry at the moment.

I know its been mentioned by the IGF that they will take stronger action against re-entering finalists, I just hope they will keep their word.     

[Glaiel-Gamer]

Budget for an indie game is not easy to measure.

2 people x 3 years of living expenses adds up to a LOT of money. Are we a high budget game because of that? Or a low budget game, because we could just as easily not count living expenses as part of a budget. What if someone else covers living expenses for you? Or if you work part time to cover expenses, does that count as part of your budget?

[AndySchatz]

For reference:
   
2011:
Grand Prize: Minecraft
Nuovo: Nidhogg
Visual Arts: BIT.TRIP RUNNER
Audio: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Design: Desktop Dungeons
Student: FRACT
Technical: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Mobile: Helsing's Fire
 
2010:
Grand Prize: Monaco
Visual Art: Limbo
Audio: Closure
Design: Monaco
Nuovo: Tuning
Technical: Limbo
Student: Continuity

2009:
Grand Prize: Blueberry Garden
Nuovo: Between
Visual Art: Machinarium
Audio: BrainPipe
Technical: Cortex Command
Design: Musaic Box
Student: Tag: The Power of Paint

2008:
Grand Prize: Crayon Physics Deluxe
Design: World of Goo
Visual Art: Fez
Browser: Iron Dukes
Audio: Audiosurf
Technical: World of Goo
Student: Synaesthete

[Triplefox]

Submitted Moto. Made a little trailer for it too:




And let a handful of blogs know, maybe they'll pick it up. One never knows

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@jimmy - yeah i mentioned the new category, but it's interesting to hear about the average budget, thanks for the info

@glaiel-gamer - living expenses for 2 people for 3 years is about, let's say 11k*6 (poverty border is ~11k for an individual i believe). so that's $66,000. that's still orders of magnitude less than games with 3 million dollar budgets; i'd consider a $66k budget (or anything below, say, $200k) reasonable for an igf winner, but when you get into the millions of dollars in funding level, that's comparable with many mainstream games, especially if the funding is upfront from investors or a publisher rather than something the devs have to work side jobs or use savings to fund

[deathtotheweird]

(In all seriousness, I'm glad Phil is entering Fez because it's really not the same game)

it's not the same game directly due to the fact it won an IGF award. that gives it certain advantages over the other contestants don't you think?

[hyperduck]

So let's talk about some more IGF entries for 2012!

[Hangedman]

I'm entering my little game.

[Fallsburg]

Trying my best to not take sides here, but if you don't think Fez should win, submit a better game? No competition can be as level a playing field as you want unless everyone starts out broke.

Yeah, it's almost like the competition is devoted to helping smaller developers get noticed or something.  /sarcasm

Or

So, the way to go about it is:
1) Create good looking art
2) Use the publicity of IGF to fund my game
3) Actually make the game
4) Use the publicity of IGF to market my game
5) Win
/yet still even more sarcasm

My stance is:
Release the best damn game you can.  If it wins, congrats, you've won your prize, please step to the side.  If you are unhappy that it didn't win the highest award, and you're going to make it better, etc. then that is too bad, you should have waited a year (x2,x3,x4, whatevs) until you were done.  If it doesn't win then try again in the future.  It's not that hard.

I think it should go further then not allowing finalists to re-enter.  I think no one should be allowed to re-enter.  None of this iterative bs.  Maybe this stifles creativity, I honestly don't know, but I don't know of another competition that allows people to enter the same work, year after year.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i may or may not enter depending on if i can find the money -- perhaps i could offer limited pre-orders of SD for one day and see if that will cover the entry fee

@fllsburg - people don't usually enter the same exact game, they do work on it during the year so that it's improved each year. braid was entered once before it won a prize i believe

[Geti]

Me and Michal are entering/have entered KAG. We'll see how it goes, we're knuckling down at the moment so I haven't even been thinking about this very much.

[Hempuli‽]

How about people entering posting screenshots or something? I'd love to see a bit what kind of stuff is going to be entered!

@Fallsburg: I'm not going to take sides in this Fez thing, but I really disagree with that last thing. Many people create several games with potential, it'd just be horribly mean to disallow retries.

Also for the record: my game is a demo so I really appreciate IGF encouraging that, thank you. 

[Fallsburg]

i may or may not enter depending on if i can find the money -- perhaps i could offer limited pre-orders of SD for one day and see if that will cover the entry fee

@fllsburg - people don't usually enter the same exact game, they do work on it during the year so that it's improved each year. braid was entered once before it won a prize i believe

No, trust me I understand that people aren't entering the EXACT SAME GAME.  That would be silly.  But they are entering the same game in some manner of thought.