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[nyyjen]

Thanks for the advice. I think you are right and we should just push ourselves as hard as we can until the deadline. Submitting to IndieCade this year gave the game a big push forwards as well.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

submissions aren't even open till june. i think this thread is a wee bit premature

Are you gonna submit SD this year?

if people donate to pay for my IGF fee, sure. can't afford to pay for it myself (my yearly income is somewhere around $6000). last year, alex may and mrpodunkian paid for my igf fee. the year before, it was notch. the year before that, it was paid for by a kickstarter

as an aside, my paypal is [email protected] if anyone wants to donate to the IGF fee (all i can offer in exchange is that your name will go in the special thanks of my game and that i'll add you to the beta testing list -- beta testing should start around the time of the igf deadline)

It's highly likely that something will be getting submitted from these parts.

I'm wondering if Paul Eres will be submitting Saturated Dreamers, finally? :D

it's been entered the last three years in a row, actually. each time the feedback indicates that they stopped playing after about five minutes (most of the time they don't even get through the intro). i keep hoping that one day i'll get a judge who plays for like, at least half an hour or something, since it is a 30+ hour game. so basically the only thing the IGF has taught me is that i need a better intro

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

why don't we talk about the overlooked gems of IGF 2012 instead?
since IGF is nothing but a big joke anyway

unfortunately, this year i think the impression that it's a joke has now permeated into the mainstream. read the comments here:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/08/09/independent-games-festival-2013-submissions-open/

Too true, there’s a hell of a lot of nepotism in these awards and for what? Rock Star you aint, you’re just some over-hyped hipster who the untalented and unoriginal press are going to write about because they can’t objectify games into print.
Roll on the ego party.

Also.

“Suck on my dick, choke on it.”

Why should I care?

The only reason that such awards exist is to provide a measure of a given developers esteem amongst other developers. This does not equate to wider recognition, is not a measure of any given games quality within it’s genre and does not drive sales.

I do not base my purchases on whether or not any given game is an IGF finalist. I do not know if any of the games that I own have IGF awards and to be honest, as stated, I do not care.

IGF is a total wank! Multiple “winners” have never finished their games even 2-3 years later(I’m looking at you particularly Monaco). Until they stop treating this as a hipster exercise in masturbation consider me and the world at large, unimpressed and uninterested.

Pay 95$ for a judge not to play your game more than 5 minutes. Or at all if there’s any error during installation.

the one lone good comment was mixed:

Hmm… I think they are definitely useful. I’ve never seen a bad game be a finalist and I always check out the games that get nominated. Most years I discover a fair few interesting projects through the awards although the last one was very disappointing for that, especially with Fez winning again. Who did that benefit? Anybody who might be excited about Fez would have heard about it by then…

i'm one of the bigger critics of the IGF but even i don't agree with most of the negativity toward it shown in those comments. it has major problems, many of which its admins refuse to admit are problems, but it's not completely valueless

i feel that the greatest value isn't in who wins, but in who enters. if you go through the entered games (all 800+ of them) you'll find some great looking ones. i try to go through all the entries each year (at least in the sense of looking at their screenshots, reading their descriptions, and watching their trailers) and each year i find a bunch of great new games in the entries, even if those never become finalists

plus it's a sort of built-in deadline for a lot of games; a lot of devs rush to improve their games before the deadline (including me), which helps out indie games a lot (a lot of games would never have gotten done without the igf as motivation, even if they don't become finalists)

to paraphrase tale of tales about the igf: 'there should 800 grand prizes, everyone who enters the igf is a winner'

[ThemsAllTook]

The only reason that such awards exist is to provide a measure of a given developers esteem amongst other developers.

That's actually the part I care most about, personally. I don't have a mind for business, so I don't really think of entering my game into IGF having an effect on sales (moreover, all of my games so far have been freeware). I'd just be in it for the glory and recognition.

[Manuel Magalhães]

Legitimate question: You guys know how can I sign up as a judge? I remember that last year there was an email address.

I kinda dislike the five minute problem, which kinda made me not to sign up for IGF ever. But I recall that on last year's IGF thread Matthew (along others connected to the IGF) were talking for a solution, so I'm hoping things get better afterwards. I also like the "one time only award" rule. I won't participate this year only because I don't have a game done, but as a former game reviewer and a gamer I'd like to give my support on the voting lead.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@ThemsAllTook - ya, that's a good point. they say it like it's somehow a bad thing to want recognition for your efforts. if you work hard and finish a fun game you deserve to be recognized for having worked hard to finish a fun game. most indie devs (the less popular ones) are criminally unknown, and their games criminally underplayed

example: people would have just as much fun (if not more) with glum buster as they have with cave story or minecraft, but almost nobody knows about glum buster in comparison to those games, so they don't have that fun, so it almost feels like some of cosmind's 4+ years of working on that masterpiece was for nothing

[brog]

Legitimate question: You guys know how can I sign up as a judge? I remember that last year there was an email address.

Could try emailing brandon boyer? ([email protected]) I think that's what Matthew or someone said to do in last year's thread.

not sure whether I'm going to enter anything this year.  Pity they cut the mobile section; I'd have been pretty confident of getting into that, but essentially no chance otherwise.

[Manuel Magalhães]

Thanks brog, I'll try that.

[msmith]

i'm one of the bigger critics of the IGF but even i don't agree with most of the negativity toward it shown in those comments. it has major problems, many of which its admins refuse to admit are problems, but it's not completely valueless

i feel that the greatest value isn't in who wins, but in who enters. if you go through the entered games (all 800+ of them) you'll find some great looking ones. i try to go through all the entries each year (at least in the sense of looking at their screenshots, reading their descriptions, and watching their trailers) and each year i find a bunch of great new games in the entries, even if those never become finalists

plus it's a sort of built-in deadline for a lot of games; a lot of devs rush to improve their games before the deadline (including me), which helps out indie games a lot (a lot of games would never have gotten done without the igf as motivation, even if they don't become finalists)

to paraphrase tale of tales about the igf: 'there should 800 grand prizes, everyone who enters the igf is a winner'

I think Paul's comment is spot on. I entered last year's competition, and like most of us, my game wasn't nominated nor did I receive an honorable mention. It did however lead directly to a post on PCGamer, which helped drive awareness of it prior to the launch of the pre-order alpha. I realize that I was very fortunate, and the $95 entry fee isn't cheap, but it is possible to get some tangible value from it without winning or being nominated.

[melos]

the built-in deadline is a good point of it. i'm entering, ummmmm, for the experience? insanely unrealistic for me to expect to get anything from it. also the free student entry as well I s'pose since i can take advantage of that for another year

I really hope Fez entering again isn't a reality, though? IGF seems like it would be better to serve games that aren't already doing super well.

[Chris Pavia]

I really hope Fez entering again isn't a reality, though? IGF seems like it would be better to serve games that aren't already doing super well.

Fez isn't entering again, TIGS just gets a big boner for hating on it and/or Fish.

[melos]

I really hope Fez entering again isn't a reality, though? IGF seems like it would be better to serve games that aren't already doing super well.

Fez isn't entering again, TIGS just gets a big boner for hating on it and/or Fish.

oh okay, that's good. mostly because I think it wouldn't be fair if games others have worked on for years and could use the press gets "beaten" by something that's doing well.

the hate on fish is a little extreme, but i just take it to be a running joke now

[sigfarter]

man i really wish fez was running again

[Tuba]

Fez is running in the Best Fez category.

[fish]

i might enter a thing or two.

[eyeliner]

Great! We now can talk trash about you, then.

[Blademasterbobo]

i might enter a thing or two.

if you end up judging again, don't forget to vote down people who already have press or a contract with microsoft

[DavidCaruso]

Yo fish I hope you win, just so that I can be entertained with a 300 page drama thread on judge bias and secret indie elite meetings that take place on the second Tuesday of every month in a candlelit crypt beneath the Jefferson Memorial which can only be located by a combination of Freemason initiation rites, secret keycodes and fingerprint patterns hidden within Daisuke Amaya's body of work, and the encoded Egyptian hieroglyphics that are given to you when your game is successful on XBLA. I think Dan Brown is writing a book about this though so be careful because he might accost you on the street when you're going to your favorite frappuccino joint or glasses store or pool to swim in while those glasses are still on.

[Blademasterbobo]

writing off people saying fish is a douchebag as a "conspiracy theory" is pretty amazing but ok

i mean it's not like it's a secret that he entered his game when it had already won an award once (and after he had told someone he voted for another game because the other game needed it more, lol)

[DavidCaruso]

He is a douchebag and I haven't played his game but everything about it seems bad (hence why it won the IGF), none of this means I can't be entertained.