AGS Awards - categories discussion [results!]

[bicilotti]

edit 24/04/14: results here!

As promised, I open this thread to discuss (and finally decide) proposals on categories for next year's Awards.
A number of points have been made, unfortunately I can't paste/quote/link them all; some of them were:  m0ds, Snarky, dactylopus, Andail, Abisso, Problem, qNemo.
Andail did set up a poll too (results here), which gives us a general idea of where we are heading.

After a bit of brainstorming, these were the proposals people came up with:

• Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
  
  
  
  • Yes, "Best Commercial game", commercial games can compete only in this category.
  • Yes, for each category (Music, Backgrounds, etc.) have a "best commercial game" and "best freeware game".
  • Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.
  • Leave things as they are.



• Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
  
  
  
  • ...merge ________ into Best Music&Sound:
    
    
    
    • Music/SFX/Voice into Best Music&Sound.
    • Music/SFX into Best Music&Sound (leave Voice-Acting alone).
    • Voice/SFX into Best Sound Design (leave Music alone).
    • Leave things as they are.
  • ...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
    
    
    
    • Yes.
    • Leave things as they are.
  • ...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
    
    
    
    • Backgrounds/Animation/Character-Art into Best Artwork.
    • Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
    • replace BGs/CA/Ani with Best Sprite Art plus Best Artwork.
    • Leave things as they are.
  • ...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
    
    
    
    • Programming/Gameplay/Puzzles into Best Game Design.
    • Gameplay/Puzzles into Best Game Design (leave programming alone).
    • forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!
    • Leave things as they are.
  • ...drop best Player Character/Non-Player Character:
    
    
    
    • yup, both
    • merge them in Best Character (whether Player controlled or else)
    • Leave things as they are.
• Should we add more categories?
      For this question, just input 0 or more categories. The ones which will reach >50% of the ballots will pass.
      To date, suggestions have been:
          Best Horror                        Best Comedy
          Best Drama                         Best Science Fiction
          Best Setting/Gameworld             Best Atmosphere
          Best Experimental Game             Best Resource
          Best Newcomer**                    Best Puzzle (single Puzzle)
          Best Game in Communal Series*      Most Daring Interface
          Most Thought Provoking Experience  Best User Interface
          Best Voice Actor (single)
  
          * (OcenSpirit Dennis, Reality on the Norm, Maniac Mansion Mania, etc.)
          ** or Best Breakthrough of the Year / Debut game, see this
  
     or add your own.
  

Cast your preferences (like so) or post to propose more options. You can change your preferences, but please warn me if you do so.
Thanks for your participation!

[Galen]

The amount of freeware games generaly far outnumber the amount of commercial games, so limiting one catagory to commercial games makes more sense than the inverse.

It also makes sense to segregate the two. While a freeware game isn't necessary worse, having a budget and full-time development does tend to make a rather substantial difference.

Merging Music and Sound together makes sense, Voice Acting is pretty destinct from the rest of the sound quality though. Likewise story and dialog are intrinsically linked with little seperation, having them boiled down into 'Best Story' makes sense. I'd consider animation and art slightly different, but the difference between character art and background art seem negligible.

Best programming just has no reason to exist. It is a behind the scenes skill. If they programmed in a cool effect then nominate them for best art, if they programmed in a cool gameplay feature or puzzle then nominate them for best gameplay.

[Baron]

My opinion is that before we talk categories, we've got to talk mission.  What are the AGS awards for?  If it's just a popularity contest, why not just have one award ("Best Game")?  Now I don't begrudge the winners of the best game award their due glory, but I have my suspicions that their popularity causes votes to spill over into other categories that, though deserving, they might not actually be "the best" in.

A few examples:

This year Heroine's Quest won 69% (11/16) of all voted awards (and consider that it wasn't eligible for Best Demo, Short Game, & Non-Adventure).  Out of a pool of 110 games.  With 22 rated 4 cups or more by the players (the rating panel hasn't got to most of them).  What are the chances?

In 2012 Resonance won 71% (12/17) of all voted awards. (same eligibility caveat)

In 2011 it was Gemini Rue with 41% (7/17). (ditto)

In 2010 it was The Journey Down with 65% (11/17). (ditto again)

Now don't get me wrong, these were all GREAT games!  But the blockbuster phenomena pretty much makes voting by categories redundant.  If all we want to do is glorify the single most popular game made with AGS then why not just have one single BEST GAME award?

Alternatively, the awards could be about showcasing the diverse talent pool that is the AGS community, giving exposure to games that wouldn't necessarily otherwise get them.  How do we do this fairly?  We could create award categories that emphasize diversity of genres, like Best Horror or Best Fantasy Game; or categories that reward innovation over simply being best, like Most Daring Interface or Most Thought Provoking Experience.  Or we could make it a community event and have preview clips of each nominated game, like at the Oscars, followed by an online poll at the ceremony itself (adding to the suspense and hopefully attendance as well).  Obviously that last idea would require much more coordination of an already laborious process, but my point is that actually seeing examples of the best that each game has to offer juxtaposed might counteract the herd-mentality of voters a bit. 

In summary, I think the awards need a bit of a shake-up to stay relevant. 

[Stupot]

I like the categories more or less as they are.  Merging them might not be fair.  For example, if you merge SFX/Voice/Music, what if a game had a great orchestral soundtrack but rubbish voice acting and sound effects? The composer of the soundtrack might miss out on some well-deserved recognition.

Asfor Baron's point about the blockbuster phenomenon.  What if there were no 'best game' voting category and instead we voted in all the smaller category and the 'best game' was decided by which game had the most other votes?  Although, I'm not sure I like that idea myself, but just throwing it out there.

[TomatoesInTheHead]

Some thoughts extending on Baron's post: What if the Best Game would automatically be not eligible for any other awards? Or if each game could only get one award, the one it most deserves, so to speak? It would afford a different voting system, where you essentially vote on all games in all categories they're in, so that when e.g. the game you vote for Best Music wins the Best Game award, you still vote on the rest of the games for Best Music.
Or maybe each game can only be nominated for one category in the first place, but then, when you don't win in that category, say, Best Game, you can't win anything else either.

Category-wise, I'd say Best Animations and Best Character Art could merge into something like Best Spriting. Best Dialog and Best Story one the other hand, to me are not too much overlapping, a game could have funny dialogs without having a great story to tell, and a truly immersive story can feature rather unoriginal dialog. Best SFX could go, IMO, I don't recall having paid that much attention to sound effects or thinking "Man, that's a game with outstanding sound effects!" - they still help making good games much better though.

[Snarky]

The amount of freeware games generaly far outnumber the amount of commercial games, so limiting one catagory to commercial games makes more sense than the inverse.

Keep in mind that the two options are not exact parallels: the proposal for the "Best Commercial Game" category is to also exclude commercial games from all the other categories. The alternative "Best Freeware Game" category would leave all the (other) categories open to all games.

Personally I think it's much better to have a system where a bunch of deserving games aren't excluded from a category because of some other, arbitrary factor. Good graphics are good graphics whether you have to pay for the game or not.

Perhaps most importantly, without a "Best Game" category where all AGS games can compete, I think the awards lose almost all credibility. If we have a "Best Commercial Game" category, you can't call the category with just freeware games competing "Best Game" any more.

It also makes sense to segregate the two. While a freeware game isn't necessary worse, having a budget and full-time development does tend to make a rather substantial difference.

But lots of commercial games weren't full-time projects, while some freeware games have comparable production values. If you look at Baron's list of "blockbusters", half of those are freeware titles.

We're also starting to see more commercial games that focus on some particular strengths without necessarily trying to match old-school Sierra/LucasArts/Revolution games in overall production values, such as Conspirocracy this year. To me (as to the game makers) it seems more appropriate to have such entries competing alongside all other AGS games in all the categories.

For me it really comes down to: The AGS Awards are about recognizing the qualities of AGS games. Commercial AGS games are still AGS games, hence they should not be excluded just on that basis.

My opinion is that before we talk categories, we've got to talk mission.  What are the AGS awards for?  If it's just a popularity contest, why not just have one award ("Best Game")?  Now I don't begrudge the winners of the best game award their due glory, but I have my suspicions that their popularity causes votes to spill over into other categories that, though deserving, they might not actually be "the best" in.

Possible counterpoint to that: "blockbuster" games become blockbusters precisely because they are strong across the board, and therefore competitive in most categories. Of course, in any category there is probably a popularity effect (mainly, I think, because some voters may not have played all the nominated games; that applies even more strongly so at the nominations stage, obviously), but personally I don't see a lot of evidence that the big award winners are taking home a lot of prizes they don't deserve. (In the case of HQ, while it faced worthy competition for a lot of the categories, there are only two awards it won where there was an, IMHO, clearly better alternative... And if you try to guess which two, I'm pretty sure we would find we all have different opinions.)

[miguel]

HQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won. Best Game is the sum of all fixtures, in my opinion.
But there's really nothing we can do about it, if a game gets popular it will raise more votes and people will throw their vote if and when they're not sure about a particular category.

The only way I think we can change things a bit, meaning giving less popular games some more attention is to actually increase the number of categories and hope that voters become more focused and specific on their voting.

As for commercial vs freeware my opinion still divides. This year we had a great free game and things got balanced but it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.

[Snarky]

HQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won.

Well, I for one voted for it in a lot of the categories it won (though not all; OTOH, I possibly voted for it in one or two it didn't win), because having played at least a significant chunk of all the nominated games in the category, I genuinely felt it was the best of the nominees.

We've had variations of this discussion pretty much every year for as long as I've been here, and in the past, the organizer, looking at individual votes, has found that there aren't a lot of people who just "vote the slate": pick one favorite game that they vote for for basically every award where it's nominated. But different people don't all agree on which categories it shouldn't take home, or which of the other nominees should win instead, so taking all the individual ballots together you often end up with a near-sweep. (Remember, if a game takes only 40% of the votes in a particular category, but there's no one clear favorite among the alternatives, it's still going to win.)

it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.

I certainly have no idea, though with the strong roster of commercial games set to hopefully be released this year (Samaritan Paradox, A Golden Wake, Blackwell, QFI, Nelly 2, Mage's Initiation, + several others) there's clearly a good chance it will be a commercial title.

[tzachs]

I have a suggestion:
Before you vote, you will be presented with the list of all games which are nominated for at least one award, and requested to check the games you have played. Then you will be given the ability to vote only for those awards for which you've played all the nominees.
This will prevent scenarios of outside voters voting for their favorite game even though they didn't check out the competition.

[miguel]

Quote from: miguel on Today at 10:41

    it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.




I certainly have no idea, though with the strong roster of commercial games set to hopefully be released this year (Samaritan Paradox, A Golden Wake, Blackwell, QFI, Nelly 2, Mage's Initiation, + several others) there's clearly a good chance it will be a commercial title.

You are very sure of most things and surprisingly unsure of others, but the list speaks for it self.

HQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won.


Well, I for one voted for it in a lot of the categories it won (though not all; OTOH, I possibly voted for it in one or two it didn't win), because having played at least a significant chunk of all the nominated games in the category, I genuinely felt it was the best of the nominees.

I played all the games nominated and my votes where pretty much more disperse. Although I did vote HQ for best game.

[Snarky]

I have a suggestion:
Before you vote, you will be presented with the list of all games which are nominated for at least one award, and requested to check the games you have played. Then you will be given the ability to vote only for those awards for which you've played all the nominees.
This will prevent scenarios of outside voters voting for their favorite game even though they didn't check out the competition.

I think that would be a nice idea to encourage people to be honest, but it's hardly going to stop someone who's determined to enter their votes regardless.

You are very sure of most things and surprisingly unsure of others, but the list speaks for it self.

I am very sure about things I have direct knowledge of. Or did you perhaps mean that I have strong opinions on a number of issues, which is quite another matter?

And you find it surprising that I am unsure about which one (if any) out of many promising-looking games that have yet to be released and that I have yet to play will "win next year's awards"? That is a very strange comment, in my opinion. Many of them are made by people who have won lots of awards in the past, so it's hardly going to be an easy victory for whichever one takes "Best Game" in the end.

So, please enlighten me. (Over PM, if you'd prefer.) Which one is the game that "most of us" already know is going to win?

I played all the games nominated and my votes where pretty much more disperse. Although I did vote HQ for best game.

That just seems to prove that people's opinions differ, and therefore that just because you don't think it deserved all the other awards, that doesn't mean the people who voted for it in those categories didn't do their own honest evaluation and conclude that it did.

[Mandle]

Maybe a 2nd place award for some categories, especially Best Game?

For when a Godzilla of a game like HQ comes around again, probably about as often as Halley's Comet... 

[miguel]

Snarky, if you wanted a PM debate you wouldn't start quoting me publicly.
But just between us I'll send you the big winner for next year's AGS award by PM. We can even place a small bet just to make things interesting.

Now, when I said that you seem to be sure of many things except who will be the next winner I meant just that. You are someone with little doubts about many subjects although fail to see something that has been consistent year after year.
Okay, next year we'll have many commercial games on the roll, and you think (and probably many more) that it will have an effect on the final voting. It does make sense but our little bet is still up because I'm not entirely sure if quality over marketing will be enough to ensure a "fair" decision.

Just a question, because I don't know. I really changed my mind sometimes over this and still can't end up with a good solution. But, is there any room for one-man games next year?
I know that things evolve and that my conversation sounds pretty conservative and that to have good quality AGS games is a good (excellent) thing and never something bad. It means that the engine is capable of producing good commercial games and what better showcase can we get?
I'm just a bit sceptical, I'm getting old or something like that. I don't know.

That just seems to prove that people's opinions differ, and therefore that just because you don't think it deserved all the other awards, that doesn't mean the people who voted for it in those categories didn't do their own honest evaluation and conclude that it did.

This is too elaborate for my tiny head, Snarky. What I said doesn't prove anything, really. When I wrote that after playing all the games I distributed my votes there's nothing else to say.
What I do know is that it's easy to vote for a popular name/brand when you're not sure and that clearly happens every year. But, with this in mind and I can't really remember my votes (alzheimer or maybe too much high-school weed) I know I voted HQ for 3 categories.
That's why I suggested that increasing the categories could lead to more independent voting. I was one of the persons to vote for less categories on the poll, call me crazy, I know. It seamed too much and now I think it created a problem.

I don't have a solution for the voting system, maybe it is the best we can get right now. And after all my talk and arguments the truth is that 90 something voters choose their games and that's that.
 

[ddq]

The most popular game will win the most awards. People are told to play all the games before voting and they don't. What I propose is to have an opt-in academy system that anyone can join, in which the player must verify with an academy moderator that they have completed every game in the category before being able to vote, possibly by sending a screenshot or photo of them reaching the endings. This could be done on a category basis, so someone wouldn't have to play every best short game nomination to vote for best full game, for example. It's definitely not a perfect idea, but I like how it marries the openness of the current system with the reliability of a closed set of qualified voters, which I usually distrust (see the Oscars). I'd love to hear critiques and alternate suggestions.

On the other side of things, I agree the number of awards should be trimmed down and similar ones merged wherever possible. We should probably keep categories like demo, non-adventure, etc. that are immune from the sweeps.

[Radiant]

It seems there is disagreement over what "character art" means: some people feel it's mostly about portraits (which is closer to background art), and other people feel it's more about character sprites (which is basically what the animation award is for). I think that's a good reason for removing character art as a separate category.

Likewise, it doesn't seem clear what "best gameplay" means. To some people, it's synonymous to "best game"; others consider it similar to "best puzzles", or to "best writing". Again, I'm not sure if best gameplay should be left as a separate award. However, "best programming" is clearly distinct from all of these.

Finally, I'm not sure if it's useful to separate sound and music, as both are complements to the game's audiotory experience; although voice acting should remain separate.


I think this is a very good idea:

Alternatively, the awards could be about showcasing the diverse talent pool that is the AGS community, giving exposure to games that wouldn't necessarily otherwise get them.  How do we do this fairly?  We could create award categories that emphasize diversity of genres, like Best Horror or Best Fantasy Game; or categories that reward innovation over simply being best, like Most Daring Interface or Most Thought Provoking Experience.

It would be interesting to see genre awards, or even something as simple as best humoristic game and best non-humoristic game. I'm not sure if that's the best name for it, but I find there's a clear distinction between grim/realistic games like Police Quest, and silly slapstick games like Day Of The Tentacle. I like both genres, but there could feasibly be a different award for each. $.02

[Radiant]

To clarify: I don't propose to merge puzzles into gameplay, but rather to eliminate "best gameplay" (since it is not clearly defined what that means), and leave "best puzzles" intact.

Also, I feel that 2.iv.b and 2.iv.c are really the same thing; both propose to have two art categories, i.e. "best background art" and "best sprites and animation". It doesn't really matter where "character art" gets merged into, since there is disagreement over what that term means.

Also also, perhaps we should consider question 3, "should we add new categories". Such as what Baron proposed.

[Dualnames]

In my honest opinion, several of the awards felt redundant, for example Best Dialogue Writing and Best Original Story could be combined into one, Best Writing. It's weird to see a game winning the latter and losing the former, a game with a decent storyline or excellent dialogs should be judged for either and win the heart of a player. Writing involves many things like the setting and all the plot-wise mechanisms devised by the team of writers.

Secondly, Best Gameplay and Best Puzzles should be combined, the categorization currently splits genres and not games, and we already have an award for non-adventure games. Gemini Rue for example combining puzzles and shooting sequences, would win this award, whether it was two or one, imho. Best Gameplay should indicate how good a game feels, regardless of genre.

Best Short Story should remain, the same reason we have short movie awards.
The Best Background and Best Character Art, should be combined, even when someone puts emphasis on one of them, which I can't recall a game doing so, it's for artistic purposes, and combining the award would honor/celebrate that.

Concerning sound awards the lack of nominations on the best sound effects currently shows that nobody understands the award anymore, thus it should be combined to Music & Sound Effects, perhaps omitting Best Voice Work, as usually it's 2-3 games against each other and one of them is either commercial or of commercial value, and the difference is waaaaay too obvious.

My sincere thoughts.

[Ilyich]

It saddens me a bit to see how often it is assumed in these discussions that "the masses" lazily vote for the same game across the board and that's why we end up with these jackpot winners.
First of all - that happens with most awards that don't use genre differentiation for their categories, be they judged by a small committee or by democratic voting - that's just how it works - there is almost always a work that was the most striking, impressive or just came out at the right time and captured the spirit of the moment. And it's not like it has to be phenomenal in every aspect to win in every category - just better than other nominees.

Then there's this little problem - who are these imaginary "bad" voters? Isn't there about a hundred of them(us) in total? So no, I don't think there is anything wrong with the voting base and the way the voting itself is handled. Sure, not everyone have played every nominated game, and all of the games were made under different conditions, and it's not exactly fair, but nothing is. We just need a representation of generalized feelings of the community, and that's what we get anyway. No need to make the process harder. We have 12 "picks of the month" and the nominations still get you on the "Awards" page of the database, so let those singular games win their trophies - they've deserved them by definition, and they are the ones putting AGS on the map anyway.

So my position is that everything is nice and lovely as it is, and adding some fun and particular categories, while removing the clearly redundant ones, are the only things we should really be worried about. And here are my thoughts:

-Freeware vs Commercial - let's be inclusive here - AGS awards are for AGS games - how they were made and how much effort went into them is somewhat irrelevant to the final product. Adding the "Best Freeware Game" category makes the most sense here, since it's the most helpful one - you can actually go and download the games that won it and find out that even free AGS games are rad.

-SFX/Music/Voices - I'd cut it down to just "Best Sound [Design]" and "Best Music", since judging SFX by themselves is quite a challenge, and voiceacting is a pretty rare treat in AGS games still. Of course, that can give the games with voiceacting more edge in the "Best Sound" category, but then those games did put a lot of effort into sounds. As for "Best Music" - do not merge that with anything under any circumstances.

-Story/Dialogue - pretty different things, probably should be apart. Comedy games tend to rely more on the amusing dialogue, while thrillers need a good story. Both can be equally "well written", but on different merits.

-Art - currently the "Best Character Art" category seems a bit odd to me, so I'd go with "Best Artwork" and "Best Animation/Sprites"

-Gameplay - "Puzzles/Gameplay/Game Design" merged into one and "Programming" as a different, more technical award.

These cuts can also open some space for less general or genre award categories(see Baron's examples) that can help both the less fortunate, but still interesting games, and the fans of particular genres/types in their searches: Best Setting/Game World, Best Atmosphere, Best Comedy/Drama/Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/etc, Best Experimental Game, Most Underrated(ok, this one might be too ironic and more trouble than it's worth ) and the like.

[Radiant]

Speaking of more categories, we used to have an award for Best Resource (module, plugin, whatever). I believe it would be worthwhile to bring that back.
From earlier discussion, I recall the suggestion of an award for Best Newcomer Game; we need to have a good definition of that, but it sounds nice to have.
Finally, there have been suggestions in the past for Best Game in an Open Series, which probably needs a better name but I mean games based on the public RON / OSD / MMM settings.
Diversity is good

[qptain Nemo]

Right. Some opinions.

I can kinda get behind merging music with sound effects, even though I completely agree with Ilyich on that you really shouldn't, but merging voice acting and music in one award can't come off as anything else than you hating voice actors and composers and considering their efforts so completely unremarkable and irrelevant that you can just lump it all in one ambiguous blob, tag it 8/10 and forget about it. Oh, and don't call it "best sound". You can't leave out the word "music" out of the awards without making music seem completely unimportant.

Next. I'll say again, I think we need a "best comedy" award. (and perhaps other genre-specific awards that Baron mentioned) A game can have crappy graphics, unremarkable puzzles, mediocre music and easily not even have the most impressive story or writing of the year, but still be very memorable and pleasant because of its humour. Case in point from the last year Chrisopher Columbus Is An Idiot. I think that kind of thing still deserves to be awarded. Especially considering how often the genre lends itself to comedic games that rely on humour as their main pillar. To say the least.

I'm against separating commercial and free games for reasons I (and Ghost) outlined in an earlier similar topic. In short, it doesn't encourage or reward anything good in particular.

Now if we're to tackle the award sweeping problem seriously, we could also try the following. All votes are weighted. Every voter has to face a simple quiz that has basic questions pertaining to random games from the eligible pool. How many questions they get right defines the weight of their vote, plain and simple. Also I think it'd be wise to make it so the weight of their vote isn't revealed to them. However personally I don't see this issue as very important, because indeed it all depends on the meaning of the awards.

Oh and I agree on having a "best game design" award. I'd much prefer it to best gameplay/puzzles/etc awards. It encompasses all of that while staying on the spot and without introducing any ambiguity.