AGS AWARDS 2008 - WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

[Buckethead]

where are my games?  :'( 

on a more serious note. It does look like some of the popular games are just nominated in all categories. 

[kaputtnik]

Think Hollywood. Blockbusters are nominated for the Oscar in nearly every category. There are some obscure names coming up once in a while, but in general, it's the same names all over - which only means that those were the most popular ones.

It seems, however, that lots of people just chose their favourite game and voted for it over and over again - I loved A Second Face for example, and I think it deserves all of the nominations it can get, but the player character was really not very notable. Well, nothing to worry about.

On another note: I am really surprised by the nomination of Man Boy for best audio - now vote the crap out of the establishment!

[Pumaman]

Wow, a lot of the same games coming up over and over again. How many people actually played ALL the games because I've gotta say, it seems a little biased towards "vote for your favourite games out of the few that you did actually play."

This tends to happen every year. I'm not sure whether the new nominations page this year has made it better or worse -- on the one hand it now displays all games so you can't accidentally forget the less notable ones; but on the other hand it makes it almost too easy to just nominate your favourite game in every category.

Anyway, this sort of thing is one of the reasons that the Pick of the Month and Cup Ratings on the games page exist, so that good games that miss out on the Awards still get recognition.

[Essex]

I also remember, that certain games were always favorized.
Take a look at the nomination history of the AGS awards:
http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/AGS_Awards

Last year it was the "Two Kindom" game. The Yahtzee and Dave Gilbert games were always very popular, both "Apprentice" games have been very popular and Grundislav has always been there, so nothing changed. It was the first year without a Yahtzee game however...

I think the main reason for this is that most people who vote at the nominations are old AGSers and know wich games to play. People like Ivy, Woltaire and Grundislav have been there for years releasing their works with a certain style. A lot of people know them and simply play their games first because they know what they get.

With all those fanatic "Vote Ben Jordan for President" messages in all kind of threads it is pretty clear that a small sub community has built up who follow a certain serie or developer.
For example the gameplay in Ben Jordan 7 was just the same like in all other parts and based on the old sierra style. Nothing new... The documentation is a two page addition to the manual. The puzzles were mostly related to given dialogues and so on...

Ivy's Nanobots had actually five player characters, so there was a five time chance to get that nomination, but if you ask me which bot I find most interesting I simply wouldn't know it...

The nice thing about "A Second Face" is, that it was just released two weeks before the nominations began. Since it is a very long game, it didn't really have time to get popular. I think the results of this nominations show the true Blockbuster force of this work, that, although being still a sleeping beauty, managed to strike through all categories.

[Nostradamus]

I think there should be a limit on how many categories each person can nominate each game. If you ask me there should be a limit of 3 categories per game for each person who nominates. I don't know how to enforce that but Chris, the scripting genius that he is, can surely find a way to script that in the nominations page for next year.

[Snake]

Blockbuster... Hollywood, or what have you, whatever, I'm super thankful that Castle of Fire is at least a nominee (best non-adventure). Suprised is to say the least. I really wasn't expecting to see it there. I was a little dissapointed for Hammerblade since his music wasn't included in best music, but good luck to everyone that was.

I'm pretty confident ColourWise will win, and surely deserves it!

And congrats to everyone else that is nominated.

[Le Woltaire]

I don't understand this nomination discussion...
I like the AGS awards like they are (I don't say this because I'm nominated)

The awards were just done to have some fun and it's already cool that they even exist (Really, I don't say that because I'm nominated)

I think all nominees have been choosen very well. May god bless their asses. (See above...)

I like Ben Jordan! This guy really knows how to kick demon's balls!

I love Ivy's red hair. Would you like to be my new girlfriend?

In the end, the true winners of the awards are always SSH and Chris Jones since they did all the award scripting stuff. If you pay them you will always win. (Did I already mention, that I would never say things like that just if I was nominated?)

[Buckethead]

in the end I don't really mind too much but it kinda anoys me that you can't just make a terrible game with good music and pick up the award for best music.

[Le Woltaire]

in the end I don't really mind too much but it kinda anoys me that you can't just make a terrible game with good music and pick up the award for best music.

Don't say this: "Night of the Hermit" won the best sound effects award in 2001...

[Stupot]

The thing is people can only vote/nominate a game they have played.  

I don't think people are just voting for their friends, I think they are genuinely voting for the games they beleive deserve the award... When games are released and announced in the Completed Games forum, the higher quality games always generate a buzz... people are limited for time, so they have to choose which games to play and which games to miss out.  They are naturally going to choose to play the games with the most buzz.

But this buzz is generally deserved... and I personally think the nominations reflect this very well.  Sure, it might seem as if only the most popular games have been nominated, but then they are popular for a reason - because they are good.

[Ghost]

I'd like to hijack the thread and say thanks to all the guys and guyettes who nominated OUAC. I didn't expect it to turn up in the places where it *did* turn up at all  I already feel extremely proud.

[Snake]

in the end I don't really mind too much but it kinda anoys me that you can't just make a terrible game with good music and pick up the award for best music.

Yeah, I know

[Ryan Timothy B]

in the end I don't really mind too much but it kinda anoys me that you can't just make a terrible game with good music and pick up the award for best music.

Music is all part of a 'whole' though.  You can't really have a crappy game with amazing music and have people actually notice it.  Music is all about the mood it helps set in the game, which that mood is usually only felt if the 'whole' game is done properly.
Like if the character enters a dark sewer system, you want the music to help portray how the character and player should feel.  Otherwise without that mood, the music obviously wasn't good or the game couldn't carry the music.
This is only my opinion of course.


Anyway, congratulations on the nominated games!  I'm happy to see my Road Racer game in three nomination divisions.   Didn't see that coming.

[LimpingFish]

I don't know, really. The awards usually play out in a such a way, and this year doesn't seem to be any different.

I'm going to be honest though; I am genuinely surprised that Geltz managed to get nom'ed in every category it was eligible for. Not because I don't think it's a good game, but, as somebody touched on before, it only had two weeks on release to find such high favour. Such a high nom result in this case is going to raise eyebrows, weather we like it or not.

For those that think there should be a limit on how many categories a game can be nominated for, I don't think that would be fair or much use. It would only end up punishing games for daring to excel in more than whatever number of categories would be deemed appropriate.

EDIT: Though, now that I think of it, Geltz has no original music (correct me if I'm wrong) as the soundtrack is composed of extracts from the works of Carl Orff, and therefore is nominated in a category for which no actual original content has been created.

This may make me seem awfully pissy about the whole thing, but sweeping nom patterns will, as I said earlier, raise eyebrows.

[Le Woltaire]

Hey Limping,

I took place at the chat session for the nominations and directly mentioned, that the sound track was made by extracts of Carl Orffs music. I also asked directly to cancel me from the nominations in the music category.

The answer I got was: "So Carl will get the award..."
But for me it's still Ok: Please kick me out of that.

[LimpingFish]

Hello Le Woltaire,

I hope you didn't take my post as implying some sort of covert attempt to deceive on your part, or as a questioning of your ethics.

I was instead pointing out the problems of blanket nominating, where people simply nominate their favourite game in every category, regardless. This can be down to a number of factors; blind fan nomination, players not actually realizing that the music they are hearing isn't an original composition, etc.

I think a clarification of the category might be in order, altering the name to "Best Original Music"; though if people simply don't take the time to read the game's credits, I'm not sure if this would help.

Again, I'm sorry if it came across that I was accusing you of anything, and I wish you the best of luck with the awards.

[Snarky]

For those that think there should be a limit on how many categories a game can be nominated for, I don't think that would be fair or much use. It would only end up punishing games for daring to excel in more than whatever number of categories would be deemed appropriate.

I understood the suggestion to be that each individual voter could only nominate it in a certain number of categories. If different voters nominated it in different categories, it could still end up getting nominated in as many as it deserved.

On the one hand, I think this solution would be unfortunate in that people might not be able to nominate the way they really felt (and could lead to weird split-vote scenarios). On the other hand, it would force them to think more carefully about which aspects of a game are really award-worthy.

The complete domination by a few games seems to be worse than usual this year. What, three games nominated in just about every category (apart from the special ones)? I wonder if higher participation has led to more casual players nominating only the most popular games. Well, at least it means I won't have to play a ton of games before I can vote.

[miguel]

Congratulations to everyone that got nominated!
As for the discussion about games and their makers being always nominated is just how things go and it's only natural.
Indiana Jones will always be seen by millions of people in the world even if H.Ford is 80 years-old!
And remember that a good game will always come up from the slumbers if it's really good.
I was happy to see my little demo to be picked, and because it wasn't, I intend to make the full version the best I can. It's the only way to go guys.
I also don't think it's very polite to talk about games that one did not like, specially on this thread.
We must accept the peoples choice.

[The Ivy]

Ivy's Nanobots had actually five player characters, so there was a five time chance to get that nomination, but if you ask me which bot I find most interesting I simply wouldn't know it...

Six, actually. Not sure how that nomination would work, either.

I love Ivy's red hair.

You're voting for my hair? Surely that's not fair to everyone else. 

Edit: Also, thank you for all those nominations! I actually laughed when I saw them all, it was pretty surprising. Thanks again for playing and supporting my games. I sincerely appreciate it, especially because I'm trying to make a living at this now. It's quite scary sometimes, but seeing things like this really helps.

[Goldmund]

I'm quite happy with the short list.
Just damn look at those games -- if any of them was released commercially back in the golden age of adventure games, they would all be well-loved classics.
There's not a dud between them.
It's great that the community has rewarded "A Second Face", the game that I feared would be too original and courageous to fare well in a democratic vote.
And rightfully nominating "Sydney treads the catwalk" for the best player character proves that it's not always thoughtless blanket voting, as some of you suggest.

Really, look at the nominations again. Programming. Animation. Voice work. It's not so uniform as you whine.
Sure: ASF, Ben Jordan, Nanobots, Ben there and Limey are all over the place. But can you point to an AGS game from 2008 which is better than the 5? Maybe I haven't played a lot, but I cannot think of a better choice.

My doubts?

"Chatroom" deserves more than one nomination, but what would that be? Gameplay perhaps? Original story?
"A Second Face", as much as I love it, and it's my favourite game of 2008, doesn't have very good puzzles (I hate the fishing one...), although the textbox dialogue system can be a part of the puzzleness factor. The player character is quite mediocre as well, and the music is not original. Not that it matters much in this case.
And "Ben there, Dan that" I find very annoying, but that's the matter of personal taste.

And remember what Werner Herzog said: awards are for dogs and horses! :-)