Adventure Game Studio

Update:

Quote from: Kastchey on Thu 30/11/2023 21:54:31Ok guys! First off, I would like to thank you all for all the responses, every single one. It's really uplifting to see that the community is still interested in and attached to the Awards and the ceremony.

The changes we decided to go ahead with this year are as follows:

1. The Awards:
Best Game of the Year
Best Freeware Game
Best Short Game
Best Non-Adventure Game
Best Demo
Best Audio
Best Visuals
Best Writing
Best Programming
Best Character
Best Gameplay

As you can see, all the visuals will be merged into a single award. Same with the audio awards. Gameplay and puzzles have become a single category.
Best Short, Demo, Programming and Character all have their fervent defenders, so we have decided to leave them be, at least for now. We may revisit the topic together again next year, should need be.

2. Ceremony date:

The ceremony will take place in March. The doodle for the specific date will be set up much earlier this time, around first week of January, so you can plan in advance to attend, if you wish to. The nominations phase will happen in January, and the voting in February (give or take a couple days for the team to set the next stage up).

Shortly after the ceremony date is revealed, I will start looking for presenters and streamers. Please consider volunteering, the more the merrier and it really helps a lot! :)

3. Games list:

The games will now be eligible for specific categories based on their database entries. This should make the nominations easier, as the lists of values will only include the actual eligible games.

We are happy to accept volunteers to sift through this year's database and let us know if any of the games are misclassified in the following categories: Non-Adventure, Demo, Freeware, Short.
Please PM me or cat if you think you can help.

4. Nominee assets:

As we have eliminated specific categories for visuals and audio, there will be little need to ask the creators of the nominated games for assets. We will either self-source the required assets, or accept optional contributions in the form of screenshots and avatars, should you choose to supply any.

Wow, it's November already! The next AGS Awards are around the corner. Now would be a good time to start catching up playing this year's games.  ;)

More importantly, though, I would like to discuss the future of the AGS Awards. We, the awards team (cat, @Kastchey and @Snarky), noticed a steady decline in interest. Fewer people nominate and vote, provide resources or attend the ceremony.

Nomination and voting
Good news first, @AGA has confirmed that he will take care of the voting page again. We will be able to do nominations and voting like always. However, there is a noticeable decline in the number of people who nominate and vote. While I think there will be still enough to have a significant result for 2023, it is still worrying.

Is there anything we can do to increase participation? Should we reduce the number of categories (e.g. best graphics and best animation could be merged, best gameplay could be dropped etc.)? Any other ideas?

The ceremony
The ceremony where the results are revealed has been the highlight of the AGS awards for many years. However, it comes with several problems:
* It's getting harder and harder to collect the required resources as many people either deliver them late, in weird formats or not at all. Even when they are collected, someone has to prepare them and put them in the client. We have lives beside AGS and this is taking quite some time.
* Fewer and fewer people are attending. Last year was the lowest number we ever had, as far as I remember. The huge effort of preparing the ceremony seems wasted time for such a small crowd.

Was the timing the problem? Was it just the wrong date and everything would be better with a tighter schedule and a ceremony earlier in the year? Is the ceremony not interesting anymore?

We considered various options for replacing the ceremony:

• IRC only, as in the good old times
• Chat only, but using Discord
• A discord voice call with a shared powerpoint presentation
• No ceremony at all, the result is just posted in the thread

What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you going to participate in voting or join a ceremony next year?

Oh come on, community! We can't let the AGS awards cease to exist! Personally, for me the ceremony is more attractive and fun than the Oscars themselves!  :-D And this year, the proliferation of titles in AGS has been great and has produced great games that I would like to see win several awards.

I have always admired the work of the team in charge of the ceremony and I know how much work that takes. It would be sad not to walk the red carpet again with the avatar we have chosen and be able to press the applause button for the winners. But I think a video introducing the nominees and choosing the winners could be a possibility (like the Agoty Awards, per example) and would take less work than organizing the traditional ceremony.

Well, 2023 still had new AGS games, maybe a little less in the commercial side but it still had, from the top of my head, Dreams in the Witch House, Menial: A Utopian Bagel Simulator, Broken Windows Chapter 4, Tunnel Vision, Stranger in Utopia and Shards of God. There were other games and demos, and a few newcomers to the engine and some long time users returning to it.

About the resources, I wonder if instead of having them delivered for the award ceremony there could be some incentive to put them in the AGS Game Database somehow, the problem is possibly storage, but like a music file that represents the game and screenshots and maybe even some way to listen this music and see these screenshots directly from the Game DB, and then asking for the resources could be just a reminder for people to make sure things are updated there.

The good thing of asking for the resources is they work to remind people of the dates - and then I guess the hard part is the game developers themselves reminding to be present at the time of the ceremony. I don't have particular thoughts just that I find the ceremony pretty sweet but I also understand that it's hard to find time as our lives get gradatively busy and I fell some new users use AGS as a stepping stone to game dev and then migrate to other engines - which is fine but it makes hard to have community members that stay and participate in community activities.

Is there any way to get statistics of games made in AGS per year, at least ones registered in database?
It may be curious to see the graph and compare how this number changed over the decade(s).

This is not about the games - there are enough of them. And more importantly, while the number may decrease, the quality is going up from year to year. There are lots of possible winners for each category. This is solely about the awards.

That's what I was writing. Those numbers probably don't mean anything.I mean, there are probably fewer games than in the past decade. But the number of high-quality games has increased in recent years. There are even free games made in AGS that rival in quality those made in other engines. I look at you, Shards Of God!

Oh I certainly hope that there's a ceremony, now that I finally have a game that I can participate with  :=

But I can understand that it takes a lot of time to make it happen. Hopefully there's some way to make it easier / faster to organize.

I have a few thoughts:

Earlier ceremony
I do think having the ceremony earlier would help keep people interested. Last year it was right at the end of May, and I think that is rather late.

One idea is to set the date in stone earlier on so that we all know when to look forward to it and have more of a build up.

Better banners
I don't think the red text banners at the top of the forum are as effective as they could be. They're supposed to be noticeable and remind/inform us, and they do at first, but they soon just become easy to scroll past, which is bad when the text changes for the next stage of the process.

I suggest a more engaging and eye-catching banner, not just in the forum but on the main website, too, all building to that set date mentioned earlier.

Separate MAGGIES
Traditionally, the MAGGIES winner is announced as part of the AGS Awards ceremony. But one option would be to have this announcement a little earlier. It could help by giving people something exciting to whet their appetites in the build-up to the main awards. And the MAGGIES winner could still be announced during the main ceremony, even if the winner has already been declared a month or so prior.

More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

For MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Of course nothing beats actually playing the games and this should absolutely be encouraged, but if less people can feel dissuaded from voting then it should help keep the overall buzz alive.


Anyway, those are just some thoughts. Feel free to pick and choose the best bits. Thank you to the Awards team for all your great efforts.

In regards to the ceremony itself, is there anything that could make things more streamlined?

I never looked into what you do there, but assuming you need to use extra resources each time, do you have to import everything inside the game project, or your client/server thing loads them from the disk?

Which assets do you get from the game authors? Can you get them by extracting them from the game, for example (assuming you received author's permission to use them)?

I have to agree with @Stupot. The ceremony of the last year was a bit too late. I suppose there would be more than one reason for that but doing it in January/February it's a reasonable date since the euphoria of devs and the public is at its highest around these months.

I have one suggestion is that the award team take a sabbatical year (they've earned it!) and simply make a thread in the forum with the list of winners. We will miss the ceremony but the final  purpose of it is to announce the winners.

It'd be a shame if the ceremony stopped. It's such a big event, and I absolutely love it because of that.  :-D
My brother is always there watching with me, so he must feel the same way, despite not even using the engine.

But if it's become that much of a chore to setup, then like Crimson Wizard said, is there anything that could be done to streamline things?

I mean, would it be possible to just change the pictures used for the nominees, and then reuse the rest with no major alterations?
I don't think we need new avatars or new functions. And while it would be nice to hear the music of the games that are nominated for best music, I think it'll be ok if we don't hear it.

Then again, I've never even so much as helped with the award ceremony, so I don't know how difficult it is to use for even the simplest of tasks.  ???

Thanks for your ideas, Stu!

Quote from: Stupot on Mon 06/11/2023 15:46:24Earlier ceremony
I do think having the ceremony earlier would help keep people interested. Last year it was right at the end of May, and I think that is rather late.

One idea is to set the date in stone earlier on so that we all know when to look forward to it and have more of a build up.

Ok, noted. Ceremony earlier.

Quote from: Stupot on Mon 06/11/2023 15:46:24Better banners

They are done by AGA. Maybe he could put up a banner image, but then again there has to be someone who CREATES such an image...

Quote from: Stupot on Mon 06/11/2023 15:46:24Separate MAGGIES
Traditionally, the MAGGIES winner is announced as part of the AGS Awards ceremony. But one option would be to have this announcement a little earlier. It could help by giving people something exciting to whet their appetites in the build-up to the main awards. And the MAGGIES winner could still be announced during the main ceremony, even if the winner has already been declared a month or so prior.

Good thinking. I love MAGGIES being presented during the ceremony, but I think they also suffer by the fact that they are revealed so late in the year. MAGGIES don't have a nomination phase, just voting (actually, nomination kinda happens year round). They could be finished much earlier.

Quote from: Stupot on Mon 06/11/2023 15:46:24More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

I think this especially applies to nominations. Some people don't nominate because they have only played few games, but nomination isn't a "this is better than the others" thing. It's more like "this game has great graphics!", and it doesn't matter if others, that I haven't played might have great graphics as well.

QuoteFor MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Another great idea!

Quote from: cat on Mon 06/11/2023 12:07:39We considered various options for replacing the ceremony:

• IRC only, as in the good old times
• Chat only, but using Discord
• A discord voice call with a shared powerpoint presentation
• No ceremony at all, the result is just posted in the thread

I don't play as many AGS games these days, so feel free to ignore me. I suspect this idea has been considered and dismissed. But if a goal of the awards is to draw attention to the best games made in the engine, perhaps the ceremony should be something anyone can attend/re-watch without having to downloading the (brilliantly put together and obviously a huge amount of work) client. Why not a livestream on twitch/YouTube that nominees could share among their followers on social media?

EDIT: Yes, unsurprisingly you've thought this through! I'm sorry - I had missed that the recent ceremonies had been streamed as well.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Mon 06/11/2023 16:33:05In regards to the ceremony itself, is there anything that could make things more streamlined?

I never looked into what you do there, but assuming you need to use extra resources each time, do you have to import everything inside the game project, or your client/server thing loads them from the disk?

Which assets do you get from the game authors? Can you get them by extracting them from the game, for example (assuming you received author's permission to use them)?

To briefly answer this:

All assets are imported into the game project, AFAIK it doesn't read anything from a server (apart from the text chat).

Any way to source the game assets is possible, and all sorts of methods have been used in the past. Asking the creators to submit them was introduced as a way to save time and get good assets (especially music, animations and avatars), but that only works if the response rate is high.

Quote from: Ali on Mon 06/11/2023 20:34:07Why not a livestream on twitch/YouTube that nominees could share among their followers on social media?

It sounds similar to the "Discord voice call" idea, but I take it you mean a format more like video streamers? (Since the ceremony has already been livestreamed on YouTube/Twitch for the last few years.) I think it's a good idea, but it seems like it would demand more of the host.

@Ali Usually, the ceremony WAS live-streamed on Twitch/YouTube. I know some people were either watching the stream live or afterwards the recording when they couldn't attend.
The problem is, that content that is streamed, has to be created somehow...

Last year, was an off year for me. Sorry. I did meant to attend the ceremony, but I simply forgot. :/
Hope I manage to find the time to help with the collecting and organizing the assets this year.

"Nomination and voting"

I think I mentioned this before, but opening a dropdown menu with 100+ games, find and pick a game to nominate, then do it again *9, until you filled the first category up (I like to always nominate the max possible in each category), is exhausting. I realize we don't need to do all at once, but still, it's a lot of hard work, just to nominate.
If we added check boxes to the games DB, where the author could check the boxes that fit ones game, then we could have this "endless" list of games shorten up to only those that apply to each category (minus eventual fail/missing checks).
It would be nice to open up the dropdown menu, and instead of seeing all 100+ games in the voice category, you only had 15 or 20 to pick from, cause those are the ones that actually fit the category.

I don't know if it would help with more people nominating or not, but probably worth a try?

Another way to pick, could be to have a text box and just type the name of the game you want to nominate (having both options would be optimal). I know some members keep a list of what games they played and "score" them on the go. So I bet that just copy pasting the name in, instead of having to find it in a list would be good. I know I wished I could have done that before at least.

I know there are some categories I never vote, those are best character and best story. For character I ever hardy remember any characters name, much less type them to nominate. Also I feel I would have to have played the games to be able to judge those categories.... On the other hand, art, character art, animation, and music I can vote on even if I have't played the game, as I see screenshots or skim a lets play video, or hear the sound track.

I enjoy the ceremonies, but I realize they take a lot of work for the organizers. However, going back from that ceremony with all its bells and whistles to irc or discord only is bound to be a major downer. Probably not very twitch-worthy either.

I'm not sure I want the awards to be that much later in the year. Every year see a lot of games coming out near the end of the year, if I'm not mistaken. There's got to be enough time to actually play the games before nominating and voting. I always end up with some full length commercial game or other that I never found the time for.

Quote from: cat on Mon 06/11/2023 19:58:17

Quote from: Stupot on Mon 06/11/2023 15:46:24More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

I think this especially applies to nominations. Some people don't nominate because they have only played few games, but nomination isn't a "this is better than the others" thing. It's more like "this game has great graphics!", and it doesn't matter if others, that I haven't played might have great graphics as well.

QuoteFor MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Another great idea!

These are very good points. I think especially for graphics, animation and sound, one could easily nominate games after just watching videos. There's been some oversights over the years, unfortunately. I think also that for categories with only a handful of games, like non-adventure games or voice work, we shouldn't be afraid to nominate those few games that fit in the category.

It's very hard to get people to vote/rate and leave comments on the ordinary database pages, and unfortunately, I think the nominations and award votes have the same pattern.

If the goal is to get more nominations, one solution would be to grant some people the power to nominate a game on their own, without getting the 5 (?) votes necessary behind it. This could be the moderators, the organizers, some anonymous committee appointed by the organizers, or a combination.

I'm not sure if it's a good solution, though, and I would vastly prefer if our members do the nominating of their own accord. It's not strictly democratic, and we already have committees deciding certain awards.

This suggestion is made out of the assumption that the nominations is the bottleneck, but if votes are as low in numbers as the nominations, then that may be based on a false premise.

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Mon 06/11/2023 21:35:08"Nomination and voting"

I think I mentioned this before, but opening a dropdown menu with 100+ games, find and pick a game to nominate, then do it again *9, until you filled the first category up

Quote from: heltenjon on Tue 07/11/2023 07:53:39If the goal is to get more nominations, one solution would be to grant some people the power to nominate a game on their own, without getting the 5 (?) votes necessary behind it. This could be the moderators, the organizers, some anonymous committee appointed by the organizers, or a combination.

These two quotes just gave me an idea to help streamline the nomination process.
What if the dropdown box for nominations, only includes the games that were posted in the "For Your Consideration" thread, and only for the categories that the person has listed in their post.

Then the organizers can fill out the list by adding any additional games that weren't posted in the thread, but that they personally believe should have the opportunity to be nominated.

It's not a perfect solution, but it might help get more nominations by streamlining the whole thing.

Just an idea to get more nominations:
You might be able to get "our" devs to contribute some free Steam/GOG-keys of their commercial games.

          (https://fs5.directupload.net/images/user/170820/9q3ovkv6.gif)

Those can be raffled of among the nominators that registered on the voting page with their username and given to the winners via pm. 
Even if older games are spend that winners already have they can use them as gift for friends.

QuoteThis suggestion is made out of the assumption that the nominations is the bottleneck, but if votes are as low in numbers as the nominations, then that may be based on a false premise.

This.
Do we have some statistics about number of people that nominate vs. people that vote vs. people that attend the ceremony.

Also for the nominations, another statistic worth taking into account: how many of those that nominate, take the time to nominate in all categories and nominate more than say 3-5 games per category?
do the majority try to nominate 10 in each category, or they just pick 2 or 3 or games per category and only in certain categories?

Then we can see if nominations might improve if they become simpler to do.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Mon 06/11/2023 13:23:15Is there any way to get statistics of games made in AGS per year, at least ones registered in database?
It may be curious to see the graph and compare how this number changed over the decade(s).

Actually, you made me curious... Here it is.

(https://i.ibb.co/hHwtWkZ/Screenshot-2023-11-07-193018.png)

Quote from: Danvzare on Tue 07/11/2023 11:45:42These two quotes just gave me an idea to help streamline the nomination process.
What if the dropdown box for nominations, only includes the games that were posted in the "For Your Consideration" thread, and only for the categories that the person has listed in their post.

Then the organizers can fill out the list by adding any additional games that weren't posted in the thread, but that they personally believe should have the opportunity to be nominated.

It's not a perfect solution, but it might help get more nominations by streamlining the whole thing.

I would not go this route. This would only encourage authors to suggest their games in all categories and exclude those who might just be on vacation during nomination period who cannot post in the FyC thread.

However, we could try to make the list smaller, by only including games that are eligible in a certain category (e.g. only games with voice acting in "Best voice acting", only short games in "best short game" etc.). I can check with AGA if it is possible to restrict the list, if we provide the correct data. We could make this a community effort to set up those lists.

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Tue 07/11/2023 17:22:18Do we have some statistics about number of people that nominate vs. people that vote vs. people that attend the ceremony.

Here are the numbers of nominating and voting people per year.

Year	Nominators	Voters
2022	36	45
2021	42	52
2020	39	48
2019	47	45
2018	35	48
2017	49	68
2016	46	53
2015	47	58
2014	56	87
2013	70	92
2012	79	112

So, it was stable low in recent years. However, we only got this number of nominations after I urged several times on the forum for people to nominate. In some categories, we almost didn't get 5 games with 5 nominations each (this is the minimum required for a game to be nominated). Maybe people tend to nominate less games? I don't have more detail who nominated for how many categories.

Quote from: catHere are the numbers of nominating and voting people per year.

Well, what this shows me is that fifty people (give or take ten or so) has decided both the nominees and the winners for the better part of a decade. That is a shockingly small turn out, especially if we take into account that a percentage of those numbers are also potential nominees/winners. It would probably make more sense to have a jury of judges, rather than rely on the community. At least then, you wouldn't have to worry about nominee/voter turn-out. This would, of course, probably raise it's own problems, but at least we would have a smaller pool of people to wrangle, and it would make it easier for commercial developers to disseminate game codes and whatnot. Just something to consider.

Quote from: catIs there anything we can do to increase participation? Should we reduce the number of categories (e.g. best graphics and best animation could be merged, best gameplay could be dropped etc.)? Any other ideas?

I've argued it before, and I think it's more likely now that ever, that less/combined categories is probably the way to go.

Just of the top of my head:

Best Free Game
Best Commercial Game
Best Game Design (combines Puzzles and Gameplay) *Might also swallow the Best Programming category
Best Writing
Best Visual Design (combines all art awards)
Best Sound Design
Best Original Music
Best Non-Adventure Game
Best Short Game
Best Programming*

The awards I'd specifically drop would be Best Demo, Best Character, and Best Voice Work. And if we were to go with a jury system, I'd introduce a single award open to the public:

Community Game of the Year

I'd agree that maybe separating the MAGGIES is a good idea. I'm also leaning towards an overhaul of the "Innovation" and "Lifetime" awards, though I haven't decided what. :-\

Less categories, it has to be said, would also shorten the actual time it takes to "perform" the awards on the night. I'd personally shoot for ten or less.

Another streamlining idea might be to reduce the presentation of nominees on the night to a single screenshot, instead of animations and audio. It's hard enough to get some developers to add their game to the database, never mind solicit media from them for the awards show. No disrespect to those developers who do manage to do it each year, but, as cat says, it's a big enough job just preparing said media for inclusion in the awards, let alone chasing up no-shows. If we're serious about streamlining the process, while keeping the client, this is one of the first things I'd look into making more manageable.

If we were to drop the client altogether, which is a perfectly reasonable choice I might add, I'd probably go for chat Discord over IRC.

We could also produce a short, standalone awards announcement "game" for after the chat ceremony, similar in style to the awards client, but just announcing the nominees and winners, like SSH did back in the day?

Quote from: LimpingFish on Wed 08/11/2023 01:03:33

Quote from: catHere are the numbers of nominating and voting people per year.

Well, what this shows me is that fifty people (give or take ten or so) has decided both the nominees and the winners for the better part of a decade. That is a shockingly small turn out, especially if we take into account that a percentage of those numbers are also potential nominees/winners.

I have the same impression. AGS games today may be found all around the gaming platforms (Steam, GOG, itch.io etc), and I'd speculate that most popular ones are played by thousands of players in the end (might have to ask the devs for the sales number though). Yet the AGS Awards remains a business of a sort of a "closed club" on AGS forums.


Given the two tables, I see the obvious decline in interest to AGS engine in the last decade. The mid-2000ies were "golden age" for this engine, where people probably did not bother about commercial success and just made simple games for enjoyment. Today people would likely use Unity 3D for the same thing.
But I digress...

I pretty much agree with what @LimpingFish said. If the wider community were only asked to vote for one or two awards, it might make it feel less daunting and will encourage more voters. It might be worth trying once anyway to see how it goes.

The only issue I can see is realistically expecting a panel of jurors to have played all of the games. Plus there could be more risk of bias, if one of the jurors is close friends with (or a massive Stan of) a particular dev.

A panel of jurors is not going to work. This would require a dedicated group of at least 5 committed people who play all games and then enter discussion and decide on a result.
It's hard enough to find people to be part of the committee that decides on best innovation and lifetime achievement (and I do not want to give up on those two awards).

Actually, I don't think 50 people deciding the awards is all that bad, if it's compared to other websites giving out awards where it's done by a small committee. I wish more people would participate, of course.

My gut feeling is that the AGS crowd are pretty fair in their ratings, even though some of us are friends or "fans" of each other's work. This could be due to us being mostly adults by now. I see a tendency on other sites that (younger?) people will vote either 1 star or max amount, and they may also feel an obligation to rate another product with five stars if the author of that game gave their game the same. At least to an extent, I see this in some game jams and on google play. (My own theory is that this is due to these people using game rating the same way they use social media.) But I digress.

In theory, artists should be more interested in nominating games in the art categories, not to mention more capable of recognizing good art than those of us don't know what's the front end of a pencil. Same would go for programming, writing, music and most of those categories. I wouldn't mind if someone with a talent in one of these fields were given a big blue nominate button, to be able to give the nominations out where they are deserved. Thus if a game doesn't get the five nominations necessary, it could be nominated as a "Expert's pick" (I'm sure someone could make up a better name for it) instead.

Again, I'm working out of an assumption that may be wrong, namely that we choose which games to play out of our field of special interest. For example, if eri0o makes a game with some programming magic, that other expert coders are likely to check it out to see what he did and how he managed to accomplish it. But I fear many of us don't really play many games at all.

Having a selected panel of judges to nominate or reveal winners is an appealing idea in many aspects, but it probably wouldn't work in our small, semi-active community. Like cat said, it's enough of a challenge to find 5 community members willing to discuss the committee awards for the given year, where the only requirement is basically "be a fairly active community regular, capable of civil communication" ;)

I would definitely like to try making the nomination and voting process somewhat easier to digest. Scaling down the amount of awards is one way to do it. It would also yield an extra benefit of having the ceremony time, the amount of presenters required, and the number of resources to be collected and prepared significantly reduced.
There are some problems tied to it, e.g. less awards means less games get the spotlight, and an even higher chance the awards would be dominated by a single game. But maybe we could think of a way to address these specific potential issues.

So here's a very minimalist version, built upon LimpingFish's suggestions:
Best Game Design: Puzzles, game mechanics, GUI design, game flow, overall enjoyment.
Best Visual Design: Backgrounds, GUI graphics, animations, sprites.
Best Sound Design: Music, sound effects, voice acting, how it all plays together overall.
Best Original Story and Writing: Story building, world design, character design, dialogues, writing quality.
Best Non-Adventure Game: (unchanged - it still feels distinctive enough to keep).
Best AGS Game of the Year: (unchanged - the alternative might be splitting into Freeware and Commercial like LF did).

Thoughts? I do realize this looks like a rather radical change, but more generic categories are also easier to interpret and understand (Best Gameplay and Best Puzzles, I'm looking at you two!).

While I do see the logic in putting programming in with game design for streamlining purposes, it does seem a shame not to shine a spotlight on those games which do incredible things under the hood, especially if a game has a dedicated coder who isn't the lead designer.

One way to approach this could be to have another panel award called something like 'Best technical achievement in a game" to acknowledge a particularly great bit of programming. I realize there could be a bit of crossover with Best Innovation, but that mainly deals with things related to the engine/editor or the website/community, whereas a "Technical Achievement" award would only pertain to a game or part of a game.

Quote from: Kastchey on Wed 08/11/2023 13:33:28Best Original Story and Writing: Story building, world design, character design, dialogues, writing quality.

Why "Original" in this category and none of the others? Do we have any AGS games where the story and writing are not original? (Remakes, I suppose.) And what will these new categories mean for the rule about original music?

Quote from: Kastchey on Wed 08/11/2023 13:33:28Best AGS Game of the Year: (unchanged - the alternative might be splitting into Freeware and Commercial like LF did).

I think the best thing for these categories is to keep the current system: One "Best AGS Game" that is open to both freeware or commercial titles, and one "Best Freeware Game" that excludes commercial entries, even if the categories will sometimes be redundant.

I think it's important to have one grand prize that all games can compete for, and while it makes a certain amount of sense to have a special category for freeware games, to preserve the hobbyist traditions of AGS, I don't see the point of a "protected" commercial category.

Quote from: cat on Mon 06/11/2023 21:12:02@Ali Usually, the ceremony WAS live-streamed on Twitch/YouTube. I know some people were either watching the stream live or afterwards the recording when they couldn't attend.
The problem is, that content that is streamed, has to be created somehow...

I take it that means you don't think you're the person to create the content/host a ceremony livestream in a more typical Twitch/YouTube format? So should we rule out this alternative?

If so, does it also rule out the "Discord call with a PowerPoint presentation" option, or is that easier to prep/host?

Quote from: Kastchey on Wed 08/11/2023 13:33:28So here's a very minimalist version, built upon LimpingFish's suggestions:
Best Game Design: Puzzles, game mechanics, GUI design, game flow, overall enjoyment.
Best Visual Design: Backgrounds, GUI graphics, animations, sprites.
Best Sound Design: Music, sound effects, voice acting, how it all plays together overall.
Best Original Story and Writing: Story building, world design, character design, dialogues, writing quality.
Best Non-Adventure Game: (unchanged - it still feels distinctive enough to keep).
Best AGS Game of the Year: (unchanged - the alternative might be splitting into Freeware and Commercial like LF did).

Thoughts? I do realize this looks like a rather radical change, but more generic categories are also easier to interpret and understand (Best Gameplay and Best Puzzles, I'm looking at you two!).

I don't like the "Best Game Design" category. This is too similar to "Best game" and I think both awards would go to the same game. Instead, I would keep "Best puzzles". It's about adventure games after all.
I would also, as @Snarky said, keep the commercial/non-commercial "Best game".
Not sure about "Best short game" (my favourite). While I think this is a very important category for game makers, the lack of votes in recent years shows, that it is maybe not important to players.
I'm all in favour of dropping "Best character". The free text field is really hard to fill in for voters.

Not sure if we have to change the categories radically. Maybe some small improvements, together with an easier voting page, would go a long way?

So, my suggestions would be a mix of yours and @LimpingFish

Best Free Game
Best Commercial Game
Best Puzzles (combines Puzzles and Gameplay)
Best Writing
Best Visual Design (combines all art awards)
Best Sound Design (sound, music, voice acting)
Best Non-Adventure Game
Best Short Game
Best Programming* (often the same as non-adventure)

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 08/11/2023 15:36:21I take it that means you don't think you're the person to create the content/host a ceremony livestream in a more typical Twitch/YouTube format? So should we rule out this alternative?

If so, does it also rule out the "Discord call with a PowerPoint presentation" option, or is that easier to prep/host?

I cannot do a Twitch/YouTube livestream ceremony. I have no experience with that. Maybe I could do the Discord call thing, I never did this but it sounds more feasible.

I hesitate to mention this because it has inherent issues, but...

What about the idea of opening voting to anyone, not just forum members? (Maybe not the nomination stage, but just the voting.)

I do realise this could be open to abuse, even if something like IP address logging could be used. But I'm curious as to what others would think of the idea, and I don't think I've seen it mooted before (apologies if it has).


In terms of assets, in line with LimpingFish's suggestion about just using a screenshot, I had also been thinking of suggesting the same thing, not least because it could be obtained from the game page without having to wait for a dev to respond.

I also agree with the reduction in number of categories, and broadly-speaking agree with what Cat's posted above (although, not sure if "Best Puzzle" is a typo? As "Best Puzzle" and "Best Puzzles" would be very different categories.)

Finally I would like to say that it's apparent that a huge amount of work goes into the awards each year and, while this is very much appreciated, a reduction of the burden seems appropriate.

Hmmm...I actually like the best character award, but I think it's rather difficult to do by popular vote as we do now. But I do think it could be done by a small committee. Suggestions could be posted in the FYI thread, like others, in case there's a great character in an overlooked game.

I guess when it comes down to it, the people who organize this will have to draw the lines and determine how much work they want to do and how they are going to do it. The rest of us will have to accept that and rather try to support where we can.

I wonder if it would be possible and make sense to make special awards done by popular demand without a category, for games with outstanding features.

Then the "interesting character" award could be among these.

Quote from: Stupot on Wed 08/11/2023 14:43:04While I do see the logic in putting programming in with game design for streamlining purposes, it does seem a shame not to shine a spotlight on those games which do incredible things under the hood, especially if a game has a dedicated coder who isn't the lead designer.

I get that and I agree, but streamlining isn't the only reason. Best Programming is one of the awards that seem difficult to judge for the general audience, and while real programming gems do often get nominated, they rarely if ever win this award.

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 08/11/2023 15:36:21Why "Original" in this category and none of the others? Do we have any AGS games where the story and writing are not original? (Remakes, I suppose.) And what will these new categories mean for the rule about original music?

Remakes, demakes, fan games. But it wasn't my intention to suggest any changes to this part of the rules, it's just how I happened to word it. What I intended to suggest was a set of compact, more generic awards.

Quote from: cat on Wed 08/11/2023 16:37:26I don't like the "Best Game Design" category. This is too similar to "Best game" and I think both awards would go to the same game. Instead, I would keep "Best puzzles". It's about adventure games after all.

That's a sensible and viable approach, too. I personally like the more generic category better (maybe "Best Gameplay" if "Best Game Design" sounds too much like a Best Game duplicate), but that's just me.

Quote from: cat on Wed 08/11/2023 16:37:26Not sure about "Best short game" (my favourite). While I think this is a very important category for game makers, the lack of votes in recent years shows, that it is maybe not important to players. If everyone is strongly in favor of Best Puzzles - sure, why not.

I do love both Best Short Game and Best Character, yet I think they don't (or no longer, perhaps) work well enough. As you noted, Short Game is getting very little interest during the nomination stage and Best Character is kind of like Best Programming - categories that (in my perception, perhaps I'm wrong) get more default voting that others. Maybe it's time to kill some of our darlings for a healthier voting and ceremony prep process..

My two cents.

For what is worth I also like the best character award, it helps to highlight games that have a specially charismatic characters.

But I wouldn't be able to tell if it is problematic for the voting, you know more. From my point of view both options sound good (popular voting as now, or restricting it to an award given by critics).

Regarding reducing the number of categories by merging some that intersect, I'm happy with it too.

Tomas

With regard to not getting enough nominations, would it cause any problems to reduce the number of required votes from 5 down to 4? Or would that result in too many nominations?

Oh, I agree that it would probably be nigh on impossible to actually fill a jury (well, maybe not impossible, though difficult), but my comparison stands; it's a relatively small number of community members who currently decide not only the noms but the winners too. Regardless, I think we need to concentrate on two points @cat made earlier: reducing the work needed to produce/host the awards and actually getting people to engage with the process.

To the latter, as everyone is almost in agreement with, I think reducing/simplifying the categories is a definite step in the right direction.

On that note, while I agree that puzzles are (mostly) key to adventure games, "Best" could mean different things to different people. A game might have easy, straightforward puzzles, which some people might enjoy solving quickly, freeing them up to continue the story, or it may have complex, intricate puzzles, which other people might enjoy mulling over for extended periods of time. If "Best" equals "Most Intricate" or "Most Cleverly Constructed", then why not just call the award something like that? But if we're looking to move away from such granular categories, I think it makes more sense to roll puzzles in with gameplay, rather than vice-versa. It doesn't have to be called "Best Game Design", but I think a singular category is the way to go.

Also, and to be honest, I've never been a fan of "Best Programming". How is the lay person (myself included) supposed to have the knowledge to judge what is and isn't "good" programming? And, really, what is the best kind of programming? Clean, but boring, error-free code? Expert, but buggy, coding that manages miracles within the confines of AGS? A mixture of both? Again, who, except knowledgeable programmers (with access to the source-code of each nominated game) could point out one script over another as being "best"? I know it might be popular among those of the community interested in coding, but...I'd cut it, or at least roll it into something else. In fact, I'd be likely to include "Best Character" over a programming category, as (imho) it has more potential for community-wide interest.

Having said that, while we know which categories see the most votes, we don't really know why people vote certain categories over others. If programming sees a lot of votes, is it because people are really judging programming merits, or are they just voting for the game the liked playing the most? We can guess, but we can't really be sure. Which is why general, less granular, categories are probably a good way to hedge your bets. Everybody knows when they see something they like, everybody knows when they hear something the like, everybody knows when they're having fun, or enjoying a story. Not everyone can tell what good programming is, or even what a good puzzle is, though.

To break it down even further (titles not-withstanding):

Game
Freeware Game
Visual
Audio
Writing
Gameplay/Design (however we define it)

I think these are the key awards, and, though past numbers might prove me wrong, the ones most likely to pull in votes. I can see "Best Short Game" being removed, if it's not doing the numbers, even though I too quite like it. I would probably keep "Best Non-Adventure Game", though I don't think its key.

All of the remaining categories (with the exception of "Best Demo") could fairly easily be covered by one of those key categories I laid out.

With that in mind, and adding in the "Lifetime" and "Innovation" awards, I count nine categories, ten if keep "Best Short Game"...

So the hot issues seem to be:

Reducing the number of categories:

I agree that reducing the number of categories will probably help streamline the awards (some of them like "Best programming" were kind of absurd, for reasons already stated by others), although it's depressing that writing the name of a character in a simple text field seems to be "too hard" for some people. But if that's what it is, then I guess that award should go too. Shame, really.

Streamlining the nomination process:

I know this might not be a popular opinion, but the way the nominations are set up right now is probably the most optimal way it can be done without dumping any additional work on anybody (site admins or devs). Yes, it can be quite daunting to open a drop-down menu and find every single AGS game added to the database that year listed there, but at least this method is automated and fair, as it ensures that no game is left behind and it doesn't depend on devs adding their games themselves to the "for your consideration" thread, which could be an issue in the case of holidays, illness, unexpected circumstances, etc.

Also, definitely start the process earlier. Nominations in the first two weeks of January, votes until late January at the latest, ceremony (or results) in the first week of February.


Streamlining the voting process:

I like the idea of opening the voting process to non-forum members, as long as there is some anti-cheating measure available (recording IPs or using cookies, or both), BUT the problem with that is that the most popular, commercial, better marketed games would be the ones to always win, whereas if the vote stays within the AGS community, the process is likely to be more neutral. I think the community here cares more about whether games are good than whether games are popular, and that's pretty valuable.

The Ceremony:

Like many others, I love the ceremony, but if the organizers feel that the turnout is not worth the work, then it's absolutely their call to "retire". And there is no need to have any kind of ceremony: a simple forum post would probably do perfectly.

I don't believe I've said anything that hasn't said before, but I wanted to at least chirp in. A lot of people put in a lot of work every year for this to happen, and it's only fair that we try to find a solution that works for everybody (but especially for them).

QuoteAlso, definitely start the process earlier. Nominations in the first two weeks of January, votes until late January at the latest, ceremony (or results) in the first week of February.

I agree that it needs to be earlier, but your timeline is extremely optimistic indeed. I think a more reasonable target is to have the ceremony in about late March / early April, but that is for the team to say.

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Thu 09/11/2023 08:09:37I like the idea of opening the voting process to non-forum members, as long as there is some anti-cheating measure available (recording IPs or using cookies, or both), BUT the problem with that is that the most popular, commercial, better marketed games would be the ones to always win, whereas if the vote stays within the AGS community, the process is likely to be more neutral. I think the community here cares more about whether games are good than whether games are popular, and that's pretty valuable.

Yeah this would be my concern too, it would be more of a popularity contest than a quality contest. So while I do like the idea in many ways, it's probably too problematic to implement.

To provide an alternate opinion, "programming" is often quite visible in AGS games, because of how engine is focused on particular gameplay and offers little to no foundation for another. Hence it's quite easy to notice something that was programmed from ground up as opposed to games using built-in behavior.

EDIT: but of course such category will be prone to not having enough competitors each year. So maybe consider the some kind of "special award" as with "Good character".

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Thu 09/11/2023 08:09:37Also, definitely start the process earlier. Nominations in the first two weeks of January, votes until late January at the latest, ceremony (or results) in the first week of February.

I also think it should be sped up, but I think your proposed pace is too high. It pretty much restricts participation to people who have already played most of the AGS games that came out in the last year.

If we could do nominations in January, voting in February, and the ceremony in early March, I think that would be more reasonable (though still pretty demanding if you have a lot of games to catch up on). The FYC thread should start... well, why not now?

But in any case, I think the most important thing is to have a fixed schedule in advance. And last year there were pretty lengthy turnaround times from e.g. when nominations closed to when voting opened, which we should try hard to minimize.

So, can we all agree on the following?

*) A tighter schedule for nomination, voting and the ceremony

*) Reduced categories
All graphic category are merged into a "Best Visual Design", all audio categories into "Best Audio Design" and puzzles and gameplay are merged into "Best Gameplay".
"Best Demo" and "Best Character" are dropped.

Keep in mind that doing big changes to the categories mean also changes to the awards client. Not sure, but the intro animations still include the category names.

*) Snarky agreed to update the award client if we go the simple route (i.e. only use the screenshots from the database)

cat, yes, I believe you have captured the key points perfectly.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Thu 09/11/2023 09:39:59To provide an alternate opinion, "programming" is often quite visible in AGS games, because of how engine is focused on particular gameplay and offers little to no foundation for another. Hence it's quite easy to notice something that was programmed from ground up as opposed to games using built-in behavior.

Definitely, but only if you are very familiar with the built-in behavior, and possibly also with modules and plugins made by other authors. Best Programming would be an outstanding category if we had a judge panel system and could pick our experts. It is a lot easier to make an honest judgement on visuals or storyline, because all of it is on the surface, made for the player to enjoy. There's no misjudging (or refraining from vote) due to lack of programming knowledge or familiarity with AGS.

I am slightly in favor of keeping the programming category, if only because these are awards centered around a game making engine. Many people here are familiar with AGS. While noone knows the quality or details of game code, people can acknowledge skillful use of the engine (in the lines of "well done, I wouldn't know how to do that", "creative use of the engine" etc.).

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Thu 09/11/2023 09:39:59To provide an alternate opinion, "programming" is often quite visible in AGS games, because of how engine is focused on particular gameplay and offers little to no foundation for another. Hence it's quite easy to notice something that was programmed from ground up as opposed to games using built-in behavior.

EDIT: but of course such category will be prone to not having enough competitors each year. So maybe consider the some kind of "special award" as with "Good character".

To be fair, one of the comittee awards already in place can also be used for this, although the tech award has been given mostly to work on the engine, modules and plugins the latest years. But maybe the committee could choose to award "Spectacular programming" a given year if there is a game that deserves it? If there are few coders in the anonymous committee, they would probably be dependent on tips from our experts in the field.

Quote from: cat on Thu 09/11/2023 10:58:00*) Reduced categories
"Best Demo" and "Best Character" are dropped.

Possibly combine Best Demo and Best Short game?

Best Character, if we should want to keep it, could be awarded by a separate committee consisting of a few of our members who play most of the games, but are not necessarily devs themselves. I think this is a different consideration from Lifetime Achievment or Technological advancement, and calls for a different approach. Not possible now, but ideally, these members would be appointed before a year starts and keep each other updated on good characters in a separate thread. (My thoughts here are that there probably will be a "best character" every year, put maybe not "Outstanding programming". Also, I think our programmers are too busy programming to have time for being hard core gamers. Could be wrong.)

Quote from: heltenjon on Thu 09/11/2023 11:39:31Possibly combine Best Demo and Best Short game?

Ah, I haven't thought about that. But actually, a demo can of course count as a short game or even non-adventure game.

Seems like every current category has its champions...

Personally I would hate to lose "Best Short Game," since those are often my favorite AGS games (but they usually have a hard time winning Best/Freeware Game).

If we keep it, I think I like "Technical Achievement" better than "Programming"—I think it makes it clearer what we are supposed to be judging. (I also like "Game Design" better than "Puzzles"; my big bugbear is having both "Gameplay" and "Puzzles," but that's an old argument.)

As for Best Character, I don't think it really makes sense the way it's currently done: it seems to pretty much default to the main character, so then why not just have voters pick the game rather than type the name? (Last year I tried to nominate two characters from the same game, but that wasn't allowed.) This is one category I think should go.

Quote from: cat on Thu 09/11/2023 10:58:00Keep in mind that doing big changes to the categories mean also changes to the awards client. Not sure, but the intro animations still include the category names.

*) Snarky agreed to update the award client if we go the simple route (i.e. only use the screenshots from the database)

Yup. We might need new graphic assets for the category intros and perhaps the trophies. On the other hand, if we lower the expectation level for the production quality, it doesn't have to be all that much work to update.

(Of course, this is all in case Dualnames doesn't decide to do it after all.)

We have a vast selection of trophies to reuse, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Category intros are a separate issue though, because they feature the name of the award, and are animated. They were made by selmiak so if he's up for updating them, great. If not, we can perhaps substitute them with idle graphics.

As for keeping and ditching specific awards, if we feel that there are things the opinions are heavily split on, we can do a poll afterwards to decide on these few specific items. The good news is that we have a consensus about the awards that create the biggest bottlenecks during the prep stage (animation, character art, voice work) being simplified into more generic categories.

I agree with merging those categories, and dropping Best Demo.
There aren't that many demos posted anyway, and sometimes, they aren't even clearly marked.

I would too be sad to see Best Short Game go, for the same reasons Snarky stated.

As for "Programming",  the problem is we don't really see how things are done in code. Thus it ends being, how one think the dev programmed and/or "that looks awesome, it must have been hard to code". The reality might though be very different, and maybe there's not really much wizardly coding, but just a bunch of "hard-coded cheats", or something like that. I remember Gurok mentioning that when he own a Best Programming award (Not that he doesn't do wizardly code, that he wouldn't have deserved the award... but maybe just not on that particular game ;) ).

So while I agree we should be awarding this category, I don't think the current way to do it is the most fair for the devs.

Quote from: cat on Thu 09/11/2023 11:24:50While noone knows the quality or details of game code, people can acknowledge skillful use of the engine (in the lines of "well done, I wouldn't know how to do that", "creative use of the engine" etc.).

Maybe. But if we're looking to expand the audience for the awards, potentially with new community members (and we have to acknowledge the fact that some of our members are players rather than developers), I don't think we can rely on this approach. But...

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 09/11/2023 11:47:58If we keep it, I think I like "Technical Achievement" better than "Programming"—I think it makes it clearer what we are supposed to be judging. 

...I guess I'd be open to this. It still contains some of the pitfalls I highlighted, but I think it's less confusing than appearing to ask people to specifically judge code. It could also potentially absorb the "Innovation" award in some way.

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Thu 09/11/2023 08:09:37I like the idea of opening the voting process to non-forum members, as long as there is some anti-cheating measure available (recording IPs or using cookies, or both), BUT the problem with that is that the most popular, commercial, better marketed games would be the ones to always win, whereas if the vote stays within the AGS community, the process is likely to be more neutral.

Well, if we're being honest, and excluding a handful of exceptional freeware titles, successful commercial AGS games almost certainly reach a far bigger audience; not just on Steam, but sometimes on Playstation, XBox, and Switch. And a large percentage of that audience have likely never set foot in our community, and probably know next to nothing about AGS. I'd like to think we could rely on a portion of this audience to vote in the awards, but, as a pessimist, I'd expect only bad things if we opened the voting to non-members. :-X

At some point in the past, I argued that commercial games should be excluded entirely from the awards, as, in at least some cases, we were putting hobbyist developers up against games with might have had a budget, professional team members, and such. To be fair, there were somewhat fewer commercial games at the time. Later, I suggested excluding commercial games from all other awards, except for a single award specifically tailored to them.

My argument about the current system we have was that, imo, commercial games would always have an advantage (and looking back, since 2012, only two freeware games have won "Best Game", while ten commercial titles took home the award; this despite the fact that there are far more freeware games than commercial titles added to the database each year. In fact, for each of the last two years, only a single freeware game has made onto the "Best Game" short list), and that it made more sense to have an exclusive commercial award while keeping the "Best Game" award exclusively for non-commercial games.

Anyway...apples and oranges.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 10/11/2023 01:32:54My argument about the current system we have was that, imo, commercial games would always have an advantage (and looking back, since 2012, only two freeware games have won "Best Game", while ten commercial titles took home the award; this despite the fact that there are far more freeware games than commercial titles added to the database each year. In fact, for each of the last two years, only a single freeware game has made onto the "Best Game" short list), and that it made more sense to have an exclusive commercial award while keeping the "Best Game" award exclusively for non-commercial games.

A few points:

There have been three non-commercial winners since 2012: Heroine's Quest, Urban Witch Story and If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers (the last two are "pay what you like" donationware, but you can choose to pay nothing). And in 2021 (so within the last two years), three of the five nominees were non-commercial. The year before it was four.

In any case, if the best games are commercial, why wouldn't they deserve to win? It's the AGS Awards, not the Freeware Awards.

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 10/11/2023 07:39:55There have been three non-commercial winners since 2012: Heroine's Quest, Urban Witch Story and If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers (the last two are "pay what you like" donationware, but you can choose to pay nothing). And in 2021 (so within the last two years), three of the five nominees were non-commercial. The year before it was four.

Just a technicality: the game itself is free, and was released as such initially on itch.io; what you're paying for (if you so choose) is the DLC, which we only added after the Steam release. Among other things, this is because due to some of the licenses of the music pieces I used we are not allowed to charge for the game, even if we wanted (not that we want to).

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 10/11/2023 07:39:55In any case, if the best games are commercial, why wouldn't they deserve to win? It's the AGS Awards, not the Freeware Awards.

(I was going to reply to LimpingFish directly, but since I'm already replying to your post anyway, I'll do it here.)

I completely agree. The idea of outright removing commercial games from the awards would only reinforce the idea that AGS is not a "serious" engine, and is meant only for hobbyists. Besides, we should be celebrating the fact that more and more devs are using AGS to create commercial games that stand tall against those created in other engines.

Furthermore, many (most?) commercial AGS games are created by small, in many cases one-person, teams, just the same as freeware ones, and these devs have to put in a huge amount of work and effort into polishing their games to a commercial standard. Excluding these games from the awards would feel like the community is "punishing" these devs for going the extra mile.

I don't think LimpingFish is suggesting excluding commercial games from the awards, when this discussion came up in previous years, the suggestion was usually having them only applicable for a specific "Best Commercial Game" award. This wasn't usually feasible, since there weren't enough commercial games released in a single year, but I get the feeling that's still true today.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 10/11/2023 01:32:54as a pessimist, I'd expect only bad things if we opened the voting to non-members. :-X

I agree.

For my two cents, I'd hate to lose the ceremony. I look forward to attending it every year. I would also hate to lose "Best Character" because characters are what usually draw me to adventure games. I'd also hate to lose Best Short Game. Those are the games I play most (and the kinds of games I tend to make myself). Commercial games usually carry the day for Best Game, but so long as Best Freeware Game has a category, I'm happy. With the exception of the two AGS Bake Sale games I made, I only make games for free. I also like the MAGGIES having a tiny corner of the ceremony.

Having the ceremony earlier in the year is a good idea, but how short of a window do we want for nominations/voting?

Quote from: Babar on Fri 10/11/2023 15:43:54I don't think LimpingFish is suggesting excluding commercial games from the awards, when this discussion came up in previous years, the suggestion was usually having them only applicable for a specific "Best Commercial Game" award.

This is true. I know it may come across as "old man shouts at clouds", but I've just always felt that commercial games, being in the minority, were kind of, I don't know, separate from the community AGS experience; a bunch of hobbyist developers making the kind of games they want to make, regardless of aesthetics or commercial concerns. I really do think that developing a game with the express purpose of selling it is very different to freeware development. Not that commercial developers inherently have or have had to compromise, but I'm reminded of Dave Gilbert's series of videos on the development of Emerald City Confidential, which I found always found kind of depressing. Commercial game development, beyond the act of simply making a game and then deciding to charge for it, has always struck me as a (potentially) soul-destroying enterprise, as opposed to the freedom(?) of freeware development. As I said, I'm a pessimist. I also realize that this viewpoint may come across as somewhat myopic, but...

...I digress.

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 10/11/2023 07:39:55There have been three non-commercial winners since 2012: Heroine's Quest...

...currently says "This is a Commercial Game" in the database. Is this in error?

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 10/11/2023 07:39:55In any case, if the best games are commercial, why wouldn't they deserve to win? It's the AGS Awards, not the Freeware Awards.

This, also, is true. But, it's, imho, kind of like a big-fish-small-pond situation; why shouldn't commercial games go up against other commercial games exclusively? On Steam, if an AGS adventure costs ten bucks, and a, I don't know, Pendulo or Daedalic game costs ten bucks, shouldn't they be judged accordingly, as opposed to a freeware title? What if it's commercial AGS game vs commercial AGS game? It makes no difference to the player, as they're out ten bucks regardless. Should concessions be made because of the engine involved? Likewise, should freeware developers have to go up against a game that perhaps has, I don't know, professional voice work, or professional pixel-pushing? Is it possible that a freeware developer, in a year with a Wadjet Eye release, might say "well, I'm not going to beat that"?*

This is not a community problem, just a "me" problem, and I don't really expect the majority to agree with me. But it's something I've always felt, and something I'll probably, rightly or wrongly, continue to feel.

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Fri 10/11/2023 08:55:13The idea of outright removing commercial games from the awards would only reinforce the idea that AGS is not a "serious" engine, and is meant only for hobbyists. Besides, we should be celebrating the fact that more and more devs are using AGS to create commercial games that stand tall against those created in other engines.

Again, excluding them completely isn't what I wanted (at least in the larger scheme of things). It's just always made sense to me to say the AGS Awards are open to all AGS games, but commercial games should only be represented by a "Best Commercial Game" category, where commercial games can exclusively compete against each other. Most people might disagree, which is fine, but I've yet to hear an compelling argument against doing this (though I realize the irony of the fact that I may not have presented a compelling argument for doing this either!), beyond it not being a popular opinion. Maybe it might open the awards to more freeware games, or at least free up some categories usually dominated by commercial titles? (And yes, conversely, it might be argued, it might stop commercial developers from entering the awards. I never said my plan was infallible!)

Quote from: Laura Hunt on Fri 10/11/2023 08:55:13Furthermore, many (most?) commercial AGS games are created by small, in many cases one-person, teams, just the same as freeware ones, and these devs have to put in a huge amount of work and effort into polishing their games to a commercial standard.

Again, this isn't about punishing commercial titles, and if my argument comes across as such then I apologize to those developers. I mean no disrespect, but, as I said, I just feel commercial development (and the practicalities/pitfalls involved) is inherently in a different realm to freeware development, regardless of any freeware titles being developed with a team or with a budget, or reaching "commercial" quality.

Regardless, all my points could be answered with a hearty "so what?", and I accept that, and this isn't a hill I'm trying to die on. I also apologize if I've derailed the conversation, as I realize that I've typed up a lot of text for a somewhat non-argument...oh well. :-\

*Yes, such an argument could've been made against "If On a Winter's Night...", as it's of an exceptional, commercial-type quality, and I'd have hardly called for that game to be excluded, so...I don't know.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25It's just always made sense to me to say the AGS Awards are open to all AGS games, but commercial games should only be represented by a "Best Commercial Game" category, where commercial games can exclusively compete against each other. Most people might disagree, which is fine, but I've yet to hear an compelling argument against doing this (though I realize the irony of the fact that I may not have presented a compelling argument for doing this either!), beyond it not being a popular opinion

As I mentioned, the argument would be that there wouldn't be enough commercial games nominated for such an award to make it viable as its own category. And then that's essentially excluding commercial games from being recognised by AGS.

Quote from: Babar on Fri 10/11/2023 15:43:54I don't think LimpingFish is suggesting excluding commercial games from the awards

Restricting them to a single category means excluding them from the awards in general.

It'd be one thing if we had different competition classes for each category, but there aren't enough games or voters to support that.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25I've just always felt that commercial games, being in the minority, were kind of, I don't know, separate from the community AGS experience; a bunch of hobbyist developers making the kind of games they want to make, regardless of aesthetics or commercial concerns

I fundamentally disagree. Indie developers making commercial games are an integral part of the AGS community, and have been for most of its history.

And in my subjective opinion, most commercial AGS games carry on the "culture" of AGS (for better and worse).

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25...currently says "This is a Commercial Game" in the database. Is this in error?

Yes. Heroine's Quest is and has always been free. (I believe there are some copyright issues that would make it difficult if not impossible to charge for it.)

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25Should concessions be made because of the engine involved?

In the AGS Awards? Yes!

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25Likewise, should freeware developers have to go up against a game that perhaps has, I don't know, professional voice work, or professional pixel-pushing?

In a contest about which AGS games have the best pixel-pushing and voice work? Yes!

You talk about "a bunch of hobbyist developers making the kind of games they want to make, regardless of aesthetics or commercial concerns." That's fine, but I think it's reasonable to point out that if you don't care about or strive for aesthetics or commercial (i.e. popular) appeal, you're probably not going to win a popular-vote-based contest for those things—and in fact shouldn't win.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25This is not a community problem, just a "me" problem, and I don't really expect the majority to agree with me. But it's something I've always felt, and something I'll probably, rightly or wrongly, continue to feel.

I think we should drop the topic. We will not change each other's minds, and for me this is a hill I'm willing to die on.

I feel like this conversation has taken the kind of turn where I should keep my nose out and let the adults talk.
But I want to add my two cents anyway.  (laugh)

Considering people have to purchase a commercial game in order to play it, and people generally don't vote let alone nominate a game that they've never played. I've always thought that commercial games are at a severe disadvantage compared to their freeware counterparts. The fact that they make up for this disadvantage with much more polish (aka professional graphics, music, ect), in my mind, puts everything on a somewhat level playing field.

And besides, there's different levels of commercial games.
I mean compare Captain Disaster to Unavowed. Both are great commercial games, but it's a bit unfair to only compare them just because they're commercial games.  :-\
(What I'm trying to say is that some commercial games are made by just one guy in his spare time, not unlike most freeware games, while some commercial games are made by a team working full time.)

Agree with basically all the above. "Commercial" just means that whoever made it has decided to sell it for a price rather than give it away for free, which massively reduces the user-based (albeit with the limited number of people who nominate and vote, the effect is greatly reduced). It's also a fair point that commercial can mean a team of people with professional artists and voice cast, or... not! But that's also (maybe not to the same scale) true of freeware games. Some people are professional artists / coders / VAs making something in their spare time, so they bring those skills to their free project. (FWIW my co-dev on Stomping Boots had been a professional developer before and without his help I would probably never had been able to complete the game, nor would it have been anywhere near as good. I would like to think that over the years I've acquired these necessary skills.)

I think the only fair way to judge any games is simply against the criteria of the award, whether it be gameplay, graphics or whatever. Which is what I think we all do. I think the "Best Game" and "Best Freeware Game" could easily be combined onto just "Best Game" if people wanted them to be, but I rather like the possibility of the possibility of having two different winners. But does it unconsciously prejudice people to think that "Best Freeware Game" means it's probable that "Best Game" should be a commercial effort? I guess that's possible but I'm not entirely convinced.

I was thinking that "commercial" and "freeware" could be temporary status, because if a commercial game after some years is no longer available on platform such as Steam then the developer could re-release for free!
Yes it's rare but could happens!  :-\

_

Quote from: TheFrighter on Mon 13/11/2023 18:23:22I was thinking that "commercial" and "freeware" could be temporary status, because if a commercial game after some years is no longer available on platform such as Steam then the developer could re-release for free!
Yes it's rare but could happens!  :-\

It could happen but probably irrelevant for the rewards themselves, as the game is only eligible for the year it's added to the database. I just checked and on the AGS game database page itself, you can still tick / untick the Commercial box if you do update. So in a sense, it is actually a temporary status, because it can be changed by the developer.

Quote from: Snarky on Sun 12/11/2023 10:21:27Yes. Heroine's Quest is and has always been free. (I believe there are some copyright issues that would make it difficult if not impossible to charge for it.)

I've changed the database entry to reflect this, to avoid further confusion. So three it is...

Quote from: Snarky on Sun 12/11/2023 10:21:27In the AGS Awards? Yes!

That was clumsy on my part, and I should have been clearer. What I meant by "regardless of engine" was in relation to one commercial game over another, AGS or other. If I pay...checks steam...14.99 for Unavowed, I'm going to want my value for money, just as if I payed 14.99 for a game by another developer, whether said game uses a comparable engine or Unreal 5. It doesn't matter that Unavowed is an AGS game, I'm going to judge it in the commercial arena, against other commercial games. I guess it's a consumer point of view. Paying that 14.99 is going to influence my opinion of any game that I have to rate, something that doesn't enter the equation when dealing with freeware titles. That's what I was trying to get across when I said there is (to me) a fundamental difference between judging "commercial" and "freeware" games, AGS or otherwise.

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 12/11/2023 04:12:25In a contest about which AGS games have the best pixel-pushing and voice work? Yes!

Maybe I'm trying to emphasize "fairness" to an unobtainable degree. That's probably on me. But judging, say, a commercial game's graphics over a freeware game's graphics means, to me, ignoring the commercial game's need to be competitive in a different arena to the freeware game, one that requires a level of polish that the freeware game doesn't necessarily need to aspire to. It's less about punishing the commercial game, and more about not punishing the freeware game, at least, as I said, to me. But as I also said, maybe that's just not feasible. :-\

Quote from: CaptainD on Mon 13/11/2023 09:15:19I think the only fair way to judge any games is simply against the criteria of the award...

I honestly don't have a major problem with that, despite the need to note my own personal hang-ups.  :-[

Quote from: Snarky on Sun 12/11/2023 10:21:27I think we should drop the topic.

Agreed.

Setting the question of what is fair and what is not aside, I think the biggest practical issue is that while trying to distinguish between "commercially competitive" and "hobbyist" games may be easy in some cases, it will become highly arbitrary in others.

If we want to try streamlining the process to make the client quicker to produce for the Awards team and the nominations easier to digest for the community, we probably want to steer clear of anything that requires heavy moderating or in-depth research, and is very prone to be disputed.

Ok guys! First off, I would like to thank you all for all the responses, every single one. It's really uplifting to see that the community is still interested in and attached to the Awards and the ceremony.

The changes we decided to go ahead with this year are as follows:

1. The Awards:
Best Game of the Year
Best Freeware Game
Best Short Game
Best Non-Adventure Game
Best Demo
Best Audio
Best Visuals
Best Writing
Best Programming
Best Character
Best Gameplay

As you can see, all the visuals will be merged into a single award. Same with the audio awards. Gameplay and puzzles have become a single category.
Best Short, Demo, Programming and Character all have their fervent defenders, so we have decided to leave them be, at least for now. We may revisit the topic together again next year, should need be.

2. Ceremony date:

The ceremony will take place in March. The doodle for the specific date will be set up much earlier this time, around first week of January, so you can plan in advance to attend, if you wish to. The nominations phase will happen in January, and the voting in February (give or take a couple days for the team to set the next stage up).

Shortly after the ceremony date is revealed, I will start looking for presenters and streamers. Please consider volunteering, the more the merrier and it really helps a lot! :)

3. Games list:

The games will now be eligible for specific categories based on their database entries. This should make the nominations easier, as the lists of values will only include the actual eligible games.

We are happy to accept volunteers to sift through this year's database and let us know if any of the games are misclassified in the following categories: Non-Adventure, Demo, Freeware, Short.
Please PM me or cat if you think you can help.

4. Nominee assets:

As we have eliminated specific categories for visuals and audio, there will be little need to ask the creators of the nominated games for assets. We will either self-source the required assets, or accept optional contributions in the form of screenshots and avatars, should you choose to supply any.

Quote from: Kastchey on Thu 30/11/2023 21:54:313. Games list:

The games will now be eligible for specific categories based on their database entries. This should make the nominations easier, as the lists of values will only include the actual eligible games.

Big thanks to @AGA , who implemented this for us. I think this is a huge improvement for the nomination process. Last year, it was hard to get enough nominations in the Best Short Game category. I hope that a reduced list that only includes eligible games will result in more people nominating.

Quote from: Kastchey on Thu 30/11/2023 21:54:31We are happy to accept volunteers to sift through this year's database and let us know if any of the games are misclassified in the following categories: Non-Adventure, Demo, Freeware, Short.
Please PM me or cat if you think you can help.

I've informed cat that I'm doing this. As I have played many of the games and have the database admin rights, this shouldn't be too much hassle.

I did some changes. Posting them here in case of objections:

* removed Demo tag on Iskra Igra
* changed Super Author Simulator 2023 to non-adventure
* changed Lost & Found to non-adventure
* changed How to: Witchcraft Cuisine to non-adventure
* changed Karelian bath steam house (Finnish) to non-adventure (will change it back to joke game after the nomination process)
* changed Super Star Trek (1978) meets 25th Anniversary to non-adventure

Jury is still out on

* The Weird thing under the bed Is it an adventure game? (Probably not important in this case. Sorry, Mandle.)
* Katura's Chronicles These games of Marion's are visual novels. In my head that is a subcategory of adventure games, so I haven't changed anything.
* Menial; a Utopian Bagel Simulator This is a hybrid of several game genres. So: non-adventure or not?

There may still be things that are incorrect, especially regarding game length. Any input may be useful, like the bride said to her shy groom.

Thanks so much, heltenjon. This really helps.

Using similar guidelines hightreason uses for his $10X Adventure Game Challenge (I think they're spot on):

Quote* The Weird thing under the bed Is it an adventure game?

I'd say so. It's a form of unusually structured visual novel.

Quote* Katura's Chronicles These games of Marion's are visual novels. In my head that is a subcategory of adventure games, so I haven't changed anything.

Yeah, I'd agree.

Quote* Menial; a Utopian Bagel Simulator This is a hybrid of several game genres. So: non-adventure or not?

To me it felt primarily like a visual novel with some extra elements, so I would say adventure game.

Just my opinion though.

When in doubt, just go with what the author decided it should be.

Quote from: Kastchey on Thu 30/11/2023 21:54:313. Games list:

The games will now be eligible for specific categories based on their database entries. This should make the nominations easier, as the lists of values will only include the actual eligible games.

Oh, cool, that's a great addition to the process. :)

Quote from: heltenjon on Fri 01/12/2023 10:59:44There may still be things that are incorrect, especially regarding game length. Any input may be useful, like the bride said to her shy groom.

It's not an exact science, so I'd say go with your gut. As for kinda-non-adventure games, if the narrative or adventure-type elements are second to the arcade or simulation elements, I'd lean towards classifying it as a non-adventure, myself. If they share equal importance, I'd probably go...adventure?

Regardless, if you need a hand with specific games, let me know. :)

EDIT:

Dread McFarlane (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2681-dread-mac-farlane/) is actually an old game re-uploaded to the database, and not the visual novel/comic version, so I guess it should be removed from the possible nominees list?

Hey Der, Undy! (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2684-hey-der-undy-/), to quote the developer: "There are two versions available. V1.3 has no voicing, but has more textured graphics, a better user interface and a "jokeatron". V1.2 has the old AI voicing and older, simpler graphics." Will this be a problem?

Also, I noticed a handful of games use free or paid asset packs for the majority (if not all) of their graphics. Should we address this in regards to the visual award?

Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 01/12/2023 19:03:21

Quote from: heltenjon on Fri 01/12/2023 10:59:44There may still be things that are incorrect, especially regarding game length. Any input may be useful, like the bride said to her shy groom.

It's not an exact science, so I'd say go with your gut. As for kinda-non-adventure games, if the narrative or adventure-type elements are second to the arcade or simulation elements, I'd lean towards classifying it as a non-adventure, myself. If they share equal importance, I'd probably go...adventure?

Regardless, if you need a hand with specific games, let me know. :)

Thanks, LimpingFish, I may do that. Like Kastchey guessed, I'm going with the same broad definition of what constitutes an adventure game as the $100+ game jams on itch.

QuoteDread McFarlane (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2681-dread-mac-farlane/) is actually an old game re-uploaded to the database, and not the visual novel/comic version, so I guess it should be removed from the possible nominees list?

That is correct. These games have already had a shot at ags awards, because they have been in the database before. Even though I'm happy they are back, they aren't eligible this year.

Some other old jam games that are added for the first time now, is eligible under our rules, though. Like America 2000. I don't think this will be a problem for anyone.

QuoteHey Der, Undy! (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2684-hey-der-undy-/), to quote the developer: "There are two versions available. V1.3 has no voicing, but has more textured graphics, a better user interface and a "jokeatron". V1.2 has the old AI voicing and older, simpler graphics." Will this be a problem?

This will not be a problem. People may nominate from either of these versions if they want to, but I don't think it's necessary to do anything about it.

QuoteAlso, I noticed a handful of games use free or paid asset packs for the majority (if not all) of their graphics. Should we address this in regards to the visual award?

Isn't the criteria something about original art? I must admit I would think that Marion's Star Trek Comics, for example, would not be a natural choice because of this, even though they look like a million Euros.

If you have to address if the art if "original to the game" or "free/paid pack" in regards to the awards, then we also have to address the audio. And we have to know which games aren't using non-original stuff.

I thing we should just let the people decide. If the pack fits the game and it's so good that the people decide it deserves and awards, isn't that just credit to the original artist that created the art and the game designer that implemented it perfectly?

I haven't followed the whole discussion, but i wanted to reply to one of the original questions.

Quote from: cat on Mon 06/11/2023 12:07:39What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you going to participate in voting or join a ceremony next year?

Most likely I won't vote.

I know that I can vote without having played all the games in question, but it was only once (2-3 years ago) that I felt I have played and seen enough to make a meaningful vote in all categories.

Usually I don't play enough of the games to give a vote, and most likely it will be the same next year. On the other hand I haven't lost interest in the awards and find them entertaining, an it's also nice to recap and see all the great AGS games that came out the previous year. If I find the time to play a good chunk of the games (and take a look at other game's comments, screenshots, trailers..) then i will vote again.

That said, it would definitely help if there were a bit fewer categories to vote for.

Quote from: Matti on Wed 13/12/2023 18:43:37That said, it would definitely help if there were a bit fewer categories to vote for.

Good news, this is going to happen:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/ags-awards-2023-the-future-of-the-awards/msg636659380/#msg636659380

I've updated the first post with this information.

Here's a question I asked during the last nomination period:

Commercial games have the option of offering a demo link. So are commercial games eligible for nomination in the demo category, if they have a demo that was released in the past year, even if the demo doesn't have a separate db entry?

Do you mean a scenario where they have released the full version of their commercial game in 2023, but still offer a demo that was also released in 2023?

If so, I think they should only be eligible for Best Demo if the full product is still unreleased. I.e. the category description should be "Best demo of an upcoming (as of year's end) AGS game".

Just my opinion, feel free to challenge :)

I think Snarky means if the demo is available, but the AGS page is for the main game, rather than a specific entry for the demo as I've done with CD3: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2666-captain-disaster-and-the-two-worlds-of-riskara-demo/

So if I only had the one page for the full game, but the demo is available from within that page, would it be eligible for the Best Demo award?

Yes, that was my understanding.

I would say no, and I would even treat it the other way round. So for example, if you made a surprise release of CD3 before the end of the year, that would in my view qualify the product to compete with other full version games, not the demos, even though you have a separate database entry for the demo itself.

I know that demos sometimes differ slightly from the end product (I recall CD2 demo had different puzzles to the final game), but at the end of the day this is the same title and it might be difficult to draw the line between the two when nominating.

Personally my inclination is the opposite of Kastchey's: I don't think the release of the full game should disqualify the demo from competing in that category, and I tend to think it is more fair to not require a separate db entry for the demo.

My logic is that I don't think arbitrary release-schedule windows should ever totally disqualify entries from competing in the Awards (in a year). It seems unfair to me that if Demo A and Demo B are both released in 2023, and Game A is released in December 2023 while Game B comes out in January 2024, the demos should therefore be treated differently. As for having a separate entry, that seems like a fairly irrelevant criterion, and punishes developers for using the db the way the current setup encourages.

The question can be fairly consequential. For 2022 there were 7 (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?msg=636653982) commercial games with demo links on the page of the commercial game, and where the demos were released the same year:

Spoiler

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard (demo 21. March)
Captain Hook and the Lost Girl (demo 7. July)
Gongbot (demo 2. May)
Graceward - Complete Edition (release demo 26. December)
Grandma Badass (release demo 22. November; there was a preview demo in 2020 (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2505-grandma-episode-1-confinement-2021-); I haven't compared it, but the file size of the final demo is 8 times bigger)
Snow Problem (demo 11. May)
SPHONX (demo 27. May)

[close]

Meanwhile, there were only 4 demos with separate db entries (none of which had a full game release in 2022).

How which games/demos would be affected in 2023?

Quote from: cat on Wed 20/12/2023 17:20:51How which games/demos would be affected in 2023?

Only Abscission, I think.

I agree that having separate entries (or not) for two versions of the title shouldn't be a factor, and I do think we should be consistent in whatever approach we take.

I do still feel though that if anything, it seems unfair not to exclude the demo of a released game, because otherwise we are allowing other demos to compete with a full product. Demos are by definition shorter, less immersive and offer very limited experience, and as such it makes sense that they have their own category. If one of them comes with a full product within the same competition, it significantly changes how the title is received.

This said, it's not a hill to die on :) If the general consensus is that the release date should be the only factor, then let's do that and just ensure we consistently add the demos to the list if they are available.

I see your point. I assumed that voters would judge the demo on its own merits, but I don't suppose that's a safe expectation. Of course, you could still get into situations where that would apply, if the full game is released in the next year but before the voting starts.

Personally, I've always took, that a Demo of a commercial game should be eligible for the Best demo, as long as individual entries in the db, independently of when the  final game is/was released. As long as it hasn't been eligible to the award before, that is.

But the hard thing for me, was always to figure if the said commercial game has a Demo and when was it released...

A demo should be a short version of the game, that demonstrates the game, playability, puzzles, story, etc. Normally 5-15 minutes game play (depending on how long the final game it). Release date for the demo should have no baring on whether it should be eligible for the award. Mostly cause one can make a demo to generate expectation and support for the development o said game (early bird, crowdfunding, etc), or be released along with the commercial game for people to evaluate if they want to buy the game.

I don't have a strong opinion. The only thing is: with the current filter, demos are only eligible if they have their own database entry. So for simplicity's sake, I would leave it as is, for this year.

Yes, I agree. But I think Snarky made a good observation. We will probably reopen the Awards discussion next year after the ceremony, so let's add this to the list of points to be revisited.

I only now noticed that Murder Cases (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2719-murder-cases-demo-/) may be missing length specification in the database. I think it should be a demo?

Quote from: Kastchey on Thu 11/01/2024 12:35:24I only now noticed that Murder Cases (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2719-murder-cases-demo-/) may be missing length specification in the database. I think it should be a demo?

Updated.

Thank you!