edit 24/04/14: results here! (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50187.msg636486973#msg636486973)
As promised, I open this thread to discuss (and finally decide) proposals on
categories for next year's Awards.
A number of points have been made, unfortunately I can't paste/quote/link them all; some of them were: m0ds (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477347#msg636477347), Snarky (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477521#msg636477521), dactylopus (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477395#msg636477395), Andail (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477387#msg636477387), Abisso (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477575#msg636477575), Problem (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477654#msg636477654), qNemo (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477721#msg636477721).
Andail did set up a poll too (results here (http://i.imgur.com/R0yg1AM.png)), which gives us a general idea of where we are heading.
After a bit of brainstorming, these were the proposals people came up with:
- Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
- Yes, "Best Commercial game", commercial games can compete only in this category.
- Yes, for each category (Music, Backgrounds, etc.) have a "best commercial game" and "best freeware game".
- Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.
- Leave things as they are.
- Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
- ...merge ________ into Best Music&Sound:
- Music/SFX/Voice into Best Music&Sound.
- Music/SFX into Best Music&Sound (leave Voice-Acting alone).
- Voice/SFX into Best Sound Design (leave Music alone).
- Leave things as they are.
- ...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
- Yes.
- Leave things as they are.
- ...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
- Backgrounds/Animation/Character-Art into Best Artwork.
- Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
- replace BGs/CA/Ani with Best Sprite Art plus Best Artwork.
- Leave things as they are.
- ...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
- Programming/Gameplay/Puzzles into Best Game Design.
- Gameplay/Puzzles into Best Game Design (leave programming alone).
- forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!
- Leave things as they are.
- ...drop best Player Character/Non-Player Character:
- yup, both
- merge them in Best Character (whether Player controlled or else)
- Leave things as they are.
- Should we add more categories?
For this question, just input 0 or more categories. The ones which will reach >50% of the ballots will pass.
To date, suggestions have been:
Best Horror Best Comedy
Best Drama Best Science Fiction
Best Setting/Gameworld Best Atmosphere
Best Experimental Game Best Resource
Best Newcomer** Best Puzzle (single Puzzle)
Best Game in Communal Series* Most Daring Interface
Most Thought Provoking Experience Best User Interface
Best Voice Actor (single)
* (OcenSpirit Dennis, Reality on the Norm, Maniac Mansion Mania, etc.)
** or Best Breakthrough of the Year / Debut game, see this (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50187.msg636485348#msg636485348)
or add your own.
Cast your preferences (like so (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50187.msg636484738#msg636484738)) or post to propose more options. You can change your preferences, but please warn me if you do so.
Thanks for your participation!
The amount of freeware games generaly far outnumber the amount of commercial games, so limiting one catagory to commercial games makes more sense than the inverse.
It also makes sense to segregate the two. While a freeware game isn't necessary worse, having a budget and full-time development does tend to make a rather substantial difference.
Merging Music and Sound together makes sense, Voice Acting is pretty destinct from the rest of the sound quality though. Likewise story and dialog are intrinsically linked with little seperation, having them boiled down into 'Best Story' makes sense. I'd consider animation and art slightly different, but the difference between character art and background art seem negligible.
Best programming just has no reason to exist. It is a behind the scenes skill. If they programmed in a cool effect then nominate them for best art, if they programmed in a cool gameplay feature or puzzle then nominate them for best gameplay.
My opinion is that before we talk categories, we've got to talk mission. What are the AGS awards for? If it's just a popularity contest, why not just have one award ("Best Game")? Now I don't begrudge the winners of the best game award their due glory, but I have my suspicions that their popularity causes votes to spill over into other categories that, though deserving, they might not actually be "the best" in.
A few examples:
This year Heroine's Quest won 69% (11/16) of all voted awards (and consider that it wasn't eligible for Best Demo, Short Game, & Non-Adventure). Out of a pool of 110 games. With 22 rated 4 cups or more by the players (the rating panel hasn't got to most of them). What are the chances?
In 2012 Resonance won 71% (12/17) of all voted awards. (same eligibility caveat)
In 2011 it was Gemini Rue with 41% (7/17). (ditto)
In 2010 it was The Journey Down with 65% (11/17). (ditto again)
Now don't get me wrong, these were all GREAT games! But the blockbuster phenomena pretty much makes voting by categories redundant. If all we want to do is glorify the single most popular game made with AGS then why not just have one single BEST GAME award?
Alternatively, the awards could be about showcasing the diverse talent pool that is the AGS community, giving exposure to games that wouldn't necessarily otherwise get them. How do we do this fairly? We could create award categories that emphasize diversity of genres, like Best Horror or Best Fantasy Game; or categories that reward innovation over simply being best, like Most Daring Interface or Most Thought Provoking Experience. Or we could make it a community event and have preview clips of each nominated game, like at the Oscars, followed by an online poll at the ceremony itself (adding to the suspense and hopefully attendance as well). Obviously that last idea would require much more coordination of an already laborious process, but my point is that actually seeing examples of the best that each game has to offer juxtaposed might counteract the herd-mentality of voters a bit.
In summary, I think the awards need a bit of a shake-up to stay relevant.
I like the categories more or less as they are. Merging them might not be fair. For example, if you merge SFX/Voice/Music, what if a game had a great orchestral soundtrack but rubbish voice acting and sound effects? The composer of the soundtrack might miss out on some well-deserved recognition.
Asfor Baron's point about the blockbuster phenomenon. What if there were no 'best game' voting category and instead we voted in all the smaller category and the 'best game' was decided by which game had the most other votes? Although, I'm not sure I like that idea myself, but just throwing it out there.
Some thoughts extending on Baron's post: What if the Best Game would automatically be not eligible for any other awards? Or if each game could only get one award, the one it most deserves, so to speak? It would afford a different voting system, where you essentially vote on all games in all categories they're in, so that when e.g. the game you vote for Best Music wins the Best Game award, you still vote on the rest of the games for Best Music.
Or maybe each game can only be nominated for one category in the first place, but then, when you don't win in that category, say, Best Game, you can't win anything else either.
Category-wise, I'd say Best Animations and Best Character Art could merge into something like Best Spriting. Best Dialog and Best Story one the other hand, to me are not too much overlapping, a game could have funny dialogs without having a great story to tell, and a truly immersive story can feature rather unoriginal dialog. Best SFX could go, IMO, I don't recall having paid that much attention to sound effects or thinking "Man, that's a game with outstanding sound effects!" - they still help making good games much better though.
Quote from: Galen on Sat 15/03/2014 23:53:36
The amount of freeware games generaly far outnumber the amount of commercial games, so limiting one catagory to commercial games makes more sense than the inverse.
Keep in mind that the two options are not exact parallels: the proposal for the "Best Commercial Game" category is to also
exclude commercial games from all the other categories. The alternative "Best Freeware Game" category would leave all the (other) categories open to all games.
Personally I think it's much better to have a system where a bunch of deserving games aren't excluded from a category because of some other, arbitrary factor. Good graphics are good graphics whether you have to pay for the game or not.
Perhaps most importantly, without a "Best Game" category where all AGS games can compete, I think the awards lose almost all credibility. If we have a "Best Commercial Game" category, you can't call the category with just freeware games competing "Best Game" any more.
QuoteIt also makes sense to segregate the two. While a freeware game isn't necessary worse, having a budget and full-time development does tend to make a rather substantial difference.
But lots of commercial games weren't full-time projects, while some freeware games have comparable production values. If you look at Baron's list of "blockbusters", half of those are freeware titles.
We're also starting to see more commercial games that focus on some particular strengths without necessarily trying to match old-school Sierra/LucasArts/Revolution games in overall production values, such as Conspirocracy this year. To me (as to the game makers (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49765.msg636477582#msg636477582)) it seems more appropriate to have such entries competing alongside all other AGS games in all the categories.
For me it really comes down to: The AGS Awards are about recognizing the qualities of AGS games. Commercial AGS games are still AGS games, hence they should not be excluded just on that basis.
Quote from: Baron on Sun 16/03/2014 02:52:49
My opinion is that before we talk categories, we've got to talk mission. What are the AGS awards for? If it's just a popularity contest, why not just have one award ("Best Game")? Now I don't begrudge the winners of the best game award their due glory, but I have my suspicions that their popularity causes votes to spill over into other categories that, though deserving, they might not actually be "the best" in.
Possible counterpoint to that: "blockbuster" games become blockbusters precisely because they are strong across the board, and therefore competitive in most categories. Of course, in any category there is probably a popularity effect (mainly, I think, because some voters may not have played all the nominated games; that applies even more strongly so at the nominations stage, obviously), but personally I don't see a lot of evidence that the big award winners are taking home a lot of prizes they don't deserve. (In the case of HQ, while it faced worthy competition for a lot of the categories, there are only two awards it won where there was an, IMHO, clearly better alternative... And if you try to guess which two, I'm pretty sure we would find we all have different opinions.)
HQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won. Best Game is the sum of all fixtures, in my opinion.
But there's really nothing we can do about it, if a game gets popular it will raise more votes and people will throw their vote if and when they're not sure about a particular category.
The only way I think we can change things a bit, meaning giving less popular games some more attention is to actually increase the number of categories and hope that voters become more focused and specific on their voting.
As for commercial vs freeware my opinion still divides. This year we had a great free game and things got balanced but it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.
Quote from: miguel on Sun 16/03/2014 10:41:50
HQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won.
Well, I for one voted for it in a lot of the categories it won (though not all; OTOH, I possibly voted for it in one or two it didn't win), because having played at least a significant chunk of all the nominated games in the category, I genuinely felt it was the best of the nominees.
We've had variations of this discussion pretty much every year for as long as I've been here, and in the past, the organizer, looking at individual votes, has found that there aren't a lot of people who just "vote the slate": pick one favorite game that they vote for for basically every award where it's nominated. But different people don't all agree on which categories it shouldn't take home, or which of the other nominees should win instead, so taking all the individual ballots together you often end up with a near-sweep. (Remember, if a game takes only 40% of the votes in a particular category, but there's no one clear favorite among the alternatives, it's still going to win.)
Quote from: miguel on Sun 16/03/2014 10:41:50it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.
???
I certainly have no idea, though with the strong roster of commercial games set to hopefully be released this year (Samaritan Paradox, A Golden Wake, Blackwell, QFI, Nelly 2, Mage's Initiation, + several others) there's clearly a good chance it will be a commercial title.
I have a suggestion:
Before you vote, you will be presented with the list of all games which are nominated for at least one award, and requested to check the games you have played. Then you will be given the ability to vote only for those awards for which you've played all the nominees.
This will prevent scenarios of outside voters voting for their favorite game even though they didn't check out the competition.
QuoteQuote from: miguel on Today at 10:41
it's with no surprise that most of us already know who will win next year's awards, although it's still March.
???
I certainly have no idea, though with the strong roster of commercial games set to hopefully be released this year (Samaritan Paradox, A Golden Wake, Blackwell, QFI, Nelly 2, Mage's Initiation, + several others) there's clearly a good chance it will be a commercial title.
You are very sure of most things and surprisingly unsure of others, but the list speaks for it self.
QuoteHQ was the best game this year, but it wasn't the best in all the categories it won.
Well, I for one voted for it in a lot of the categories it won (though not all; OTOH, I possibly voted for it in one or two it didn't win), because having played at least a significant chunk of all the nominated games in the category, I genuinely felt it was the best of the nominees.
I played all the games nominated and my votes where pretty much more disperse. Although I did vote HQ for best game.
Quote from: tzachs on Sun 16/03/2014 12:02:19
I have a suggestion:
Before you vote, you will be presented with the list of all games which are nominated for at least one award, and requested to check the games you have played. Then you will be given the ability to vote only for those awards for which you've played all the nominees.
This will prevent scenarios of outside voters voting for their favorite game even though they didn't check out the competition.
I think that would be a nice idea to encourage people to be honest, but it's hardly going to stop someone who's determined to enter their votes regardless.
Quote from: miguel on Sun 16/03/2014 12:50:47
You are very sure of most things and surprisingly unsure of others, but the list speaks for it self.
I am very sure about things I have direct knowledge of. Or did you perhaps mean that I have strong
opinions on a number of issues, which is quite another matter?
And you find it surprising that I am unsure about which one (if any) out of many promising-looking games that have yet to be released and that I have yet to play will "win next year's awards"? That is a very strange comment,
in my opinion. Many of them are made by people who have won lots of awards in the past, so it's hardly going to be an easy victory for whichever one takes "Best Game" in the end.
So, please enlighten me. (Over PM, if you'd prefer.) Which one is the game that "most of us" already know is going to win?
QuoteI played all the games nominated and my votes where pretty much more disperse. Although I did vote HQ for best game.
That just seems to prove that people's opinions differ, and therefore that just because you don't think it deserved all the other awards, that doesn't mean the people who voted for it in those categories didn't do their own honest evaluation and conclude that it did.
Maybe a 2nd place award for some categories, especially Best Game?
For when a Godzilla of a game like HQ comes around again, probably about as often as Halley's Comet...
Snarky, if you wanted a PM debate you wouldn't start quoting me publicly.
But just between us I'll send you the big winner for next year's AGS award by PM. We can even place a small bet just to make things interesting.
Now, when I said that you seem to be sure of many things except who will be the next winner I meant just that. You are someone with little doubts about many subjects although fail to see something that has been consistent year after year.
Okay, next year we'll have many commercial games on the roll, and you think (and probably many more) that it will have an effect on the final voting. It does make sense but our little bet is still up because I'm not entirely sure if quality over marketing will be enough to ensure a "fair" decision.
Just a question, because I don't know. I really changed my mind sometimes over this and still can't end up with a good solution. But, is there any room for one-man games next year?
I know that things evolve and that my conversation sounds pretty conservative and that to have good quality AGS games is a good (excellent) thing and never something bad. It means that the engine is capable of producing good commercial games and what better showcase can we get?
I'm just a bit sceptical, I'm getting old or something like that. I don't know.
QuoteThat just seems to prove that people's opinions differ, and therefore that just because you don't think it deserved all the other awards, that doesn't mean the people who voted for it in those categories didn't do their own honest evaluation and conclude that it did.
This is too elaborate for my tiny head, Snarky. What I said doesn't prove anything, really. When I wrote that after playing all the games I distributed my votes there's nothing else to say.
What I do know is that it's easy to vote for a popular name/brand when you're not sure and that clearly happens every year. But, with this in mind and I can't really remember my votes (alzheimer or maybe too much high-school weed) I know I voted HQ for 3 categories.
That's why I suggested that increasing the categories could lead to more independent voting. I was one of the persons to vote for less categories on the poll, call me crazy, I know. It seamed too much and now I think it created a problem.
I don't have a solution for the voting system, maybe it is the best we can get right now. And after all my talk and arguments the truth is that 90 something voters choose their games and that's that.
The most popular game will win the most awards. People are told to play all the games before voting and they don't. What I propose is to have an opt-in academy system that anyone can join, in which the player must verify with an academy moderator that they have completed every game in the category before being able to vote, possibly by sending a screenshot or photo of them reaching the endings. This could be done on a category basis, so someone wouldn't have to play every best short game nomination to vote for best full game, for example. It's definitely not a perfect idea, but I like how it marries the openness of the current system with the reliability of a closed set of qualified voters, which I usually distrust (see the Oscars). I'd love to hear critiques and alternate suggestions.
On the other side of things, I agree the number of awards should be trimmed down and similar ones merged wherever possible. We should probably keep categories like demo, non-adventure, etc. that are immune from the sweeps.
It seems there is disagreement over what "character art" means: some people feel it's mostly about portraits (which is closer to background art), and other people feel it's more about character sprites (which is basically what the animation award is for). I think that's a good reason for removing character art as a separate category.
Likewise, it doesn't seem clear what "best gameplay" means. To some people, it's synonymous to "best game"; others consider it similar to "best puzzles", or to "best writing". Again, I'm not sure if best gameplay should be left as a separate award. However, "best programming" is clearly distinct from all of these.
Finally, I'm not sure if it's useful to separate sound and music, as both are complements to the game's audiotory experience; although voice acting should remain separate.
I think this is a very good idea:
Quote from: Baron on Sun 16/03/2014 02:52:49
Alternatively, the awards could be about showcasing the diverse talent pool that is the AGS community, giving exposure to games that wouldn't necessarily otherwise get them. How do we do this fairly? We could create award categories that emphasize diversity of genres, like Best Horror or Best Fantasy Game; or categories that reward innovation over simply being best, like Most Daring Interface or Most Thought Provoking Experience.
It would be interesting to see genre awards, or even something as simple as best humoristic game and best non-humoristic game. I'm not sure if that's the best name for it, but I find there's a clear distinction between grim/realistic games like Police Quest, and silly slapstick games like Day Of The Tentacle. I like both genres, but there could feasibly be a different award for each. $.02
To clarify: I don't propose to merge puzzles into gameplay, but rather to eliminate "best gameplay" (since it is not clearly defined what that means), and leave "best puzzles" intact.
Also, I feel that 2.iv.b and 2.iv.c are really the same thing; both propose to have two art categories, i.e. "best background art" and "best sprites and animation". It doesn't really matter where "character art" gets merged into, since there is disagreement over what that term means.
Also also, perhaps we should consider question 3, "should we add new categories". Such as what Baron proposed.
In my honest opinion, several of the awards felt redundant, for example Best Dialogue Writing and Best Original Story could be combined into one, Best Writing. It's weird to see a game winning the latter and losing the former, a game with a decent storyline or excellent dialogs should be judged for either and win the heart of a player. Writing involves many things like the setting and all the plot-wise mechanisms devised by the team of writers.
Secondly, Best Gameplay and Best Puzzles should be combined, the categorization currently splits genres and not games, and we already have an award for non-adventure games. Gemini Rue for example combining puzzles and shooting sequences, would win this award, whether it was two or one, imho. Best Gameplay should indicate how good a game feels, regardless of genre.
Best Short Story should remain, the same reason we have short movie awards.
The Best Background and Best Character Art, should be combined, even when someone puts emphasis on one of them, which I can't recall a game doing so, it's for artistic purposes, and combining the award would honor/celebrate that.
Concerning sound awards the lack of nominations on the best sound effects currently shows that nobody understands the award anymore, thus it should be combined to Music & Sound Effects, perhaps omitting Best Voice Work, as usually it's 2-3 games against each other and one of them is either commercial or of commercial value, and the difference is waaaaay too obvious.
My sincere thoughts.
It saddens me a bit to see how often it is assumed in these discussions that "the masses" lazily vote for the same game across the board and that's why we end up with these jackpot winners.
First of all - that happens with most awards that don't use genre differentiation for their categories, be they judged by a small committee or by democratic voting - that's just how it works - there is almost always a work that was the most striking, impressive or just came out at the right time and captured the spirit of the moment. And it's not like it has to be phenomenal in every aspect to win in every category - just better than other nominees.
Then there's this little problem - who are these imaginary "bad" voters? Isn't there about a hundred of them(us) in total? So no, I don't think there is anything wrong with the voting base and the way the voting itself is handled. Sure, not everyone have played every nominated game, and all of the games were made under different conditions, and it's not exactly fair, but nothing is. We just need a representation of generalized feelings of the community, and that's what we get anyway. No need to make the process harder. We have 12 "picks of the month" and the nominations still get you on the "Awards" page of the database, so let those singular games win their trophies - they've deserved them by definition, and they are the ones putting AGS on the map anyway. :)
So my position is that everything is nice and lovely as it is, and adding some fun and particular categories, while removing the clearly redundant ones, are the only things we should really be worried about. And here are my thoughts:
-Freeware vs Commercial - let's be inclusive here - AGS awards are for AGS games - how they were made and how much effort went into them is somewhat irrelevant to the final product. Adding the "Best Freeware Game" category makes the most sense here, since it's the most helpful one - you can actually go and download the games that won it and find out that even free AGS games are rad.
-SFX/Music/Voices - I'd cut it down to just "Best Sound [Design]" and "Best Music", since judging SFX by themselves is quite a challenge, and voiceacting is a pretty rare treat in AGS games still. Of course, that can give the games with voiceacting more edge in the "Best Sound" category, but then those games did put a lot of effort into sounds. As for "Best Music" - do not merge that with anything under any circumstances. :)
-Story/Dialogue - pretty different things, probably should be apart. Comedy games tend to rely more on the amusing dialogue, while thrillers need a good story. Both can be equally "well written", but on different merits.
-Art - currently the "Best Character Art" category seems a bit odd to me, so I'd go with "Best Artwork" and "Best Animation/Sprites"
-Gameplay - "Puzzles/Gameplay/Game Design" merged into one and "Programming" as a different, more technical award.
These cuts can also open some space for less general or genre award categories(see Baron's examples) that can help both the less fortunate, but still interesting games, and the fans of particular genres/types in their searches: Best Setting/Game World, Best Atmosphere, Best Comedy/Drama/Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/etc, Best Experimental Game, Most Underrated(ok, this one might be too ironic and more trouble than it's worth :)) and the like.
Speaking of more categories, we used to have an award for Best Resource (module, plugin, whatever). I believe it would be worthwhile to bring that back.
From earlier discussion, I recall the suggestion of an award for Best Newcomer Game; we need to have a good definition of that, but it sounds nice to have.
Finally, there have been suggestions in the past for Best Game in an Open Series, which probably needs a better name but I mean games based on the public RON / OSD / MMM settings.
Diversity is good :)
Right. Some opinions.
I can kinda get behind merging music with sound effects, even though I completely agree with Ilyich on that you really shouldn't, but merging voice acting and music in one award can't come off as anything else than you hating voice actors and composers and considering their efforts so completely unremarkable and irrelevant that you can just lump it all in one ambiguous blob, tag it 8/10 and forget about it. Oh, and don't call it "best sound". You can't leave out the word "music" out of the awards without making music seem completely unimportant.
Next. I'll say again, I think we need a "best comedy" award. (and perhaps other genre-specific awards that Baron mentioned) A game can have crappy graphics, unremarkable puzzles, mediocre music and easily not even have the most impressive story or writing of the year, but still be very memorable and pleasant because of its humour. Case in point from the last year Chrisopher Columbus Is An Idiot. I think that kind of thing still deserves to be awarded. Especially considering how often the genre lends itself to comedic games that rely on humour as their main pillar. To say the least.
I'm against separating commercial and free games for reasons I (and Ghost) outlined in an earlier similar topic. In short, it doesn't encourage or reward anything good in particular.
Now if we're to tackle the award sweeping problem seriously, we could also try the following. All votes are weighted. Every voter has to face a simple quiz that has basic questions pertaining to random games from the eligible pool. How many questions they get right defines the weight of their vote, plain and simple. Also I think it'd be wise to make it so the weight of their vote isn't revealed to them. However personally I don't see this issue as very important, because indeed it all depends on the meaning of the awards.
Oh and I agree on having a "best game design" award. I'd much prefer it to best gameplay/puzzles/etc awards. It encompasses all of that while staying on the spot and without introducing any ambiguity.
Quote from: Ilyich on Sun 16/03/2014 23:03:09
stuff
Basically +1 to (almost) everything Ilyich said. Beyond that:
- I don't see any reason to change the voting process unless there's some actual evidence of "unserious" voting. The award patterns we've been seeing seem quite explicable to me even if all (or at least most) voters are perfectly informed and consider each category on its own merits
- I think genre awards would be a nice way to recognize a few more different games.
- Personally I see Background Art and Character Art as very different (with Character Art basically referring to the sprites). Character Art and Animation could probably be merged, though.
- Best Story and Best Dialog don't seem very much alike to me at all. Oftentimes the games with the best dialog have pretty weak stories, and vice versa. But since the most memorable dialog is often (though not always) in comedy games and the best stories in dramas, genre awards might be an alternative.
- Gameplay/Puzzles: This was one of the first years I found this distinction useful, since several of the gameplay nominees (notably HQ and TAOD) didn't have totally puzzle-based gameplay. But I agree 100% that it's something there seems to be a lot of confusion around. I'm not entirely sure that "Game Design" would be a less ambiguous term, but I guess it's worth a shot.
- Instead of "Best Puzzles", how about "Best Puzzle"? It would have to be a write-in, like Best NPC.
- I'd be sorry to lose "Best Sound", since I think it's a really important and often overlooked aspect of game design, but the problem is that when it's done well you don't notice that it's even there. If you played one of the nominated games six months ago, do you really remember if the sound was good?
- That said, I think it makes more sense to merge Best Sound with Best Music than with Voice Acting, since music/sounds is more part of the background experience and sense of the environment, while voice acting is foreground (and very noticeable). There are also a fair number of voiced games now, so even if only two managed to reach the nomination threshold last time around, there should be enough to sustain a category.
Ilyich, how can you be so calm and reasonable all the time? I envy you.
Apologies here for Snarky for my tone (unintentional).
Anyway, maybe more specific genre categories would reward a broader variety of titles. This seems to be the way.
+1 for genre awards.
Sound effects is probably a redundant and quite tricky category as most designers, even professionals, use libraries, either bought or creative commons.
Best puzzle (as in a specific puzzle) is an interesting idea, but it might be a bit unfair in the sense that it favors a game with one outstanding puzzle (but a dozen other lousy ones) over a game with twenty really good puzzles.
And to reiterate what some people have already wisely said about a game being commercial - it doesn't mean the designer magically got a huge team and could work full time on the project. In my case I still work on my own and have a day job - I just wanted to be able to pay my voice actors and (hopefully) get that money back.
Thanks everyone for your inputs.
There haven't been new posts in the last few days, so I guess we could start voting.
Given the questions, I guess an Instant-runoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote) will do (nothing scary, simply write in ranked preferences).
To provide a template, mines would be:
Question 1: IV, III, I, II
Question 2-I: a, c, b, d
Question 2-II: a, b
Question 2-III: a, c, b, d
Question 2-IV: a, b, c, d
Question 2-V: b, a, c
Question 3: none
Rationale
For question 1, see what Ilyich and Snarky wrote. In particular, if were to introduce 'Best Commercial', not every game would be able to compete Best Game made with AGS, which wouldn't do the awards any good in my opinion. I find Best Freeware to be more palatable but still unnecessary; a good game is a good game, who cares whether it's freeware or else.
Question 2: I am all for dropping many categories. The way I see it the Awards are (i) a moment for the community to choose their favourite games and a (ii) great way of showcasing excellence-in-AGS-gamemaking for the newcomer-player. In light of this, the plethora of categories we have now is not that useful; less is more.
Question 3: there have been some nice suggestions but let's face it, do we have the needed games to fill-up those categories? E.g.: Best SciFi, how many games would have competed this year? And again, there's a definite risk of watering stuff down, diminishing the importance of the Awards.
edit: of course if you find the list of voting options to be incomplete (or have any other remark to make), voice your opinions now!
What I do think is that we should have 2 separate awards.
The first one to take place (let's say in February and call it The Golden Blue-Cup) would award games from Demos to Short Games, also Non-Adventure games and everything made with AGS that doesn't rate as a full-lenght game. Here we could have all sort of categories that make different games unique.
The second one would be the AGS Awards, and would feature ONLY full-lenght games. A game, to be nominated for the AGS Awards would have to be:
- fully voiced;
- fully tested and bug-free;
- more than X playable rooms;
this awards could then have much less categories and really be the showcase of AGS games.
This way we would only have top, polished games into a "final round".
This is a different route I would like to be discussed by everybody really, and it's obviously just a rough idea. What do you think?
Question one: III, I, IV, II.
Rationale: 2 is just messy. I think there are enough commercial games to warrant some kind of split though.
2.I. b, c, d, a
Rationale: I'm not sure if it's useful to separate sound and music, as both are complements to the game's auditory experience; although voice acting should remain separate.
2.II. a, b
Rationale: Writing and dialog are two sides of the same coin.
2.III. c, b, d, a
Rationale: It seems there is disagreement over what "character art" means: some people feel it's mostly about portraits (which is closer to background art), and other people feel it's more about character sprites (which is basically what the animation award is for). I think that's a good reason for removing character art as a separate category. It doesn't really matter where "character art" gets merged into, since there is disagreement over what that term means.
2.IV. c, b, d, a
Rationale: It doesn't seem clear what "best gameplay" means. To some people, it's synonymous to "best game"; others consider it similar to "best puzzles", or to "best writing". Again, I'm not sure if best gameplay should be left as a separate award. However, "best programming" is clearly distinct from all of these. So my preference is to eliminate "best gameplay" (since it is not clearly defined what that means), and leave "best puzzles" intact.
2.V. b, c, a
Rationale: I find having two character awards somewhat redundant.
About question three, though: There has not been enough discussion about this topic, and the top post doesn't currently list the suggestions people had. Most importantly, I believe that the outcome of questions one and two will influence what people want for question three, so I suggest that we postpone question 3 until voting on the other two is complete.
Quote from: Radiant on Mon 24/03/2014 13:55:21
About question three, though: There has not been enough discussion about this topic, and the top post doesn't currently list the suggestions people had. Most importantly, I believe that the outcome of questions one and two will influence what people want for question three, so I suggest that we postpone question 3 until voting on the other two is complete.
I have added the suggestions in OP!
As for delaying the vote on question 3, we are burning out (check the number of posts in this awards thread compared to this); I don't think more debate will help. Having said that, I expect casting ballots will take some time (due to non-triviality of deciding preferences), proposals can still be submitted.
Baron pretty much hit the nail on the head. So, you can go ahead and pretend I said it all too.
Question 1: III ("Best Freeware Game"), IV (no change), II (parallel awards for each category)
Rationale: I'm relatively indifferent between III and IV, which I think are both good solutions. Parallel awards (except, I assume, one joint "Best Game" award) would be cumbersome. Alternative I, to exclude commercial titles from all categories except for "Best Commercial Game", would in my opinion be catastrophic.
Question 2-I: b (Music+SFX combined), d (no change)
Rationale: As argued above, SFX may be a hard category to evaluate, and SFX+Music are often aspects of the same experience. Voice acting is clearly its own thing.
Question 2-II: b (no change)
Rationale: "Best Story" and "Best Dialogue" seem to me to address distinctly different parts of the game design. If voters do not clearly distinguish them, perhaps clarification is needed instead of merging.
Question 2-III: c (merge Character Art+Animation), d (no change)
Rationale: Sprite Art and Background Art are relatively easily distinguishable graphical elements, and fairly often even done by different artists. They should not be merged. OTOH, Sprite Art and Animation are tightly intertwined.
Question 2-IV: b (merge Gameplay+Puzzles as "Game Design")
Rationale: I don't understand the suggestion of merging "Best Programming" here, it seems completely unrelated to me. (Best Programming, as I see it, essentially means "the most impressive-that-you-managed-to-get-AGS-to-do-this game we saw this year".) I strongly object to the idea of dropping any consideration/mention of gameplay apart from puzzles. "Best Puzzles" is an ambiguous category that I suspect different people think about in different ways (most balanced puzzles? most creative puzzles? most difficult puzzles? most memorable puzzles?), and Best Gameplay is probably even more confusing. "Game Design" could work, but I think what's really missing here is a good explanation of what the category or categories mean.
Question 2-V: c (no change)
Rationale: I don't see a problem with the Best Character awards.
Other comments:
As I believe I mentioned but maybe forgot, I think it would be useful to have a short description of each category to define what it means, so that hopefully all voters understand it more or less the same way.
How about an award for best user interface?
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 25/03/2014 15:25:42
How about an award for best user interface?
Excellent idea; +1 from me!
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 25/03/2014 15:25:42
How about an award for best user interface?
That depends; do you mean the easiest to use interface? The prettiest looking interface? The most innovative interface? The most versatile interface, in that it also works on one-button mice or touchscreens?
Well, I would propose something along the lines of:
Best User Interface: "The means of interacting with the game, including mouse cursor, keyboard controls, menus and other interface widgets, and how these respond to user input. Awarded to a game which stands out by reason of visual appeal, elegance and simplicity, innovation, or ease of use. Multi-modal support (e.g. keyboard shortcuts), usability on different hardware platforms, and accessibility for players with physical impairments should be considered."
It might be best as a juried award?
This also serves as an example of the kind of description I think might help clarify some of the other categories.
Edit: Oh, should probably specifically mention inventories as well (since inventories are, at least IMHO, the weakest UI point of many AGS games).
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 25/03/2014 16:01:21
It might be best as a juried award?
Probably. The issue is that three of the aspects you mention (visual appeal, simplicity, and innovation) tend to be mutually contradictory. For example, the best visual appeal is probably a Sierra or Lucas-styled interface with good graphics (but that's not really simple, and clearly not innovative). The best simple interface is arguably a one-click interface, or left-to-look,right-to-use (but there's no visual appeal here, and it's not innovative either). Innovative interfaces are things like Infinite Monkeys (which is neither simple nor visually appealing). I don't think that adding another ambiguous award is the way to go.
Thinking about it, it's probably better to see "visual appeal of interface" as part of "best sprite art", and to see "ease of use of interface" as part of "best gameplay"; and we already have an award for best innovation.
To me the different aspects are not mutually exclusive. For example, IMO a simple two-button UI with a well-designed cursor, a pretty effect for when hovering over hotspots, good feedback on actions, and with tasteful menus (e.g. at game start) has plenty of visual appeal, certainly just as much as the Sierra/LEC UIs. (I would probably penalize it if it used LEFT to look and RIGHT to act rather than the other way around, though. :P )
I don't see it as a huge problem to use several different criteria in one category, as long as it's explicit so that voters know that all of those things matter. For example, UI innovation should be awarded, but only if the novelty is actually competently executed and appealing. Yes, it'll be a matter of weighing these different factors against each other, and deciding which ones are more important in any particular case. But isn't that the case for many of the categories?
We all know that "UI visual appeal" will be almost completely ignored in a "Best Sprite Art" category, and I'd prefer to keep a gameplay/game design category focused on... the gameplay, or the game mechanics if you prefer, i.e. "what it is like playing the game" independent of the specific UI or graphics etc. Innovation is probably the category that comes closest (in that it has been awarded in the past apparently on the basis of innovative UI elements), but then we're losing all the other dimensions of "good UI design".
I guess the question is whether we think UI design is an important and distinct enough element of making AGS games that it deserves its own award. It might not be. (I tend to think it is, but that's just in my own judgment.)
One other possible argument against the idea is that it's yet another category that awards "polish". Making a good UI is 90% about tweaking code and graphics so it looks nice and behaves smoothly in every case (e.g. stuff like changing the graphic to show that a button is pressed), and the most professional games, whether commercial or freeware, are most likely going to dominate.
I'd like to see that "Best UI" award simply for the implication that there's more than BASS (which has become a standard and is boring as hell) and that the way you interact with a game can shape the game- that is SO OBVIOUS that I wince at mentioning it. To name a recent example, Resonance has been lauded for its interface. It was NOT completely novel (even the memory thing has been done before) but it just made sense within the way you played the game, and it was a huge achievement, code-wise. It came with a lot of visual overhead since everything slid in and out and occasionally you'd have to make a few extra clicks, but that did not ruin the concept.
Any clever idea to make an adventure go beyond look/use(on) should be worth an award.
Stating my opinions here:
Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.
I feel that Commercial Games should be eligible to compete in every category, although I feel that an award specifically designed to recognize freeware games would be nice to see as it has been the core of the AGS experience for many years.
Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
...merge ________ into Best Music&Sound:
Music/SFX into Best Music&Sound (leave Voice-Acting alone).
Voice Acting is really a different category, although Music and Sound Effects could be combined.
...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
Yes.
I see the benefits of keeping them separate, and would not be troubled if they were kept that way, although I feel that Story and Dialogue are part of the same category and could easily be combined.
...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
replace BGs/CA/Ani with Best Sprite Art plus Best Artwork.
Sprite Art could include all Sprites in the game, not just Characters, and their respective Animations. Background Art could include not only Background Art, but also the related Background Animations.
...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
Leave things as they are.
To me, Programming is about behind the scenes code work. For example, one reason I nominated Heroine's Quest was for the Programming of the combat engine, which I saw as a very worthy contribution. I also nominated The Art of Dying, as the entire game made use of very complex coding to achieve an engaging platforming engine. Puzzles, while related to coding, are a completely separate category, and are a big part of what makes Adventure Games unique. Gameplay, in my mind, is about the ease of use of the game. A winner should be like a car, it is a smooth ride, handles well, and driving is intuitive.
...drop best Player Character/Non-Player Character:
merge them in Best Character (whether Player controlled or else)
Leave things as they are.
Either of these options appeal to me. I find a Character Award to be fun. Often times, that Character is not the Player. I'm not sure we need to have two awards, but I'd rather both than none.
Should we add more categories?
For this question, just input 0 or more categories. The ones which will reach >50% of the ballots will pass.
To date, suggestions have been:
Best Horror
Best Comedy
Best Drama
Best Science Fiction
Best Setting/Gameworld/Atmosphere
Best Newcomer
Best User Interface
I would be on board with any of the categories listed above. Newcomer should be more defined (is it being awarded to someone new to the Community that year, or anyone who is new to the Community within 5 years? Or is it awarded to anyone on their first game, or on their first full-length game? Is this going to be a Category like Lifetime Achievement, or is it a Voting Category?). I'm not sure about User Interface, since that can be covered by Sprite Art, Programming, and Gameplay, but it might be nice to recognize the best example each year.
Anyways, just a few opinions on the questions at hand. I'd like to voice my agreement that there could be more explanation into what each award is about, like a short description.
I appreciate the opportunity to aid in the further development of these awards. I'd also like to thank everyone involved in the awards and the related ceremony for all of their hard work on this continuing endeavor.
1. Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
III, IV. I agree with Andail that just because a game is commercial doesn't mean the developer necessarily has a large team or vast resources to throw at it, but at the same time it does imply that the developer at least put more time into the project than a freeware developer would be able to justify. With an increasing list of commercial titles each year I think a "Best Freeware" category is valid, but should only be awarded if the "Best Game" is not freeware (i.e. the freeware runner up, so we'd still just be voting on best game but those votes might result in two awards instead of one). This means that sometimes the nominations might have to be tweaked to ensure that there are two slots reserved for freeware games (not an issue now, but it could be down the road). I don't see limiting commercial games to one category or separate commercial/freeware awards for all categories as viable.
2-I Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
c,b,d,a -Although, reflecting on this further, could we maybe consider a "Best Voice Actor" category?
2-II ...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
b} Leave things as they are.
2-III ...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
d) Leave things as they are.
2-IV ...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
a, d, b, c
2-V ...drop best Player Character/Non-Player Character:
c) Leave things as they are. Adventure games are so character driven that I think both awards have merit and should be retained.
3. Should we add more categories? -I'm big on this, in most cases:
Best Horror +1
Best Comedy +1
Best Drama +1
Best Science Fiction +1
Best Setting/Gameworld -I like this idea!
Best Atmosphere -I think this could be merged with the above topic
Best Experimental Game +1
Best Resource +1
Best Newcomer Almost impossible to define fairly
Best Puzzle (single Puzzle) -I like this, as it makes voters think about specifically what they liked about a game
Best Game in Communal Series -as opposed to a proprietary series (Barn Runner, Blackwell, etc.), +1
Most Daring Interface +1
Most Thought Provoking Experience +1
Best User Interface I agree with Radiant on this one, it would be so hard to define what "best" meant
Best Voice Actor -(+)rewards acting, instead of the designer who merely solicited the lines; (-) might not be community member....
Question 1: IV, III, I, II
Rationale: There aren't that many commercial games and if the apocalyptic forecast of "how AGS is too limited for modern times" comes true, the number of commercial titles will even more decrease.
Question 2-I: d, b,c,a
Rationale: Totally selfish reason - I don't know if I ever have a voiced game ;)
Question 2-II: a,b
Rationale: I can't see how a great story can be transported without having great dialogs
Question 2-III: c, d,b,a
Rationale: as Q2: great sprites usually don't go along too well with blocky animations
Question 2-IV: b,d,c,a
Rationale: With gameplay and puzzles merged, also a non adventure game has a chance to stand in Game-design
Question 2-V: c,b,a
Rationale: I like strong NPCs, so I also like to see an award for them.
Question 3: 0
Rationale: It sure would be nice to see those categories filled, but I can imagine that nominations and voting get pretty complicated.
I considered not voting or voting blank if I could but because I can't change the way things are, consider Baron's votes mine as well. Please.
As a composer, I think merging SFX and music makes no sense at all. I don't see why a composer should be barred from getting recognised for their work just because the sound effects guy wasn't doing a good job. It's just a different thing.
Similarly, I think merging SFX and voice acting makes no sense either.
Edit: adding a note because bici poked me about it: I don't have an opinion on the other things. So my formal vote is 2.I: d
Quote from: Ogon on Wed 26/03/2014 10:12:33
As a composer, I think merging SFX and music makes no sense at all. I don't see why a composer should be barred from getting recognised for their work just because the sound effects guy wasn't doing a good job. It's just a different thing.
Because for most games, it's either the same guy doing the composing and sound effects, or the sound effects are taken from a free public website somewhere. In neither case does it make sense to give a separate award for the sound.
Although I'm a composer too, I think it does make sense to merge music and sound, and also some of the art awards. What counts for me is the overall experience. The greatest music doesn't help if it's poorly integrated into the game.
We don't need "best composer" or "best artist" awards, the awards should focus on the games.
Question 1: III, IV, I, II
Question 2-I: b, a, d, c
Question 2-II: a, b
Question 2-III: b, d, a, c
Question 2-IV: a, d, b, c
Question 2-V: b, a, c
Question 3: none
QuoteBecause for most games, it's either the same guy doing the composing and sound effects, or the sound effects are taken from a free public website somewhere
And the composer's music work should be judged by free sound effects taken from some random website? Makes sense. So what about the cases where the composer is not the person doing the sound too?
QuoteThe greatest music doesn't help if it's poorly integrated into the game.
The integration of the music really is unrelated to sound effects integration IMHO - unless the composer is also the audio guy responsible for the sound effects. However, I disagree that is necessarily the case.
Edit:
QuoteWe don't need "best composer" or "best artist" awards, the awards should focus on the games.
Ok that is a good point. Still, separating music and SFX seems common (e.g. see most film awards). The reason being I guess that often it's not the same person doing both.
Quote from: Ogon on Wed 26/03/2014 10:12:33
As a composer, I think merging SFX and music makes no sense at all. I don't see why a composer should be barred from getting recognised for their work just because the sound effects guy wasn't doing a good job. It's just a different thing.
Similarly, I think merging SFX and voice acting makes no sense either.
I'm also a composer, and I don't see a problem with merging Music and Sound Effects because I see them as being similar aspects of a game's Sound Design. They are similar enough to fall into the same category, whereas I'll agree that Voice Acting is different enough to be in its own category.
Quote from: Ogon on Wed 26/03/2014 12:32:29And the composer's music work should be judged by free sound effects taken from some random website?
If a game's designer is stupid enough to ruin a good composition by taking bad sound effects from some random website, then the game clearly doesn't deserve an award for that. Remember that the awards are for
games, not for individual composers. If as a composer, you want to win awards for standalone songs, there's other sites for that.
Quoteunless the composer is also the audio guy responsible for the sound effects. However, I disagree that is necessarily the case.
Please look over the games database and see how often you find a separate credit for sound effects. This may be common in films, but it's pretty rare in AGS games.
Ogon, I also think (though this is just my guess) that if the music is great while the sound effects are just mediocre, people are going to focus on the thing that stands out: the great music. As long as the listening experience isn't actively ruined by terrible sound effects, great music by itself goes a long way towards "Great Music & Sound".
(In my opinion, there are few AGS games that really excel when it comes to sound effects anyway, so if the SFX are OK I think a good composer stands an excellent chance of winning a combined category.)
Question 1: I, IV, III, II.
(A single category: "Best Commercial Game". It's a long-held opinion.)
Question 2-I: d,c,b,a.
(None of the categories can be comfortably combined in a way I'd be happy with. Maybe voice and sound fx...at a stretch.)
Question 2-II: a,b
(Yes, I'd like to see these combined.)
Question 2-III: d,a,b,c
(Or keep Backgrounds and Characters, and lose Animation?)
Question 2-IV: b,a,d,c
(Never really took much notice of the puzzle award.)
Question 2-V: a,b,c
(Hmm. My gut says to drop them.)
Question 3: none
(Nothing from that list leaps out as being particularly necessary.)
Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.
Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
...merge Music/SFX/Voice into Best Music&Sound.
...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
Yes.
...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
I think there should be one Backgrounds and one Sprites/animations, basically.
...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!
Leave things as they are.
Should we add more categories?
No.
Since I hadn't written this earlier, I think the following would be good additions to the awards.
- Best Resource. This was traditionally an AGS award, and given how many modules and plugins we get these days, we should have it back.
- Best Game in Communal Series. I would like to recognize the effort put into the OSD, RON, and MMM 'verses, I beleive they're underappreciated in the awards.
- Best Experimental Game. I'm fond of games that try something different. We'd have to word it carefully so that the big classic-style adventures we get each year don't qualify for this one.
- Best Newcomer. Assuming we can find a definition that's fair and unambiguous.
Thanks voters, I ductaped together a program to compute outcomes.
Regarding preferences, I am a bit unsure about Snarky & Ghost on new categories (is that a vote or just a proposal?).
Keep voting!
Q1: I, III, IV, II
if there are enough commercial games a year II should be on top)
Q2-I: d
Q2-II: b
Q2-III: d (c sounds interesting but also confusing ;))
Q2-IV: d
Q2-V: d
basically: Leave the versatility
Q3: Best Horror, Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction, Experimental Game (yay for best of a catergory, but I would rather make this depended on the games a year and how many for a category were nominated)
Best Newcomer
Best Puzzle (single Puzzle)
Best Game in Communal Series* (maybe, make that a 50% vote)
Voice Actor (single)
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 02/04/2014 20:05:42
Thanks voters, I ductaped together a program to compute outcomes.
Regarding preferences, I am a bit unsure about Snarky & Ghost on new categories (is that a vote or just a proposal?).
Keep voting!
I was intending to hold off on voting for new categories until the other issues were settled.
But if it has to be decided in one go, you can just put me as a
Yes for everything, assuming you're still going by the 50+% majority rule idea. OTOH, if you're just going to pick the top-ranked ones, my top priorities would be:
Best Comedy
Best Drama
Best Communal Series Entry
Best Resource
Best Newcomer*
Best Single Puzzle (but only if "Best Puzzles" goes away)
* Actually, rather than "Best Newcomer" (which sounds like a newbie forum member appreciation award), I'd call it something like "Best Debut Game" or "Breakthrough of the Year", depending on exactly how we want to limit it. I would propose to define it as something like...
Best Debut Game: "Best AGS game created largely by a game maker (or group of game makers) who has not previously been a major contributor to a substantial released game."
Breakthrough of the Year: "Best AGS game created largely by a game maker (or group of game makers) who has not previously made a game of comparable ambition."
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 03/04/2014 11:22:19
Best Debut Game: "Best AGS game created largely by a game maker (or group of game makers) who has not previously been a major contributor to a substantial released game."
Breakthrough of the Year: "Best AGS game created largely by a game maker (or group of game makers) who has not previously made a game of comparable ambition."
+1 to this.
Ok, it sees we got all the votes we could get.
I am closing this in three days.
I'm not sure I should have any say in this since I haven't voted in the AGS awards for years, but then again, the reason I haven't is because every year I make an effort to do so, only to give up halfway down the list, trying to remember if game A or B had the better dialogue or story.
So:
Q1: I, IV, II, III
Q2 I: a, b, c, d
Q2 II: a, b
Q2 III: a, b, c, d
Q2 IV: a, b, d, c
Q2 V: b, a, c
Edit: bicilotti, what would you have done for numerals if there had been subquestions to any of the questions in section 2?
Quote from: Esseb on Mon 21/04/2014 20:20:31
Edit: bicilotti, what would you have done for numerals if there had been subquestions to any of the questions in section 2?
:P Alwyas had a thing for these (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals)!
Last 48 hours to cast your preference, vote now!
Question 1. I II IV III
I've always seen the awards as an encouragement for beginning developers as more professional game developers (most likely commercial) can draw enough attention for bigger award ceremonies. Not that I don't respect the effort put in these games but the awards are often crowed by one big title which is usually already receiving lots of attention. I'd rather have the lime light go to a developer not known very well outside the community since it is a community awards ceremony to begin with. Also we should no take the awards so seriously; it not like there are cash prices or you get to bring home a statue. :P
Question 2. I d c b a
These are very different things
Question 2. II b a
Dialog is more about the use of language and story is more about what it is about.
Question 2. III c d a b
Most animations are character animations and it's hard for me how I perceive characters to rate them as two separate things.
Question 2. IV d a b c
Although puzzles are a subset of gameplay since we are an adventure game community it can't hurt to take puzzle as a specialized category since puzzles serve a special purpose in the genre. It is almost impossible to rate best programming for games that are closed source (which is almost all of them). It'd change this to best module/plugin or something.
Question 2. V b a c
This awards should go to the character with the most personality, a character that truly stands out (whether we get to control them or not). If it always goes to the main character of the most popular game it might as well be dropped.
Question 3.
I like the "best puzzle" idea, maybe we can drop the plural in "best puzzles" to make it more specific.
I also like "best newcomer"; it might draw in some competition among the newcomers. ;)
Well as I said above: "best module/plugin" would be a better option then best programming.
I also like "best world/setting" although that might coincident a bit with "best story".
And lastly bring back the Penis awards. :=
Executive summary These are the results for the poll
- Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.
- Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
- ...merge ________ into Best Music&Sound:
Music/SFX into Best Music&Sound (leave Voice-Acting alone).
- ...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
Yes.
- ...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
Leave things as they are.
- ...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
Leave things as they are.
- ...drop best Player Character/Non-Player Character:
merge them in Best Character (whether Player controlled or else)
- Should we add more categories?
No category reached >50%
and
this is what the Awards 2014 will look like (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/AGS_Awards_2014).
Gory detailsI wrote a little program in Haskell (http://paste.debian.net/95815/) to calculate the outcome.
I paste the output (http://paste.debian.net/95816/) so you check yourself how votes have been redistributed in the instant runoff.
Thanks everyone for participating-voting in this!
Thank you for doing this, Bici!
However, may I point out one detail; Andail wrote the following,
Quote from: Andail on Mon 31/03/2014 06:50:39
...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!
Leave things as they are.
which is a preference for options C and D, not just a preference for C. So in your code, Andail should have "(4, [c,d])" rather than "(4, [c])". I'm not sure if that changes anything but perhaps you could tweak this and run it again please?
Quote from: Radiant on Thu 24/04/2014 19:56:03
Thank you for doing this, Bici!
However, may I point out one detail; Andail wrote the following,
Quote from: Andail on Mon 31/03/2014 06:50:39
...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!
Leave things as they are.
which is a preference for options C and D, not just a preference for C. So in your code, Andail should have "(4, [c,d])" rather than "(4, [c])". I'm not sure if that changes anything but perhaps you could tweak this and run it again please?
I interpreted that last "Leave things as they are." as the answer to question 2.V (which otherwise would have been left blank). The vote *is* indeed significant though, so I PM'd our cultured Man of Mystery to shed light on the matter!
Thanks for doing this, bicilotti! Haskell looks like a bit of an odd language, eh?
I'm not a hundred percent thrilled with all parts of the outcome (at least the one I was most worried about came out how I hoped), but I guess that's democracy for you, and no one can say it wasn't a fair process. Seems like the Fewer Awards Party have the upper hand for now, and we in the As Many Prizes as Possible Party have to think about our campaign strategy for the next election. :-D
Quote from: bicilotti on Thu 24/04/2014 21:16:26
I interpreted that last "Leave things as they are." as the answer to question 2.V (which otherwise would have been left blank). The vote *is* indeed significant though, so I PM'd our cultured Man of Mystery to shed light on the matter!
Very well. For the same reason, I think it would be a good idea to ask Snarky, Dactylopus, and Selmiak what exactly they meant. This is because in several cases they wrote down only their favorite option, but they added a commentary from which it is apparent that they don't consider the other three options to be equal.
It is good to have chosen this method of voting (rather than straight majority, which doesn't work well for questions like these); and given that the AGS Awards are an important part of the community, we should verify that next year's awards reflect what the community wants even if they specified their 2nd/3rd choice in writing instead of as a ticked box.
Speaking for myself, I think my votes reflect my intention, except that I might add "no change" as second preference for 2.iv (which wouldn't make a difference in the voting).
Also, if we're making corrections, maybe we should clarify this response:
Quote from: Andail on Mon 31/03/2014 06:50:39
...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
I think there should be one Backgrounds and one Sprites/animations, basically.
The bolded comment sounds like Andail actually intended to vote for option (c), "replace BGs/CA/Ani with Best Sprite Art plus Best Artwork" (which of course ended up winning).
I would also comment that "Best Sprite Art" and "Best Artwork" sound so overlapping that I assumed it had to be a mistake, and that the latter was meant to remain "Best Background Art". Surely the intention of option (c) was to combine "Best Character Art" and "Best Animation" as "Best Sprite Art"; what would then be the purpose of renaming "Best Background Art" to something else?
I feel I was fairly well represented, although I do have a couple of suggestions and clarifications:
I was under the impression that Best Artwork was only to combine it all under one heading, a default term used for the question. I would not have voted C for this question. There was no appropriate response for me, since I wanted to see the Art category rendered as Sprite Art and Background Art, merging Sprites and Animation and leaving Backgrounds alone. I thought comments were going to be taken into consideration. With a lack of a choice for me, I'd choose D - Leave things as they are. I think Andail intended the same result I hoped for, but we'll let him speak for himself.
I'm personally disappointed by the combining of Puzzles, Gameplay and Programming, all unique and not deserving of combination. If I had a second pick, I'd choose B - Gameplay/Puzzles into Best Game Design (leave Programming alone). Not sure if that would change anything.
Also, maybe we could lower the threshold on adding categories. 50% is a steep goal.
Thanks for the time and effort, bicilotti! This is a good community service.
I definitely didn't want best puzzle to go, since that's one of the fundaments upon which our games rest! So in case I wasn't clear - keep best puzzle!
Quote from: dactylopus on Sat 26/04/2014 05:20:35
I was under the impression that Best Artwork was only to combine it all under one heading, a default term used for the question. I would not have voted C for this question. There was no appropriate response for me, since I wanted to see the Art category rendered as Sprite Art and Background Art, merging Sprites and Animation and leaving Backgrounds alone. I thought comments were going to be taken into consideration. With a lack of a choice for me, I'd choose D - Leave things as they are. I think Andail intended the same result I hoped for, but we'll let him speak for himself.
So what you're saying is that you'd like to have two categories (Sprites and Backgrounds) instead of the three we have now (Sprites, Character, Background), is that correct? Because if I'm interpreting things correctly, that's precisely what option C says. This is certainly why I voted C, and based on his comments I believe Snarky did the same.
Based on discussion in this thread, it strikes me that if we're going to keep the traid of sprites/backgrounds/character art, at least we ought to
rename 'best character art'. It is clear that people have different opinions on what it means; several think it's more-or-less the same as sprite art, several people think it's more-or-less the same as background art, and several people think something else again. We should get agreement on what it's for, and then it needs a clearer name.
QuoteAlso, maybe we could lower the threshold on adding categories. 50% is a steep goal.
I think 50% is fair. What the answer to this question shows us is that (a) most people do want to have more categories, but (b) there is not really any agreement which ones to add. Indeed, ten different proposed questions got five votes, and I'm pretty sure most of us don't want to add
all ten of those to the awards for next year, which would almost double the amount of categories. But, perhaps we could consider a runoff out of these ten, asking "if we could have
one more award, which one would it be" (with "none of the above" being one of the possible answers, of course).
Well the wording of C threw me off. I'd like to see Sprite / Character Art (Sprites & Sprite Animations) and Background Art (Backgrounds and Background Animations). I would not support this if it became 'Best Sprite Art' and 'Best Artwork' because I don't think it's clear enough what each category implies. If there is no UI Category, UI Sprites should be part of Sprite / Character Art.
Yes, it sounds like we're many of us in agreement on the Best Artwork/Background Art point. I really have no idea what "Best Artwork" means when there's also a "Best Sprite Art" category.
Quote from: Radiant on Sat 26/04/2014 10:54:51
What the answer to this question shows us is that (a) most people do want to have more categories ... perhaps we could consider a runoff out of these ten
Actually, 6 people explicitly rejected the idea of adding any categories at all (well, Esseb didn't outright say so, and wasn't counted, but that seems very much to be the implication of his post), so the voters were about evenly split just on the principle. Therefore, although it's not the decision I hoped for, I think we should respect the outcome of the vote.
Quote from: Snarky on Sat 26/04/2014 23:36:21Quote from: Radiant on Sat 26/04/2014 10:54:51
What the answer to this question shows us is that (a) most people do want to have more categories ... perhaps we could consider a runoff out of these ten
Actually, 6 people explicitly rejected the idea of adding any categories at all (well, Esseb didn't outright say so, and wasn't counted, but that seems very much to be the implication of his post), so the voters were about evenly split just on the principle. Therefore, although it's not the decision I hoped for, I think we should respect the outcome of the vote.
Hm, that's a good point. I saw a lot of votes for extra categories, but it turns out that most of these are from the same people. So yeah, let's drop that proposal for now; we have one extra award already in the form of "best freeware game".
Quote from: Snarky on Thu 24/04/2014 23:02:23
Also, if we're making corrections, maybe we should clarify this response:
Quote from: Andail on Mon 31/03/2014 06:50:39
...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
I think there should be one Backgrounds and one Sprites/animations, basically.
Well, I guess this (and other clarifications) will not arrive in the end :P
Check upated result post (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50187.msg636486973#msg636486973)! Thanks again for voting!