AGS Awards - The aftermatch

[cat]

Hello fellow gamers and game designers!

I really enjoyed the last AGS awards - there was a lot of activity, many different games won an award and the ceremony was a great party!

End of last year, we had a discussion about how to change the awards to increase participation and make lives easier for all involved people:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/ags-awards-2023-the-future-of-the-awards/

I now want to look back on the changes and how they affected the awards. I would also like to get your feedback.

The main points we wanted to tackle were low interest in the awards and the ceremony. This has significantly improved. I don't know it was only because of the threat to stop doing it or if the changes we did helped.
The changes in detail:

Reduced categories
We reduced the number of categories. Did this make nominations and voting easier for you? One side effect was a shorter ceremony, which was actually a good thing.

Tighter schedule
Fixed nomination and voting periods and an early ceremony helped to keep it together. Was there still enough time for you?

Filtered list for nominations
Showing only games that are eligible for a certain category (demo, non-adventure, short, freeware) hopefully made nominations easier.

Simplified resources for ceremony
We wanted to reduce effort for creating the awards ceremony. Kastchey told me it went much smoother this year, so I think we should stick to this.



What did you like/not like about the last AGS awards?

[bicilotti]

Here just to thank you and all the organisers for this fantastic moment of celebration of community games. It is something that the AGS community should be pround of!

[Rik_Vargard]

Well since for me it was a first, I can't compare but I had a great time! The whole organisation was well done.  I can't imagine the work and time behind it so thank you for that. 

In a technical way, I did have problems with the .exe file: I got kicked out of the ceremony and the .exe file got deleted. (Windows 11?)
I just got lucky thx to my stress and intuition (I'm a basic user)... to make it work by making Windows accepting to launch it.
But I tell you, it was pure survival instinct in the moment.
Maybe there's no really perfect way to run the file, depending on everyone's security settings etc., so I think it would be cool to have intstructions about what could go "wrong" and how to fix it ,based on tests.

But again, really, this was a well organized, funny and emotional evening well rounded up!