The annual AGS awards debate

[Snarky]

Nice. To fine-tune the solution, I would recommend:

1. If you're going to rely on Ctrl-Click to select multiple, that needs to be explained. Very. Clearly.
2. The "select which games you've played" step should probably be optional, and not the first thing a player sees when starting the nominations process.
3. There should be "select all" and "select none" options for the "games you've played" list, and it should start out with everything selected.

I quite liked my idea of having a main page that shows the different categories w/ your current nominations, from which you can access the selection lists. It wouldn't have to be on a separate page, if you just expanded each section when a user clicked it. Obviously we have to weigh the usability benefit against the effort of implementation.

[Pumaman]

I've been experimenting with an alternative design. Have a look at this:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGSAwards/Home.aspx

The idea behind this approach is that you can look down the list of games, with screenshots and descriptions; and then if you want to nominate it you check the tick-box, which then allows you to select the nomination categories for the game.

I'm not sure what people think, but I think that this way allows you to concentrate more on looking at each game you've played and working out which categories it goes in, rather than listing by award category and then having to think of games that you played that would fit the bill.

Also, I noticed there are a couple of games this year that are actually translations of other games (eg 1213 Russian, Cosmos Quest 2 Spanish) -- should these even be in the database at all? Surely these should just be extra translation files that are available from the game's website, or included in its normal download?

[bicilotti]

Nice effort! I slightly prefer SSH's attempts, but the bottom line is: everyone of this mockups are way, way better than the old nomination page.

Also, I noticed there are a couple of games this year that are actually translations of other games (eg 1213 Russian, Cosmos Quest 2 Spanish) -- should these even be in the database at all? Surely these should just be extra translation files that are available from the game's website, or included in its normal download?

1213 Russian was translated without the author knowing it (i.e. opening the .exe and changing words with a text editor).

[Trent R]

I don't think that translations should be allowed for AGS Awards. If the gameplay, characters, and plot are absolutely excellent, the translation basically has nothing to do with it. Besides, that can be exploited in the future as a way to resubmit games.

However, if there is a translation available for a game that is nominated for Best Writing, it should be included in the description with maybe a short review, ie. "Blah Quest has both Spanish and Czech translations, but are lacking in correct grammar for the languages."

~Trent

[LimpingFish]

Oh, I like that version, CJ. I don't see why something along those lines couldn't work. Just add in the ability to limit the number of games a person can nominate in each category and that's a pretty good prototype right there.

Didn't the old nomination page allow a user to nominate ten games in each category?

Being able to jump between the list alphabetically (in case you already know the name of the game you wish to nominate) would also be handy. As would the ability to sort the list by game type (Full, medium, etc). Yeah, I can see a fully-featured version of that design working out grand.

As for translations, I agree that extra database entries are superfluous. If the file can't be included in the original distribution, a post in the games CGA thread linking to the file should be enough. And they certainly shouldn't be included for the awards if the original version of the game was previously eligible.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yeah, there's no good reason at all for those translations to be separate games.  Also, I really like CJ's layout and would echo Fish's suggestion, maybe by having an A-Z bar at the top of the page for switching letters quickly.