Wanted: Someone to take over the AGS AWARDS/AGS ACADEMY

[MrColossal]

hey no worries GG, i wasn't offended you can think what you want about my game i'm sure tons of people hate it [unless you're czech], i was mostly making a joke

and i figured you were being overly dramatic and DG took it wrongly [it's funny how just about everyone here is overly dramatic and yet we have a hard time sensing it in others]

on short and long games: if someone feels bad that their game is called short or whatever or their award isn't given out last then that's their problem

6 day assassin was a lot of work for what it was but i'm not gonna cry foul and try and hold it up to pleuburgh or tierra or rob blanc. it's a game i made in 6 days and it's a short game. the shortest maybe, not counting that one RON game... i hope the same would be done by all people. realize what your game is and compare it to others. it may be a herculean effort to you [heh] but imagine making KQVGA with a team of people on the internet or PB... by your damn self.

that's why i'd agree to let the designer place the game in the category they chose. but this would be a lot of work.

and on the whole appreciating a game thing:
apprentice is a short short game. a lot of work went into it for sure, so what should we praise it on? the game or the work that went into it? The art was amazing, the puzzles were good [cept for the cheese] and animation was superb the music was real nice and there even was voice acting. But if you try and stick that up against Fatman... This is when I wonder how to choose. Let's say fatman had TERRIBLE voice acting, like all of it was done with that text to speech generator and then you put it against apprentice's little voice acting part. Do you choose fatman cause it's bigger and obviously took more work, or apprentice cause it's actual voices and obviously better?

it's 7.30 am so i'm prolly rambling i'm sorry

i just hope people don't really put too much emotion into the AGS Awards. as in if their game doesn't win they die inside.

eric is going to bed

[Barcik]

Edit: When was the English translation for Mourir en Mer done? I'm curious because the game had no nominations in the 2002 awards which is quite puzzling. If the translation was released in 2003, could the game be nominated again for this year's awards?

The translation was done in 2002, and it's lack of nominations is indeed puzzling. I sure put it on my nominations list.

[straston]

Hi, just meddling!

Can anyone explain the process of the award to me (someone who joined the community during the current year).

I mean: Who decides who is nominated and who decides about the final winner and how?
Also: When is it decided? It puzzles me to have all the 2002 games still in the nominated stage. Shouldn't the final decision be shortly after the nomination?
Or is this just due to the webmaster's lack of time?

So, just enlighten me. ;-)

Bye,

Straston

[GarageGothic]

Straston, somebody just didn't update the website. The awards were held earlier in the year.

Barcik: Damn, I really think Mourir en Mer deserved at least a nomination or two.

[DGMacphee]

Ok, wrong choice of words, so I'm a drama queen. I merely meant that in my opinion, some of the awards (as well as nominations) were unfair.

I don't see how they are unfair when they're voted by people in this community.

Unfair would be if I'm taking bribes and rig the contest.

Which I'm not.

Yet.

I did say "in the early days", so I don't suppose you WOULD remember it, unless you are VERY old I was thinking of the first Academy Awards ceremony back in 1929, when they had separate "Best Director, Comedy Picture" and "Best Director, Dramatic Picture" awards.

Right, and I suppose you remember those "early days", huh?

I do know that when the Oscars had their first ceremony, they had a separate category for Comedy and Drama director, only because when first starting they noticed Comedy and Drama films in those days were very different styles of direction. (Try watching Two Arabian Knights and Seventh Heaven for comparison -- One is very fast paced compared to the other)

(Also, notice there was no separation between comedy and drama for Best Picture?)

Anyway, this separation was not very popular as they scrapped the two categories and had just the one single Direction category.

They have kept with this method for the last couple of decades.

Thus, I wish to keep it as simple as that too.

It's not the game's fault, nor MrColossal's, that it's become one of the most over-hyped AGS games. I'm happy for you that it got on a magazine cover-cd, and I hope it'll bring more attention to AGS. But I do think it's a problem, if people play it, thinking it's the ultimate AGS game, realize it's shorter than most demos and say "screw AGS!".

I don't think you can call it over-hyped -- I think the hype is justly deserved.

Besides, people don't consider it the "ultimate AGS" game -- I think more people mention the likes of KQVGA 1+2, Pleurghburg, Larry Vales, Rob Blanc, and Richard Longhurst (Sorry, eric, but it's true )

However, I also think 6DA is a great game to demonstrate the power of AGS to new users -- the small size works in its favour as it shows you can do so much with so little.

But I do think it could be made clearer what the awards are given for. I'm not even sure what Dialogue Scripting covers. Is it just the writing quality of the lines, or does it include the structure, the choices and as such "scripting" in the programming as well as the screenplay sense?

Dialogue scripting encompasses all things relating to words spoken in the game: The actual words and their meaning/subtext, their humour, the structure of conversations, and how well they advance the narrative of the game.

Yes, it is like a screenplay award, only a screenplay award also utilises action and imagery, which is why I included a regular scripting category in the Technical Awards.

However, I do plan to clarify some of the award descriptions, and also upon consultation with some of the community's most experienced gamemakers.

It's very difficult to compare short and long games. What is it we're looking for? Does a long game with five excellent and twenty average puzzles rate lower than a short game with three excellent puzzles?

What about a 20 room game game with 25 average puzzles compared to a five room game with 30 excellent puzzles? (And such is possible)

Should graphics be judged without taking the amount or the work put in it into consideration? In that case, we could reduce the backgrounds category to a "best single screenshot" award.
I could easily see myself voting Conspiracy of Songo for best background art. It's certainly not perfect, and it nearly put me off the game. If it had been a single or two-room game, I would never have taken it into consideration. But with the amount of rooms and consistency of style, it's one of the most professional looking games of the year. But there's little chance it would happen with games like Apprentice out there.

This only proves the difficulty in separating games into long and short -- Do you consider a game with 20 badly drawn rooms a long game compared to a 5 brilliantly drawn room game?

Unless we make some proper definitions of what to take into consideration, everyone will just make up their own. This isn't just the case with length, but also with different techniques and styles. If some people are voting for "prettiest art" while others are voting "artwork most fitting to the atmosphere of the story" (Norman Cooks could easily win for both, so no complaints there), things are getting confused. Clear categories and definitions would solve a lot of my personal issues with the current award system.

There are definitions and I've made them pretty clear, as most people seem to vote for graphically consistant and graphically billiant games.

But I'm sure an inovative style is appreciated among AGS users -- And if you don't believe me, play Aaron's Epic Journey, which utilised a new style of background and deserved it's nomination.

Back to the matter of size (don't let them tell you that size doesn't matter ), I've realized the main problem - distiguishing between short and long games is bound to create the idea that one is better than the other. If only because the more important awards are given at the end of the ceremony. And that's not the purpose. The idea is to let the games be judged on their own terms. This goes for all the short games, which would never be able to compete against the monster-size titles of Tierra.

What I suggest is that we look at the way animation is handled at the Oscars. They have a separate category, BUT the can be nominated for the regular awards, if they are good enough.

This doesn't really solve the problem of DISTINGUISHING a long game from a short game -- Animated films (and films in general) are emasured in time and it's impossible to put an exact playing time on an adventure game.

Secondly, the Full Length animated category was a new category established two years ago because there were an influx of full length animated films that were consistantly good -- it had nothing to do with the Short Animated film category or short films being unfair to long films, etc.

However, the Full Length category is in it's infancy -- I was happy that Spirited Away won, but to be up against the likes of the dire Treasure Planet in an insult to the Animated category.

It would mean the addition of a "Best short game" category, which would allow the best titles of that format to be acknowledged. Defining long and short games could be solved easily by letting the designers choose which category the game belongs to themselves.

Just so you know and I make it absolutely clear: WE'VE DONE THIS AND IT DID NOT WORK!!!

last year, no one bothered deciding the difference between their long and short games -- we just included them all into one category in the end.

Thus, IT DID NOT WORK!!

Repeat: IT DID NOT WORK!!

I write in capitals because some have repeatedly asked me on this issue, and frankly it's pissing me off.

And a short game nominated in the long category would obviously have some difficulties competing, unless it truly was among the best.

Like 6DA?

Short games would still be able to compete in all other categories, but they would have to be judged taking the length of the game into consideration (a game like Apprentice could easily win in the animation category despite it's length, after all, it has as much of it as most longer games, and of a very high quality).

So what you're saying is: they're allowed to compete in other categories EXCEPT for BEST GAME as they have their own short game category.

Now that seems more so unfair.

I DIDN'T SAY THAT! I said that "I'd really hate to see Tierra win a "best story" award for QFG2 VGA" (meaning that I respect their awards).

Sorry, I misread.

If QFG2 VGA does not rewrite the story, then I'm sure the Community will not vote for its story.

It happened with KQ1VGA -- no story nomination there.

I just figured that was because KQ1 has a crappy story

Crappy, probably. Stolen from the original, definately.

All this said, I'd like to suggest one change to the awards, which I think is very valid. And that is to add a "Best Speech Pack" award (or just "Best Voice Acting", as some games include the speech in the main download).

Aye, I want to implement this.

However, currently there's not enough entrants with voice packs in their games.

I do think it's a little odd (read: stupid) to have 7-8 nominees for one game's sound, as was the case with Calsoon 2 last year.

So, I think we'll have one category for the performance of a three single voice artists - but only if there's enough voice packs.

Edit: When was the English translation for Mourir en Mer done? I'm curious because the game had no nominations in the 2002 awards which is quite puzzling. If the translation was released in 2003, could the game be nominated again for this year's awards?

The game had no nominations, yes, but it was registered for the year 2002.

However, you do raise an interesting point on the AGS Awards being English-centric.

However, you'll notice that the awards are speicfic to this community (The English speaking one).

If one of the other AGS communities wishes to hold their own awards, they have my blessing and support if they need it.

[DGMacphee]

As a final note: I do support the creation of new categories, but only if justified -- Take for example, bspeers (someone who've I've disagreed with many times in the Ezboard days, but have developed a closer understanding with him in recent times) suggested the Best Puzzle Category and justified it well, and thus I added it.

Yeap, even though I disagreed with him many time in the past, I though his justification for a Best Puzzles categories was important.

See, I do add things when they're needed -- I don't just add superfluous categories, as it means more work for me without much point to it.

And keep in mind, just so you know I'm not being slack, that I have:

a) A university course to finish
b) A girlfriend to love
c) A family, with whom I like spending time
d) Friends, with whom I like drinking in pubs
e) Dark Hero to finish (This year's Run Hot!)
f) Photoshop Phriday (not much actual work, but it adds to the pile)
g) A job! (I need the $$$)

In other words (and I'm sure you've guessed this by now): I HAVE A LIFE THAT I ENJOY AND CHERISH IT MORE THAN DECIDING WHETHER A GAME IS BLODDY LONG OR FUCKING SHORT!

Christ, I wanted to hand the awards over to someone else cause of stuff like this -- you just can't please everyone, especially when people call your categories "unfair" or "injustices" or whatever.

However, GarageGothic, if you would like to start your own awards with seperate long and short categories, I'm all for diversity in the community and support your venture.

Just beware of the time it consumes, the late nights putting the final touches and hosting, the mind-numbing process of tubulating the votes, the endless complaints from people who think the categories are "unfair' or "injustices", the n00bs who PM you with ideas for stupid categories like "Best Game About Vampires" (I have received one like this), etc

All this was what made me want to give it all up earlier this year.

So to make it clear in case this comes up AGAIN: I am not making seperate categories for long and short games, and never will!!

It's too much time, too difficult, and the majority of users don't really care!!

End of rant! Please respect my decision on this!


straston: Look out for updates and info on how to vote when the year comes closer to the end -- I'm planning a big revamp plus negotiating with someone who can host the website on a proper server.

[Scummbuddy]

What we need is a medium length category too.  

and 'best vampire game'... Well, now that you brought this up, I can not live without it.

No, really, we all thank you very much for the hard work you do, and for taking the reigns back this year.

[DGMacphee]

What we need is a medium length category too.  

and 'best vampire game'... Well, now that you brought this up, I can not live without it.

SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP MAKE THE BAD MAN STOP!!!

[rodekill]

We love you DG.
I wouldn't want to see the awards run by anyone else, in all honesty.

So... when do I start sending out the 'For your consideration...' copies of Rode Quest 2?  :

[DGMacphee]

Soon -- make sure you send it with a crisp $50 note too!

Soon, I'll have enough to buy back to family farm and breed rabbits!  8)

[GarageGothic]

This thread is beginning to feel like the first scene of Romeo and Juliet ("Do you quarrel, sir?", "Quarrel sir! no, sir.") So maybe I should just shut up now. I won't make any more arguments, only clarify a few points.

So what you're saying is: they're allowed to compete in other categories EXCEPT for BEST GAME as they have their own short game category.

Not at all. With my hypothetical "Short game" category, a short game could easily win the Best Game award. In fact it could win best short game as well as best game. So in a way short games would be more privileged than long ones. However, what I think WOULD happen is that some short games would be acknowledged, even if they can't be compared to the likes of Tierra's, and others, that really DO compare, despite size, would be contenders in all the other categories as well.

In fact, I think a "short games" category would be an excellent way of bringing attention to less mainstream games, more experimental and innovative ones. An alternative would be a "Most original premise" award, even though that wouldn't take the actual presentation of the idea into consideration.

Besides, people don't consider it the "ultimate AGS" game -- I think more people mention the likes of KQVGA 1+2, Pleurghburg, Larry Vales, Rob Blanc, and Richard Longhurst

No, no, no. I agree that it isn't actually hailed as the greatest AGS game ever. What I do know however, is that when I got into this community and started looking around for good games, I first played all the award winners, and - I must admit - was a little disappointed with 6DA (sorry that I keep bringing it up, but it's really the only example). If there had been a short category, it'd be more likely that 6DA had (deservedly) ruled that one, and perhaps KQ2VGA had been voted best game.

There are definitions and I've made them pretty clear, as most people seem to vote for graphically consistant and graphically billiant games.

Could you please direct me to those definitions. I must be blind, but I couldn't find anything like that on the AGS Academy website. If I'd knew about this, I probably wouldn't even have started the discussion.

Just so you know and I make it absolutely clear: WE'VE DONE THIS AND IT DID NOT WORK!!!

Nuff said. That is all that matters. I won't bring it up again. Promise

If one of the other AGS communities wishes to hold their own awards, they have my blessing and support if they need it.

Woohoo, at least I'd have a chance to win the Danish AGS Community award of 2004 (possibly 2005 or 2006)

Christ, I wanted to hand the awards over to someone else cause of stuff like this -- you just can't please everyone, especially when people call your categories "unfair" or "injustices" or whatever.

It wasn't the categories I called unfair. It was some of the results that I found unfair, the *objective* quality of the games taken into consideration (if there ever was such a thing as objective quality, probably not). I wasn't attacking the awards or the categories (or at least it wasn't my purpose), only suggesting some ideas for what I considered clearer definitions.

I'll stop taking this so seriously - I'd much rather show my appreciation for designers and their games by writing to them in person than by voting and hoping that everyone else share my opinion.

[DGMacphee]

GG, here are those definitions you wanted -- Obviously, I'll need to update some of them, but I think it's pretty comprehensive:

http://agsacademy.tripod.com/guidelines.htm

[GarageGothic]

Thank you. You are right, they pretty much cover what I asked for. And I finally discovered how to get there. But man were they well hidden.

A piece of usability advice: when you update the website, please get rid of links where the actual hyperlink (and thus the only underlined part) is the word "here". With well written hyperlinks, the user shouldn't have to read anything but the link itself to know where he's going (thus the links on http://agsacademy.tripod.com/agsaward.htm could be "register your game" and "list of registered games")

[m0ds]

After careful reading and consideration, this thread has confused me.

* m0ds squaks like a parrot

[auhsor]

After careful reading and consideration, this thread has confused me.

Yeah, i though that too.

Lets just hope everyone calms down now. Good work with the awards DG.

[Totoro]

So the awards were running propperly but only the page wasn't updated, right? WOuld it be too cheaky if I asked who where this year's winners? Just curious...

[DGMacphee]

For 2003

Best game: KQ2VGA Remake

Best Gameplay: 6DA

Best Story: KQ2VGA

Dialogue: Odysseus Kent

Puzzles: 6DA

Best Player Character: "Satan" From Satan's Quest

Best Supporting Character: "The Demon" from Earwig is ANGRY

Room Art: Norman Cooks

Character Art: Norman Cooks

Animation: KQ2VGA

Music: KQ2VGA

Sound: Calsoon 2

Scripting: KQ2VGA

Docs: KQ2VGA

Best Util/App/Plugin: Snow Plugin

Demo: Revenants

Non-adventure: Platformerius

Lifetime Achievement Award: Anthony "Cornjob" Hahn

Penis Award (Booby Prize): A Cup of Coffee is Worth A Thousand bathroom Breaks

[MrColossal]

6DA GOTTED TWO AWERDS?!?! WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS ASS CRAP!?

you must all where asshats if ou yhink that desrves it!!


speaking of cornjob... where is that hawaiian bastard?  a friend of mine just moved to hawaii till december and now he lives on his uncles hippy farm with woody harrilson