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The UK is a terrible destination for Mittens though, there's not that much to do outside the larger cities, and within them it'd cost a fortune to house so many people.  Iceland could maybe work, but would again hit people's unwillingness to spend money on travelling.

Still not many responses, but it does look like Europe might be more popular. Cat mentioned Croatia as an option a couple of years ago, so maybe we can consider that as an option. It's somewhere we haven't had a Mittens yet. There are loads of properties available and lots to see and do.

Great news, new parents!

[*if*]

I added a poll.

Let's switch it to Europe *if* we can get more people to attend. In all fairness this mittens is too close to last years mittens. We can do the Caribbean the year after. Grundislav was the one who recommended this location and he's not even sure he'll be able to attend it.

Much of Europe is just as close together as this would be...  We usually do Europe for two or three years before an American Mittens, so why not the other way around?

Not everyone lives in Europe - 'low cost flights' are never cheap for everyone involved; Disco comes every year from the US even though he's not on 40k a year.  The last Mittens in Europe was Portugal, and perfectly affordable for most, and still only had 13 attendees.  Don't read  too much into the cost, I get the impression from at least some of the people who responded that it's other stuff like having busy real lives - children, studies to finish, etc, that's as much of an issue.

The main reasons for having it in different places are that a) going to the same place / country for your summer holidays every year is boring, b) AGS is a global thing, not just European.  If you work full time, you only have so much time to take off to have a holiday, so why not make the most of the opportunity and make a real holiday of it, rather than going to Bognor and wasting the annual leave you could use on going to the Caribbean?

I very much enjoy the looks and description of Casa Iguana in Mexico and the Large Private Cave house in Dominican Republic. We have never had a cave on the property before! The situation of the Caribe Pointe house in Honduras looks fantastic as well. Those three properties are the standout ones for me on the list.

My main concern at the moment is the numbers. It is April now, and about half a dozen have chimed in thus far. What's going on, people?!

I agree.  I think if we really want a Caribbean island, the cave one seems best.  I am actually more leaning towards Mexico though (house you mentioned), mainly because there'd be more to do.  That place is 1hr from Cancun, and 2hrs from Chichen Itza and other Mayan sites: http://wikitravel.org/en/Mayan_Riviera.  The trouble with Caribbean island holidays is they're usually more about drinking, sleeping and relaxing than most Mittenses are, and Mexico would give us the best of both worlds...  If you look at the actual beds described, it also fits up to 15 people if we share.

I've sent out a PM to all previous Mittens attendees alerting them, and put up a banner.  12 people wouldn't be unusually small (we've had four 12/13 person Mittens), but let's hope we can find that many!

Using DM's advice, I've tried to find nice, affordable places in a variety of places, for a variety of sizes (around $250 for a week per person, some much cheaper):


Mexico (in / on Caribbean Sea)

Casa Iguana, Akumal, Quintana Roo	12	https://www.vrbo.com/685228	$349
Casa Calypso, Cozumel island, Quintana Roo	16	https://www.vrbo.com/392963	$279

St Maarten (Dutch side)

Beach House, near Phillipsburg	12	https://www.vrbo.com/6604345ha	$285
Villa Caribbean Jewel, near Phillipsburg	13	https://www.vrbo.com/153811	$314

Dominican Republic

Home with Large Private Cave, near Punta Cana	12	https://www.vrbo.com/4133084ha	$300
Gorgeous Three Level Penthouse, Boca Chica, Santo Domingo	12	https://www.vrbo.com/3707320ha	$175
Apartment, Santo Domingo Este, Santo Domingo	16	https://www.vrbo.com/3819341ha	$97

Belize

Stress Free, Hopkins	16	https://www.vrbo.com/793312	$89
Crimson Orchid Inn, Orchid Bay	18	https://www.vrbo.com/453569	$69
Eco Jungle Resor, Middlesex, Stann Creek District	20	https://www.vrbo.com/634115	$75

Saint Lucia

La Gampierre, near Saltibus

12

https://www.vrbo.com/644297

$360

Jamaica

Old Fort Bay Cottage, Ocho Rios

12

https://www.vrbo.com/716115

$400

Honduras

L'Alize, West Bay Beach	12	https://www.vrbo.com/437116	$385
Private Water Front Estate, Caribe Pointe	14	https://www.vrbo.com/346754ha	$340
Ocean View Villas with Pool, West Bay Beach	17	https://www.vrbo.com/98897	$340

Pretty sure it doesn't count as an April Fools when 99% of your audience is still on 31 March... 

Only think the script checks externally is your forum session.  Everything else is done from the database.  So yeah, clearing cookies would have helped!

I'm really happy and honoured to see Rogue State nominated for 5 categories - but to be fair, there has never been a Demo for Rogue State. So I don't think we should have been nominated for the "Best Demo" category.

Anyway, congratulations to all nominees!

Thanks for your honesty.  I've removed Rogue State from Best Demo, and the next down the nominations league (Reality on the Norm: Reality Check 4 DEMO (Cancelled)) is now up.

Thanks for this AGA.  If possible, grateful if you add Problem as the co-creator of Rogue State.

It is a wiki!  I just used the names given in the 'main author' field in the games database.  Fixed it now though.

Yay, voting is OPEN!

"AGS Awards votes close at 17:59 GMT on Monday 04 April 2016", reads the banner.

Given that the clocks go forward next weekend, is that 18.59 British Summer Time?

BST.

Here are the nominees.  I need to make the formatting match other years', but you'll get the gist of it.

It checks the nominations database.  According to which, Cassiebsg has voted.

What do Americans think about trying to score visas to visit Cuba?  It's apparently quiite easy...

Because the database isn't designed that way.  Games have no information stored that describes them well enough to categorise them.  And I'm definitely not going to categorise a hundred games myself!  If lots of people are stupid enough to nominate a game for an inappropriate category, that's their nominations wasted, so it doesn't really have an impact.

I mainly chose DR because it was rated the cheapest Caribbean island to visit on some travel site.  I guess the main decider overall should be accessibility of villa from airport, and relative expense of flying to said airport. The flight cost difference is greater when you take transatlantic connections into account.

Nice to have all that insight!  I'm happy to hunt around and do any organising that's necessary, assuming enough people show an interest to make it viable.

So I've had a look at Grundislav's suggestion of the Caribbean.  Turns out I wouldn't be able to do Australia this year myself, since I will not have earned enough time off from my new job by then.  Australia should definitely be done one of the coming years though.

Since 'Caribbean holiday' basically means luxury, I've looked at the cheapest options.  If we wanted an island, it seems to be Domician Republic, or if island is okay Cancun (Mexico).  Cancun would provide us access to interesting Mayan sights like Chichen Itza, but could also be pretty damn touristy.

Some options for Dominician Republic:

HUGE (32 bed) villa, $1043pw - https://www.vrbo.com/3673349ha
Medium (20 bed) villa, including staff, $2583ow - https://www.vrbo.com/2516
Small (15 bed) villa, $1834pw - https://www.vrbo.com/722383
Tiny (12 beds) villa, $2100pw - https://www.vrbo.com/3768488ha

There are literally thousands of options for large villas on DR though, all of them offering crazy luxury for really quite cheap.  Flights are not quite as cheap, but it's no more expensive than flying to the US, and definitely cheaper than Australia for most of us.

Oh, and I was looking at the first week of September.  Someone mentioned preferring to do Mittens later in the year, and early Autumn might be better for avoiding the deadly tropical heat too.

I deleted anything more than 24 hours old, but everything newer than that should have been delivered now.

The mail hpst we use blocked us because of too many 'failed delivery' reports in a 24 hour period.  I've changed the mail settings for the users causing this, so hopefully it won't happen again.  Mail should start trickling through again soon.

Ghost best NPC?  So Joey then?