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Good job! You seem to be a great team! I'm gladly helping out with the testing - if you need any more testers, I could probably ask around.

Here's a quick selection of some >> mittens 2014 photos << to give a short impression

Impressive beer collection!

I have recently started listening to all the podcasts and I must say: good job, guys. And also, Ben's laugh is extremely contagious.

We made the whole thing bigger than it was, and it ended in the most ridiculous way with Dualnames deleting his own posts out of spite.

No, we didn't make it bigger than it was, and no, we are not accountable of Dualnames deleting his posts. My final sentence about this topic.

I want to say:
Kijra said what he felt.
Dualnames explained the origin of the joke (and even Monsieur OUXX explained it VERY well) and why he felt of not to apologize. Kijra said nothing. I don't know, but I think that it's ok for her.
The thread should have ended there.
I think that all was said after was something concerning don't know what... and I want to take Dualnames' side.
The majority of the community wants just play and make games... and losing Dualnames we'll have less HQ games (I mean less number of HQ games).

What about letting Kiira speak for herself? She's not a child - she's an adult human being. Let's wait if she wants to say something about the subject. Just because she said nothing at the time this was happening, you should't assume everything's perfect (and Dualnames' posts are now deleted, so it's pretty difficult to react to them and you shouldn't expect that would happen at all, to be honest). No one pushed Dualnames out of the community, it was pretty much his decision - not Kiira's, not ours and not anyone else's. So please stop putting the blame on anyone.

I also want to congratulate not only to all the winners, but to all the nominees as well. Being nominated is a great accomplishment by itself. Good job, everyone!

So, in summary, Dualnames has definitely made a mistake.  This must be (and has been) politely pointed out to him.  His reaction, from what I can glean from quotes of his deleted posts, was unfortunate, and clearly he needs some time to mull it over.  But I don't consider him some sort of villain.  He's just a hard-working artistic guy who's 99.9% of the time a great and valued member of the community who accidentally stepped over the line.  I hope everyone can find it in their hearts to forgive him.

Also, the internet is a place where a grain of salt and a thick skin are handy inventory items... Just kiddin'

I don't think anyone claimed that he's a villain or wanted to portray him as such. Much positive stuff was said about what he has done for the community, not only in this thread (e.g. I prepared an optimistic post about the ceremony, so other indie developers who follow me on a social network and aren't familiar with the AGS scene would know about what's going on in this community, and I didn't let any personal feelings influence my post, because I think this event should be recognized in a positive light). Yes, now the discussion is more heated than it originally was (partly because of the deleted posts and what was in them). The situation is unfortunate - agreed, although again, I don't think it was necessary for it to get into this stage. I also understand your perspective on this. I got a little angered because I saw a tendency of quickly dismissing certain opinions and even emotions.

Yeah, you definitely need a tough skin on the internet. I know a lot about that.

[perfectly good points]

Or other plenty of people look at the rhetorical land mines, logical fallacies, oversimplifications, "all-put-in-the-same-bag" generalisations, out of context arguments that feel like picked from the Internet, all mixed with perfectly good points - not always relevant, but good nonetheless -  in one mass of text, that makes it difficult and time consuming to dissect down what's right from what's wrong and vice versa, and then nearly impossible to make a fairly understandable counter-argument that doesn't create further misunderstandings; prompting those same people to say to themselves with a desperate sigh, "Not gonna touch this one. Let's just agree with it and call it a day."

That isn't healthy dialogue, in my humble opinion.

You know, sometimes I think that I would be nice if people just tried to listen to other people's feelings and attempted to understand them, just for a moment, instead of beating them with their own personal truths, dismissing their feelings as nonsense and telling them what they should be feeling instead (because an ideal person is someone like me, and all that - let's try not to think about others). But nah, the reality is what it is. And it gets us nowhere.

I listen to Myinah's opinions as much as I listen to anyone else's. It's kind of manipulative to say "people aren't listening to you", when in reality, you are speaking about yourself. Also, you admit you weren't there, so you don't know how the whole ceremony went - yet you accuse other people to quickly jump to conclusions. Hmmm.

Spoiler

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What did you hide there, Peder? It just shows an empty spoiler...

Also, it seems like Dualnames deleted all his posts. Again, I think this kind of reaction wasn't necessary. Nobody wanted to "start a drama" - there will always be people that have different views and opinions and if they voice them politely, that should be viewed as fine. Instead, it was viewed as a personal attack and something to get extremely upset about. As if anything positive that was said about the ceremony suddenly doesn't have any effect.

[Edit]

Edit: Apart from being objectifying and alienating to some community members, it was just... kinda tacky and out of place, you know? When you think of AGS, is "gratuitously sexualized" something that comes to mind? To me, it doesn't seem to represent what the community is about. Such a shame, when stuff like pixel Daft Punk really made it seem like a proper AGS party.

Honestly, I was also a little put off by the constant "your mom" jokes and general immaturity, so much that I stopped paying attention after about 20 minutes. I appreciate that a lot of work and time were put into making the awards happen, but this year seemed like the most unprofessional one of all.

I have to agree with this. Please, let's not make all this seem like it's some kind of a "hardcore feminist" issue (e.g. pretend like only females have a problem with some of the content), when that's clearly not the case. A lot of male members expressed similar views in this thread. Also, even if there WERE just females voicing their opinions, it shouldn't be devalued or dismissed because of that (unfortunately, it happens pretty often around the internets).

I don't understand all the unnecessary rage. The OP was very polite and didn't dismiss the ceremony as a whole, just expressed her views regarding certain aspects of it. Personally, I'm new to the forums and didn't get the lesbian joke at all - I didn't know what it was even about. I read the explanation for the first time in this thread. Still - not very funny, if you ask me, and it seemed very out of place and random. I don't know how many other newcomers were present there and how they felt about this, but to me, it felt kind of segregating.

I have nothing against humor (and I personally love black humor); I even think that it definitely has a place in the AGS ceremony, that the ceremony should include joking around and shouldn't be entirely serious. But, unfortunately, some of the jokes reminded me of my grade school years and not in a good way. And some of the jokes I wasn't even able to get as I wasn't present during the previous ceremonies. It's not like animated gifs and photos of two girls making out are known memes (the animated gif of Orson Welles, on the other hand… I laughed about that one). In the end, all the pointless sexual content just ended up looking very… immature. And btw. I also thought about the fact that there might be some actual lesbians present and was wondering how they felt about this (and cringed). Glad I got my answer.

I also don't understand the hostility towards people that are just expressing their opinions towards certain aspects of the ceremony. Why so much anger? It would be great to be able to have a civilized discussion about this. Instead, this thread escalated quickly into people announcing that they're leaving. I'm sure everyone appreciates what Dualnames (and other contributors to the application) have done. It was lovely and I made screenshots just to show other people how sweet it was. I also enjoyed the music, which was a very nice addition. It was generally a great idea and I definitely appreciate it.

Edit: Added additional stuff to explain myself more in depth.

Thank you very much, Crimson Wizard!

I'm looking for an AGS game now - Dada: Stagnation in Blue. None of the links in the Completed Games Announcements work and the game isn't present in the game database for some reason. Any help will again be greatly appreciated.

It's a shame that after so much debate, we decided to allow Primordia to compete, and it didn't get even one nomination.  I played the Demo and loved it, and hoped to see it in the nominees.

Primordia did not compete. I asked Dualnames about his intentions and he politely and firmly stated that he did want to withdraw the game from the awards (hence votes for Primordia were disregarded).

Well then that's also a shame, as I feel it would have done very well and it deserves to be recognized.  Thanks for the clarification, though.  It seemed odd, and it's good to know what went down.

And now I'll just say good luck to all of the nominees!

Ah, thanks for explanation, I was also wondering about this. I understand that Dualnames got discouraged because of the long discussion about commercial vs. free game nominations and time of release vs. time of adding to the database, yet I think it was kind of unnecessary to withdraw his game from the awards altogether (before the discussion even ended). I was hoping that he would change his mind. Oh well.

Heh, I'm little surprised (in a good way) that Ratatosk made it among the Best NPCs. I thought I was the only one who thought about voting for her (or him?) - I didn't expect more people would share my "silly" idea. I'm also sorry that I wasn't able to play all the "For Your Consideration" games - I hoped to have more time to familiarize myself with most of the titles. At least I will try to catch up on the nominated games...

Arj0n: Oh, ok then, I remember I was playing it much sooner than 1995 though, maybe it was just a demo?

donkeymilk: Wow, amazing! Thank you very much! I admit I didn't expect to ever get my hands on that game again. And also, thank you for the tips on all those sites, didn't know about them until now. Now I just hope I'll be able to make the game work, that's another thing… But if I won't be successful, at least I know where to ask. Yay!

It's not an AGS game (sorry for that, I haven't found more suitable topic for this yet), but I'm wondering if, by any chance, anyone has a functioning Windows copy of a FMV adventure game Mirage. Trailer can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85yK0rkAUUQ . It was made around 1993 (it says 1995 in the title of the trailer, but I don't think that's accurate) and it seems to be a pretty rare game. I own a Mac OS copy of this title, but a) I'm not using that system anymore, b) the CD got worn out by time (and bad storage conditions) and no longer works. I was mesmerized by this title as a child, even though I was never able to finish it. I thought it would be nice to refresh my memories and see if it's still an interesting game or a piece of excrement. If anyone could help me, I would be very glad.

Sounds like a really nice event. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend (as I'm not from England and it would be too costly for me right now), but my friend was in London at that time and she said she enjoyed it (not only the presentations, but also the opportunity to exchange a few words with some of her favorite game developers/publishers). I'm looking forward to the videos, if there are going to be any!