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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!!!

Minimi, no offence, but you average 25 posts a week, which is quite large for someone who's just been here for a few months.

Doesn't it seem a bit hypocritical that you post so much, yet you tell Mr Jack to shut up?

Christ, this is confusing.

Maybe we should just lock this thread and never speak of it again.  :o

Though, it is nice to have the second coming of littlewilly.

See, I edited my previous post while you were replying.

That proves I'm not you.

I = THE WINNER

You and Fruittree both use hotmail accounts

Not only that, but according to our posting times, you posted at the same time as I did -- plue I aslo edited my post, as it clearly states.

Thus, I wouldn't have enough time to long into my name, then quickly log into Mr Jack, then back to my name to edit my post.

That's way too much effort for me!

See, I have Johnny Cochrane on my side -- The gloves don't fit!

You're from Sweden and I'm not.

Besides, you could be Fruittree!

Fruittree, did you happen to notice that second Mappomedia website, which is real and not mine?

If Mr Jack is a prank, he's not mine.

I think the rules for MAGS need to be changed!!! They're unfair and an injustice!!!

For example, i think there should other categories, like ones for long and short games because some games are longer than others!

Also, i think you should separate them into "ones with mr T" and "ones without Mr T" categories!!! That would own!!!

The five days thing is a reference to littlewil...

Nevermind, you'll find out eventually.

And of course no one believed me -- It's a typical stupid joke that only DGMacphee could thi...

Nevermind, you'll find that out too.

Well, it looks like I scared them off.

Oh well, joke's over -- My website was a FAKE!! I FOOL YUO ALL!!! FOR FIVE DAYS!!! COUTN TEHM!!!!11!

Anyway, welcome to the community and good luck with finding employees from here to work for you.

[Sweden]

Yes, they do.

23 countries currently have extraterritorial laws including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.

Looks like I'm beating two heads tonight with my large lumpy stick!

(BTW, I'm actually Australian, which is also listed )

I will beat you with my large lumpy stick if you do not give me back my company!

I spoke to the courts here and they said I could do this based on principle!

No, just a guy wanting his company back!

Now, gimme!!!!  

*Sigh*

You've studied International Law, but you don't know what 'extraterritorial' means?

Christ, you must have gone to a poor Law School.

To give you an example of extraterritorial regulation:
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0009.html

The same can be applied to copyright.

And also defamation in the case I mentioned before, Gutnick vs Dow Jones: Gutnick was a businessman who sued Dow Jones for defamation, even though they were from different countries:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutnick_v._Dow_Jones

In other words, you're a liar and know bugger all about international law!

So, in other words, you haven't really studied law and are trying to weasel out of it by calling me a liar.

You are SO going to lose in court!  8)

You've already studied law so you should know what I'm taking about.

If you do not know what 'extraterritorial litigation' is, or have never heard of 'Gutnick vs Dow Jones' (which was one of the biggest cross-country defamation cases ever), then you obviously haven't studied law very well.

Johnny Cochrane owns you!

Wow, you studied law, but can't capitalise your I's or spell 'coming' correctly.

Luckily, I've also studied some law and will claim extraterritorial litigation -- This has happened before with Gutnick vs Dow Jones as a defamation case.

However, after studying law, you'd know this already, right?

See you in court, sucker!

- DGMacphee
Mappomeida Industries' REAL CEO

Hnmm, I wonder which movie the Cap is a fan of?


CEO and Mr Jack: Johnny Cochrane is pissed and he's going after your balls.

He got OJ off the hook, so I'm sure to win!

See you in court, losers!

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.

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.