So I'll confess - I got bored of trawling through the 2009 Independent Games Festival finalists, and judging from my blog traffic reports I'm guessing you did too. Too many of the games just didn't have any public media to base a meaningful post around. I'd recommend to the IGF that they make the provision of a public-release trailer a condition of entry in future years, to help facilitate a meaningful discussion around the awards.
Anyway, for the sake of finishing things off, here are the finalists I didn't get around to doing a full post about:
Zeno Clash
5 comments:
Hey!!!
I helped!
You did!
Actually my blog traffic downturn may have more to do with coming down off the spike brought about by people googling "disco stick" and "prince of persia trailer" than anything in my actual content. It's going back up again now!
'It's really not clear what agenda the IGF is trying to promote through its selections, and I think that weakens the value of the awards as a whole.'
'The IGF', as such, is a group of almost 50 judges - indies, media, and mainstream developers, all smart and experienced. They played the games, they voted in each category, and this was the result.
I'm not really sure there's an 'agenda' behind that, and I don't really understand why people are keen to ascribe one. Do you know what I mean?
Also, as IGF Chairman, I do take issue with the concept that games that might be popular or have publicity should not be honored.
Why would we knock out The Maw, just because it's being released on XBLA? (It's not retail, btw.) If a game gets sufficiently popular, should it be disqualified?
We think the IGF should be a celebration of the best indie games, no matter what - so there may well be a mix of known and less know titles, I guess?
Thanks for the feedback anyhow. We're definitely listening.
Thanks for the comment, Simon!
I suppose I should explain that better. Other award systems generally exist to achieve some particular goal, either by explicit design or by established tradition.
Time Person of the Year, for example, aims to recognise the man, woman or idea who has made the greatest mark on the world that year, for better or for worse, with the implicit aim of reflecting on the evolution of society.
The Oscars explicitly recognise outstanding achievement in filmmaking over the year, but by tradition particular recognise Western studio-driven achievement in filmmaking, and are not above giving proxy awards by rewarding a strong candidate both on their merits that year and on the basis of previous unrecognised efforts.
In the case of the IGF, the largest mission statement I can find is "rewarding innovation in independent games" - I apologise if there's a better explanation that I'm unaware of, but if so it's not immediately obvious from the IGF website.
Judging by the construction of the website and its emphasis on past IGF winners who've gone on to big things, you could draw the conclusion that an unstated goal of the IGF is to help struggling but talented teams find the publicity and funding necessary to take their works to the world stage by highlighting them with an appropriate award.
You might also draw the conclusion that the aim of the awards is to highlight independent development as a breeding ground for new mechanics, art styles, and methods of play that large publishers would otherwise have little incentive to fund exploration of.
But neither of those goals is reflected strongly in the selected finalists, and there's no clear rationale to be found as to why some finalists made the cut and others didn't.
Obviously judging is a subjective process, and part of the mark of a good awards process is to be controversial - to stimulate debate among the community and thereby raise the profile of both sucessful and unsuccessful entrants. But it would be nice to have a clearer view of what goals the judges are attempting to achieve by their selection, or what selection criteria the games might be being judged against.
I'll come back again to You Have To Burn The Rope, which was an excellent and hilarious game well worth highlighting for reasons of debate, but which it's really hard to accept as in any way innovative, except in the manner in which all unique pieces of comedy innovate.
And I guess retail may have come to be used in a sense that implies physical storefronts but the literal definition is "the sale of goods or commodities in small quantities directly to consumers", which I'm quite happy using to describe portal-based online sales (possibly as distinct from sales direct from the developer's website). There could be an entire interesting discussion in that!
The case of The Maw (and for that matter PixelJunk Eden) is interesting in that it raises the question of what "Independent" means (which I note isn't addressed on the IGF site). The Maw, much like Braid and Castle Crashers, is shaping up to be a flagship title for Microsoft's Live Arcade service, which they're likely to end up heavily promoting. While it may have started life as an indy title, does it continue to be one once Microsoft are actively using its name to promote their service? Is PixelJunk Eden an indy game when Sony are using it to sell the PSN? These are (admittedly excellent) games that now have the support of the biggest names in the business behind them.
Anyway, I really love that the IGF are out there, I'm very supportive of anything that highlights the excellent work being done by so many independent developers, and thank you very much for engaging in the discussion!
I'll speak out for Cortex Command, it's a cross between worms and a very old series of games from europe (that's still going). Slightly entertaining and well made, and very complex to old school levels of game.
Probably not really IGF material, but at least they have a demo you can play. FFS having a publicly available demo should be a requirement of entry! But I have to agree on the corporate backing, the competition needs some tightening down on in that aspect.
But I will say this, It might need a slightly larger overhaul, it's voting are from a wide collection of awesome judges so there's no real collaboration on the entries (to my understanding of well, talking to the dudes) but perhaps a public shortlist for everyone to get involved might be considered in the future. Sure if we can make it to GDC we can play em on the floor (if the terminals are not incredibly busy, like they were last year), but seriously, gaming is much more than GDC!
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