2010 XYZZY Awards now open

It’s that time of year again, only earlier! First-round voting for the best IF games of 2010 is now open at xyzzyawards.org/ with a couple new awards and all sorts of good stuff.

Cool! Thanks for organising the awards again this year!

By the way, the page listing all the awards and games for this year still includes Best Use of Medium as well as Best Implementation and Best Use of Innovation.

We have lists of nominees for the game categories, but not for “Supplemental Materials” or “Technological Development”. I think it’s worth posting links to works that are eligible for those categories. (To repeat the FAQ: supplemental materials released in 2010, not materials for games released in 2010.)

I will start by declining the nomination (or pre-declining, I guess, since this is the nomination phase) of all the promotional material I put together for Hadean Lands. (That includes the cover art, the kickstarter page, the teaser game, and the video). It was high-profile, everybody saw it, and I think it was one of the motivators for this award category in the first place. So I’m not comfortable having it in competition.

If you like my art, note that in 2010 I created cover art for Dual Transform, Heliopause, and The Dreamhold (all visible on my web site). I should also point out that Jason McIntosh, whose work on the HL video I am peremptorily withdrawing – sorry Jmac – created cover art for The Warbler’s Nest.

So we have many eligible cover illustrations. What else? There was this image, whose status is unresolved as far as I know, but it should count: emshort.wordpress.com/2010/09/18 … ouncement/

For “Supplemental Materials,” do they have to be for a specific game? Arguably, the entirety of the IF Hospitality Suite and Get Lamp were pretty big in the realm of supplemental materials for IF this year.

Also, by my reading of the FAQ, the supplemental materials ought to be for a game that was released in or before 2010 (“regardless of whether the game it is a supplement for was released then or earlier”,"(for a game released in the past year, or earlier)"), by which rules Em Short’s truly excellent chatons poster is disqualified.

Good point; inky should clarify whether he meant that that way.

Both good questions! I’ve updated the FAQ to reflect the Clarified Official Position: the release year of the game doesn’t matter, just the release year of the supplemental materials (so supplemental materials for even games that haven’t been released yet are ok); however, the supplemental materials do have to be for a specific game, so the Hospitality Suite and Get Lamp are both ineligible*.

*That said, there’s probably room for a Best IF Scene Thing award in some future XYZZYs, but it’d be separate.

I saw that GLIMMR was nominated for the Technological Development category, while I nominated Inform 7’s “Release with an interpreter.” option. I’m not sure about the ethics of these things which had so many people involved… I’ll certainly abstain from voting for that release option in the final vote.

Could Get Lamp be considered a supplementary video prequel to the Get Lamp Review? [emote]:P[/emote]

This comp has a sad side effect of making me feel ashamed of how few new works I played last year.

Inky: Sounds good, thanks. Those were the answers I was expecting, but I just wanted to be sure.

I was freaked when I first picked ‘Rogue… Multiverse’ for best NPCs and saw Dr Sliss pop up when I started typing. I thought ‘OMG someone has created a drop menu of every NPC!’… then my freakedness abated when I realised (I think!) that I was seeing what someone else had previously voted for.

Along these lines, I put the cursor in Supplemental Materials and saw five options, two of them being Aaron Read’s book. I created Leadlight and I was pleased to see my game there, because I have a manual, website, coded hints and handdrawn ink pics, sketches and a painting. But I thought ‘if Read’s book is eligible, the book is the winner.’ I have the book beside my laptop now and it’s killer, but should it be in this category? As a whole tutorial on programming Inform, I don’t see it inspiring feelies or cover art or artistic materials, etc., which is the stated goal of the award on the front of the xyzzy page. I feel like it’s an apples and oranges comparison to the specific extra materials attached to my game or anyone else’s.

I agree, if anything it seems like a manual should go in tech improvement or something like that.

That sounds right to me, but it’s also attached to the game Sand Dancer – does that make a difference?

I don’t think so, a manual plus tutorial game feels like a different thing than a game plus feelies and cover art.

Just a reminder that there’s still a few more days left to vote in the first round! Finalists will be put up sometime Feb 1st.

The finalists are up and the second round of voting is open! See the list of finalists at xyzzyawards.org/finalists.php

Thanks to the wonders of automatic vote counting, I am extending the deadline a couple days, until Friday, February 25th at 11:59pm PST. Which means you still have just under a week left to vote if you are so inclined.

And whether you’re going to vote or have already voted or are just curious how other people voted, then show up this Saturday, February 26th on ifMUD (ifmud.port4000.com) to see the results announced live at noon PST (3pm EST, 8pm GMT). See you then!

I don’t think anybody’s actually gotten the results up here yet.

xyzzyawards.org/winners.php

Best Game: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Writing: Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home (Andrew Plotkin)
Best Story: The Warbler’s Nest (Jason McIntosh)
Best Setting: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Puzzles: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best NPCs: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Individual Puzzle: Crossing the river in Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Individual NPC: Dr Sliss in Rogue of the Multiverse (C.E.J. Pacian)
Best Individual PC: Anthony Saint Germain in Death Off the Cuff (Simon Christiansen)
Best Implementation: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Use of Innovation: Aotearoa (Matt Wigdahl)
Best Technological Development: Quixe, online Glulx interpreter (Andrew Plotkin)
Best Supplemental Materials: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 (Aaron Reed)

Congratulations to everybody, including of course me, but mostly Matt. :slight_smile: