In almost every category there are large numbers of nominees that only get one vote. That’s more or less guaranteed by the system, unless you have a lot more voters than candidates, or an electorate with very uniform preferences.
Have you considered letting people cast more than one vote per category during the first round? It might help one-vote games get more votes.
I think the unfortunate consequence of these nominations is that the casual player could look at the results and conclude that parser games don’t have good writing or interesting stories to tell.
Neil
That’d be a bit of an unfair leap for that casual player to make, wouldn’t it? And rather pessimistic to assume that at the outset?
Why should that casual player not conclude that there are other mediums beside the parser which are now popular and solid in their own right and are perfect for non-parser-based stories?
If they’re that casual, I don’t think they’d know which games were parser and which were choice just from the titles.
Hmm. That would probably alter the character of the Awards a bit, depending on how many votes were allowed per voter. (At the most extreme version, if you let each voter nominate any number of games in each category, you’d see a much more IF Comp-like distribution).
There’s also the possiblity that some voters would be scared off by the now even-bigger ballot - even if you know you don’t have to fill out every category, seeing three drop-down menus instead of one for every category could look like a bigger job.
I also don’t know how much work it’d involve on the back-end. The idea’s got some definite advantages, though; I’ll think about it.
“That’d be a bit of an unfair leap for that casual player to make, wouldn’t it? And rather pessimistic to assume that at the outset?”
Yes, but I’m sure it happens. Just look at how many people unfairly pass on hypertext works because most aren’t “interactive” enough according to them. We have voters in IF Comp that automatically give Twine games low scores, so surely people could similarly dismiss the parser a priori as fiddly puzzle generators.
“Why should that casual player not conclude that there are other mediums beside the parser which are now popular and solid in their own right and are perfect for non-parser-based stories?”
You’re right, but that doesn’t change the fact that parser games are under-represented in the nominations. Why shouldn’t we assume a casual player who is familiar with Twine but not the parser? Don’t the nominations support the opposite bias of what you suggest? That people may not realize their are non-hypertext games that can also tell good stories?
“If they’re that casual, I don’t think they’d know which games were parser and which were choice just from the titles.”
No, you’re right. But if they are interested enough to seek out the nominations, I think it’s reasonable to assume they will also want to play the nominated games. Wouldn’t anyone unfamiliar with modern IF and who has played the nominated works conclude that parser=puzzles, hypertext=narrative, despite how naive that may be?
Neil
In a very simplistic way, that may not be wholly innacurate. Certainly hypertext seems to be the best tool for people who just want to tell a story, and parser seems to be the best tool for someone who has something else in mind.
I just hope this doesn’t mean Photopias and Rameses will be hypertext from now on, those games rock in the parser format. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.
You could, in the event that a category receives less than four nominations, have a second round of voting so people can give nods to their second-favourite games, or vote “no additional nomination” if they really think the field is thin in that particular category.
I think it is a bit confining to only get to vote for one thing per category, especially with such a huge initial pool of games which for the average player could not possibly have broad knowledge of. The spread of (I would assume) single votes for a large number of different games would suggest that lots of people liked different things. In that case, it’s disappointing that the final round is limited to two contenders since so many people had different ideas about best writing/puzzles…
I’d vote to allow three choices per category in initial voting, with 1st and 2nd place votes weighted. That would seem to solve a broad spread of 1 vote submissions.
Or…if there are fewer than 4 games in each category, there should be some kind of panel to review the games that almost made it and choose some. There’s no reason to have less than 4 things to vote for in each category when there are “hundreds” of possibilities. Especially when IF is such a niche market. The XYZZYs are big enough that they do guide what more casual enthusiasts play.
When I first saw the nomination form a few years ago, I was surprised that you could only nominate one game per category. I had just assumed that nominations involved sending in Top-5 lists or whatever.
It’s true that there are possible downsides to allowing multiple noms per category, e.g. it could result in nominating games that no one really loved but everyone thought was decent. My guess is that there will always be at least one or two games that some big-enough faction really loved, and that the tepid crowd-pleasers won’t swamp all of those games out, but who knows.
But, it definitely disappoints me to see fewer than 4 nominations in a category (I actually assumed that 5 was the normal cutoff, a la the Oscars, but I guess it just shows how often there are ties for 4th place). I like to think of the XYZZY nominations as a summary of the notable games of the year, and an underpopulated category means that notable games, even ones that have no chance of winning, are falling through the cracks of history.
As for the write-in categories, I think it would also help to have IFDB polls per category like there were last year, to help people jog each others’ memories and point out things that might have been overlooked, so that people can coalesce around things that get identified in public rather than having to privately think up something from a huge un-enumerated set. (Funny how this mirrors the parser/choice dichotomy…)
Aside from the underpopulated categories, the thing that jumped out at me about the 2014 nominations was the proliferation of commercial games. Well, 4 games is not a large number in the greater scheme of things, but as far as I can tell, Shadow in the Cathedral in 2009 was the only previous commercial game ever to get a Best Game XYZZY nomination, and here suddenly we have 3/5! Of course, it’s hard to conclude that we’re in a New Golden Age of Commercial IF, given the unlikely-to-be-repeated-soon nature of Hadean Lands and Blood & Laurels in particular, but it will be interesting to see if the trend continues in next year’s nominations.
I think the For Your Consideration polls could stand a remake that allows for more discussion. IFDb polls are not conducive to discussion, to put it mildly; you can only comment once per game, only a snippet of each comment is visible without clicking, and the request to have only one vote per game basically cuts off discussion at all. This year I thought that combining everything into one poll exacerbated these issues; it wasn’t clear which categories games were even being suggested for.
I had this experience–I voted for Excelsior for Best Individual Puzzle which I remembered in terms of the solution as
the one where you have to set the gnome down to trigger the switch after you turn the hydraulic machine to the other setting
but I had to replay most of the game to find a description of it that wouldn’t be totally spoilery. Again I feel like a discussion board would help here–I could’ve posted "Hey, anyone remember that puzzle in Excelsior where lbh unir gb frg gur tabzr qbja gb gevttre gur fjvgpu nsgre lbh ghea gur ulqenhyvp znpuvar gb gur bgure frggvat? And then maybe someone could have told me about it.
It seems like kickstarting discussion might help spur interest–people like to talk–and maybe the thing to do is replace the FYC polls with discussion threads on the XYZZY blog. (Or on community sites like this one, Twine, and CoG, but that might turn things into a “Whose community can bring in the most votes?” affair.) At least it’s worth trying a new approach, if the current one isn’t working.
I also agree that it’d be great to have the possibility of multiple votes.
I think this would really take away from the spirit of the XYZZY awards. This is supposed to be a popular-vote event, not a panel judging.
I agree though that it sends an odd message to see only 2 entries in the Writing category. I also had the thought, “Man, people must not have liked the writing this year,” even though the exact opposite is apparently the case.
Accepting multiple votes (nominations) seems like the natural fix. Maybe the web page could be organized with big lists and checkboxes, rather than big pop-ups.
Or, given the not-all-that-large voting pool, just accept nominations as free text and spend the extra time it takes to canonicalize entries.
Yes; that might also encourage people to vote more on the first round. You no longer have to ask “is this really THE best writing/puzzle/NPC in IF over the last year?”, you just list the ones you think would be valid candidates.
There were several categories in which I really wrestled with which of 2 or 3 possible nominees to pick, so I would have liked the freedom to go with all of them. But I appreciate that that might mean more work for people.
I suppose every story in the final round is worth a vote. This means one could (hypothetically) vote for every entrant and there would be no winner.
Like in any regular reality show, you must vote for a single nominee, imho. Even if that means discarding a good character for a better one.
I think we were talking about multiple options in the first round and only one in the final round.
And, if voters can only cast one vote per category, why are there two rounds? It seems redundant. Wouldn’t people just make the same votes again?