I like the idea upthread about honoring a game over two hours—how about another category for Outstanding Short Game? Short games could often use more recognition!
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How short? Under fifteen minutes? Around five? Or left olio to voters interpretation?
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Good question! Under 15 minutes? It might be good to spell it out, especially if there’s a category specifically for games over two hours.
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I always found “playtime” for games a strange concept, probably because it seems so subjective.
I tend to putz around as a player, doubling-back, insufferably pestering every NPC at every opportunity, testing the breadth of my vulgar vocabulary against the parser to see how far the author went in predicting my adolescent hijinks, trying actions that will almost certainly kill or maim the PC just to see if they’re implemented, licking, well, everything, etc., etc.
Others, focus in to that finish line like a laser guided homing missile, not an ounce of fat on their transcripts.
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At the same time, playtime is a directive in the most prestigious competition in the IF community. We’re all used to thinking about it.
The rhetorician in me must acknowledge that such factors have their effects on authors and readers alike.
While I can’t speak to short games, my intent in suggesting recognition for longer games was to acknowledge works that might be disadvantaged in a time-constrained competition environment.
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Agreed. Could this be better measured in turns or text volume?
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If a time to completion field were implemented on IFDB (there’s a feature suggestion here, and a related suggestion to be able to search that way here) it might make it easier to figure out which games qualify for time-based awards. Otherwise, to decide which games qualify, it seems like you’d probably
- leave it to voters’ judgment, or
- plan to have volunteers going through the games on IFDB that were released in a given year and confirming that each one qualifies, or
- let any game be nominated in the first round, and then have volunteers test each one before the second round to make sure it qualifies.
So whatever the criteria are–estimated time to completion, amount of text, etc.–it would be good to keep in mind how labor-intensive it will be to figure that out.
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Outstanding Comedy Game
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Best Gameplay
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Maybe genres is the way to go here. Comedy, drama, puzzler, horror, etc. That would be very different from the XYZZYs.
Edit: If you did this, we could all decide on reasonable categories, along with an “other” category for the square peg games, and when people listed them on IFDB, they would need to check a box identifying it as one (or more) of those categories, or opt out of being eligible.
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And once everyone agrees a given game is most divisive, it’s eliminated from consideration and we go on to another round of voting.
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“So Bad It’s Good”
I sure played a few games that would qualify.
Case in point: Magic Realms – The Sword of Kasza - Details (ifdb.org)
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In my experience, the appreciation of short games directly proportionally decreases according to their length.
You may want to do a separate award class based on length/size, for all categories.
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Guess the Verb/Noun comes to mind. Also “shoot the moon” logic puzzles (e.g. Sierra On-Line)
Then there are regional/niche games that people love to hate. People call these games “Divisive”. You really need to have an open mind to be able to appreciate the blood and tears the authors put through in order to make and finish the games.
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I’ve updated the initial post with a list of categories that have reached the 15 vote threshold.
So far, the categories are:
-Best Debut
-Best Game with a play time over 2 hours
-Outstanding Short Game
So far the poll on procedures has firmly placed both comps simultaneously in February. I plan on letting nominations for categories run until Jan 15th.
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I’d love to see short games getting more love. Best Debut game would also be awesome.
How about best replayability?
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Probably too niche, but best based/adaption/reinterpretation of an exisiting property (CC allowance required obvously. ie Public domain works (old texts, fairy tales, folkore, mythology,) Based heavily on historical people’s lives or events with or without artistic license.
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Strongest MC character voice. (For playing characters with a fair degree of their own personalities set in and coming through in the story options.)
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Best commercial (pay to play the whole game) vs non-commercial (free, add supported etc) games.
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