Nomination thread for IF People's Choice and IF Authors' Choice awards (closed)

Competitions
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Edit: Most recent poll: How much public discussion/promotion should be allowed

Continuing the discussion from Announcing a new set of Interactive Fiction Awards:

This thread will serve to nominate new categories for the IF People’s Choice and IF Author’s Choice awards described in the link above.

Please only use the LIKE button for nominations you are willing to vote on.

Reply to this thread with ideas for categories for these new awards. For the first year, the two awards will have the same categories. In future years, this may change.

Non-nomination replies are also just fine in this thread; the rules about likes only apply to category nominations.

Nominations that have passed the fifteen vote threshhold:
-Outstanding Game of the Year (automatically included)
-Outstanding Debut
-Outstanding Game with a play time over 2 hours
-Outstanding Short Game
-Outstanding Unawarded Game Changed to Outstanding Underappreciated Game
-Most Sequel-Worthy Game
-Outstanding Feelies
-Trailblazer Award
-Oustanding (insert language here) Game (currently thinking French, German, Spanish)
-Hanon’s suggestion changing ‘best’ to ‘outstanding’
-Outstanding Worldbuilding
-Outstanding (Genre) Game, with genres including Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Science Fiction,Slice of Life, Surreal,
-Outstanding Use of Interactivity
-Outstanding Retro game

System categories: These are for categories with at least 5 released games this year. The polls will contain links to IFDB searches for games written with these systems.
-Outstanding Inform 7 Game
-Outstanding Inform 6 Game
-Outstanding Adventuron Game
-Outstanding Twine Game
-Outstanding Choicescript Game
-Outstanding Adrift Game
-Outstanding Game in a Custom System
-Outstanding Game in an Uncommon System (for games not written in an above system)

(not enough games: Dialog, Punyinform, Hugo, TADS, Quest, etc.)

Suggestions that have not been accepted:
-Most Fun, Most emotional, Best English game, most divisive, best for first time players, or advanced players, or for learning a foreign language, best implementation in specific languages, most original use of medium, user interface, graphics, voice, multiuser, best gameplay, ‘so bad it’s good’, best replayability, best adaptation, strongest MC character voice, best commercial/non-commercial, best written characters, best combo of mechanics and story, outstanding puzzle design, best visual design, best artwork, best game about repairing a spaceship, best title, outstanding ludonarrative, outstanding game home page/instructions/tutorial, outstanding WIP, funniest game, changing name to IF Community Awards, changing the comp to be aabout rating every game released in 2022 in a ranked competition,

17 Likes
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Best Debut/First Game

36 Likes
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Best Game That Didn’t Receive Nominations or Awards from a comp, jam, or festival

17 Likes
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Best Game with a Play Time Over 2 Hours

22 Likes
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Best feelies

16 Likes
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Most Fun

12 Likes
7

Most Emotional

8 Likes
8

Best non-English game

15 Likes
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Maybe I’m being dumb here, but the only way you would know who won and/or was nominated for an XYZZY is by waiting for the conclusion of the XYZZY’s. I though the timing of the XYZZY’s was sorta the whole genesis of this whole thing. Your IFDB shindig would by necessity take place after the XYZZY’s, or at least after the nominations (since, I’m assuming you can’t win without being nominated).

Again, not 100% rn. So feel free to set me right.

2 Likes
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Yeah, true. We should leave that out.

4 Likes
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I like the idea of this one, but implementation might be hard since from how Brian’s set out the timing, these would probably run before the XYZZYs and the various comps and festivals don’t really have consistent or clear rules for what counts as an award. I think IF Comp just has the winner, Miss Congeniality, and the Golden Banana, except they count down the two Miss Congeniality runners up and top 20 games on the livestream, and some of the top finishers get a different color on the results page. In Spring Thing, everyone gets an award, though there are two best in show ribbons. ParserComp just has the winner I think, except this year the organizers gave an extra trophy to the second place game since the results were so tight….

I dunno, it just seems hard to manage, especially since my understanding of the approach here is to try to get more folks who are less up on the scene as a whole to get their voices heard; I’m not sure I can see how to make it easy for them to figure out which games are or are not eligible for this award, potentially leading to wasted votes, disqualifications, and bad feelings.

I wonder whether an award for the best game not entered into any comp or festival at all might be something of a similar idea, though? I know there are games released that way (especially on Itch and Tumblr, I think?) that I never really get to, and authors often feel like they can only get attention by joining a Comp even if they don’t want to, so that might meet a need.

8 Likes
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Trailblazer.

Author breaks into new ground not explored with IF as of yet.

Could be setting/plot, could be a unique implemention/authoring system, could be new game mechanics never tried before. Can’t be accurately predicted due to the nature of the award.

Sort of like a you’ll know it when you see it, and this setup where people can publicly advocate for why they feel a game is a Trailblazer game works best for it.

18 Likes
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I really like the idea others have mooted of best game released for each authoring system, though perhaps there would need to be a minimum number of games released using that system during the year (5? 10? 15? 20?) so that you’re not giving an award to every custom game out there.

17 Likes
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Yeah, I was actually just thinking “Best Indie/Homebrew Game” or something like that might be a good idea to include such folks without having category bloat.

10 Likes
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I strongly feel acknowledging the separate communities with at least a single “best of 20xx” for each community would drive more buy-in from those communities. Warranted or not, there’s often a vague sense of neglect felt by some folks regarding the more mainstream I7/Twine crowd. Hell, I’d even include a “Best AIF of 20xx.” God knows these communities could use the boost and visibility. :man_shrugging:

7 Likes
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That’s one reason I’m only including categories that get at least 15 likes in this thread. Only categories that can muster enough support will get votes. If nothing gets 15 likes, I’ll just stick with “Game of the Year”.

3 Likes
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Aww :frowning: I was looking forward to having a stranglehold on the ‘Best Game Written in Nils’ Unpublished Homebrew System’ category.
:wink:

8 Likes
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You just missed my edit. I’ve cut XYZZY from the suggestion.

I think this would be all. I personally would (EDIT!) exclude 20th place from consideration.

I think declaring all entrants winners would violate the spirit, if not the law of the award.

Isn’t there a nomination round? Seems like the IFDB poll question (if that’s the mechanism) could explicitly state the handful of games that don’t qualify. It ought to be a pretty manageable list.

I think there are many of these, with a much higher list of exclusions to manage. Unless I’m thinking about this wrong (I do that a lot!). Brian would know, I’m sure.

E: changed an important “wouldn’t” to “WOULD”

2 Likes
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If you can get buy-in from the fr and es communistes, perhaps replace this with:
Best English Game (maybe?)
Best French Game
Best Spanish Game
Best Other Language Game

19 Likes
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Yes, that would definitely be my preference!

3 Likes