Such a great book. Carry on with XYZZY talk, but also go read this book.
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I actually ran into the game they had commissioned from the same people who wrote Fallen London, before grabbing the novel. It was a really cool introduction to their in house style, and really beautifully suited the dream like quality to the novel. Iâm not sure if it would still work, as StoryNexus has been dead for quite some time⌠But a great little game.
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âŚ
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Mmmaybe we shouldnât be so noisy about them not being awarded last year, then? I mean⌠we could just agree to back each other up if we all put âWon XYZZY for Best Game of 2022, (game you made in 2022)â on our resumes, right? Share the opportunity?
Just, uh, letâs not all apply for the same job.
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In another post I mentioned that I see the IFComp as the equivalent to interactive fictionâs E3. The XYZZY awards are IFâs answer to the annual Game Awards. I was surprised that the 2022 iteration was not there, it probably should have been held earlier in the year.
Since I reviewed every game in IFComp 2023, Iâm hoping to see a revival of XYZZY.
By the way, Xyzzy is a special weapon in my project, but Iâm not allowed to divulge what exactly it does and how it functions.
However, the XYZZYs are not a good indicator for people new to IF to check out which games they should play. The IFComp winning entries, slightly better, but not much. Something beginner-friendly is more appropriate.
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To be clear, the 2021 XYZZYâs, reviewing games that happened in 2021, did occur in 2022, just late 2022. Nov 21st - Dec 22nd, iirc. And the 2022 XYZZYs would typically occur in 2023. Technically, thereâs enough room left to run the 2022 awards before New Years Eve. Although, theyâd have to announce in the next few days.
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The XYZZY rewards do matter to me! They help me find what was âbestâ for particular categories (e.g. setting, puzzles, NPCs) and learn from the masters of the art. It also helps in that it not only considers a particular comp (like IFComp), but all games overall. Not all games are released through one of the major comps, and it would be bad if we would miss out on what is out there, just because the author(s) decided not to enter any.
By the way, I joined the lasting âtraditionâ of adding the special magic word to my IFComp game as well (not in the big archived version, but in the during the comp updated version which hopefully will be available in IFArchive soon.)
Small note: the historical link appears to be broken?
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After playing a game from last yearâs IFComp, I was thinking about adding an XYZZY puzzle to my game that has been in the works for several years. It my be an XYZZY epic game. 
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Looks like the wayback machine snagged an image: https://web.archive.org/web/20210813051650/http://xyzzyawards.org/awards/historical.php
Edit: Oh, bummer. None of the list of links have been captured. I guess we have to settle for Wikipedia:
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I always thought of the XYZZYs as the main award of the year - like an Oscar. It was not connected to a competition, but any game from the year could be nominated for something. Like those big awards, âthe nomination is the thingâ even if a game didnât win, an XYZZY nomination was still a big deal and great recognition and could be listed in a blurb to make it stand out.
I suppose itâs more like a peopleâs choice type award since anyone can vote. At one point it was also very valuable because IF veterans were asked to write an essay about a category they had specific attachment to and how each nomination and the winner related to it. Even though these happened after, this was almost like the âaward packageâ they usually show before they give an award.
I started giving some side-eye in 2013 when there were only 3 nominees for Writing out of a normal five. I was like âthat canât possibly be trueâŚâ in a year where I could name at least ten games that at minimum had nomination-worthy writing. The report back was essentially one game got several nominations; the other two got two apiece and then there were maybe fifteen other games that got one nomination apiece and cancelled each other out.
This was when people could only nominate one game in each category and the rules were re-thought so people could list a second choice as a backup to fill the category.
I still think they are important, and I know they require a lot of effort (every game published in a year must be vetted for eligibility to avoid mistakes, re-releases, ineligible games, etc) but the timeframe for when they happened started slipping later and later, and interest in the nominated games had been replaced by the following yearâs games so they werenât as fresh in peopleâs minds.
The other thing is since this is basically a community choice award with a limited number of voters, itâs very possible for one very popular game to get vote-flooded for every category. This happened inadvertently one year (either for XYZZY or IFComp) that had a Choice of Games entry and that entire huge community wanted to show support and overwhelmed the number of votes for everything else. This will happen in a niche interest group where there are a normal limited number of participants but the voting is open to anyone and another community can inadvertently stuff the ballot box for their game.
Birdland swept in its year, and while it was a great game that deserved accolades in all the categories it won for, it had a fanbase outside of the normal community that pushed it to the top of every category. While not undeserving, it was already a popular game that pushed out other works that might have been deserving to be recognized also.
My only suggestion would be to re-organize it so nominations are by the community, and the winners are selected from those nominees by a rotating slate of âexpertsâ who only need to play all the nominations in their category and decide on winners with commentary. Donât worry about vetting every game in the year and only vet them for eligibility when nominated to reduce that task.
AndâŚhopefully start the nomination process in January, hand the nominees to the experts in February so they have a couple months to play them with a goal of announcing the nominees in the beginning of April and then winners by the end of April. First quarter of the year!
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I believe I read that Dan and others from COG have learned from that and are now more circumspect about the XYZZYs each year. I donât know if I could find where I read that, but I donât think I imagined it. Also, while I do believe your suggestions have some merit, Iâd be happy if they continued to happen at all, improved or not.
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Why? Why not simply vet only the games that have been nominated? Much less work. Easy to throw out any nomination for the wrong year or such. Easier, anyway, than vetting every single game released in a year.
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I donât know for sure, but usually the XYZZY nomination form is an enormous drop down list of games, so they likely were pre-compiling a database of valid nominees. Maybe this made sense in the past since people only could nominate one game in each category so peopleâs nominations wouldnât be nullified if the game wasnât valid. Itâs less of an issue since people can choose a nominee and a backup-nominee.
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Well, then it makes better sense to just make a google form with spaces for 2 or 3 nominations, along with a check box saying something like âI have checked that this game was released in 2022â. You get what, maybe 200 nominations? Get a panel of 4 volunteers and give them each 50 to check on IFDB, then release the final round form. Iâd absolutely be willing to do an hour or two of gruntwork to check IFDB listings, and I bet a lot of people would. I mean, itâs insane to vet every game ahead of time, especially when the vast majority of them are very small games for little comps.
Edit: Plus, at least 90% of nominated games will be from comps that have already vetted games to some degree. If it was in IFComp and it wasnât a new game, it would have been found out and booted already.
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I agree. I think originally they didnât want to just trust the âpublication yearâ was correct and collect all of the IFDB cruft (incomplete games, games that were released but only added to IFDB a year later, etc) for the list. Iâm with you that thereâs no need to vet everything and itâs more economical to only vet games that have been nominated as most voters will filter most of that.
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Transcripts of past XYZZY Awards ceremonies (from when they were held on ifmud) made them look like they were a lot of fun. It seemed like a good opportunity to bring the community together.
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Hereâs a post from Dan discussing how it was resolved the year it happened: We Almost Flooded the XYZZY Ballot Box. At the end he says:
Weâre in discussions with the XYZZY Award organizers to decide what to do for next yearâs competition, to guarantee that the awards are fair to everyone involved.
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Seems like exactly the thing that should be on IFWiki: XYZZY Awards - IFWiki
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Very good point. My bad.
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Iâve been around the IF community for a very long time, and since the start of the XYZZY awards. I used to think XYZZYs were very important, a great guide to the best games each year, and so I would actively participate as a proposer and voter. But since the XYZZY voting time scale has slipped later and later I no longer remember games from the period covered, and very much doubt XYZZYs are still a reliable guide. I wish that wasnât the case. And I know Iâm criticising volunteers. Sadly I canât help more myself, being very seriously ill. But I do think XYZZY needs to be timely to count.
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