The IGF and GDCA In Depth

The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards honor some of the best development efforts of the previous year. The field was amazing this year, and the choices up for Best Game were all worthy of the appellation. The evening had some extremely enjoyable points, and a moment or two of frustration and annoyance. Read on for my views on the awards at the 2005 Game Developer's Conference. When you imagine awards shows, the idea that springs to mind is an orderly ceremony with well dressed guests. The guests weren't slovenly, and the night went mostly according to plan, but the tone of the IGF and GDCA last night was very different than your average awards show. A while back I wrote about the SpikeTV video game awards show, and made the argument that if we're going to have a show honoring games it should at least not suck. While folks for the most part seemed to be having a good time, the tone of the GDCA last night was..not exactly surly, but subdued. It seemed as though there was something missing from the experience that the developers in the room were hoping for.

More on that in a moment, though. The Independent Games Festival presentations kicked off the evening, and the award recipients were overwhelmingly gracious and enthusiastic. Most of the recipients were content to leave their speechifying for later in the evening, post liquor, but what was said was meaningful. The folks from The Behemoth, who would get up several times during the course of the evening, seemed overwhelmed by the reception Alien Hominid received from the judges. The awards for Visual Art and Technical excellence, as well as the Audience award later in the evening, seemed to really affect the team. Similarly, the young woman who went up to receive the audience award for N, by Metanet Software, seemed extremely choked up. On the other hand the Large Animal Games representatives went up on stage to receive the award for Audio Innovation accompanied by a guy in a winged Gorilla suit.

The impression that I got from the IGF, overall, was one of real experiences for these people. Games like Gish (which got a huge reaction when it garnered the Seamus McNally Award) and Wik were obviously crafted by teams that really put themselves wholeheartedly into their work. The team most immediately affected by the Awards ceremony, the Digital Builders, didn't even speak to the crowd after they were awarded the Cartoon Network Project Goldmaster prize. The team will be tasked with creating a game with one of CN's Intellectual Properties. The most human moment of the evening came when a Gish developer proposed to his girlfriend on-stage, prompting open weeping and enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.

The IGF over, the Game Developer's Choice awards kicked off and at first it seemed the momentum of the first awards ceremony would carry through the night. The Innovation awards were all met with great enthusiasm. The ARG "I Love Bees" and Katamari Damacy recieved heavy applause for their recognition. The I Love Bees representative was especially self effacing, and thanked Bungie and Microsoft for showing trust in their vision.

The energy of the evening began to wind down as the awards continued, and by the time First Penguin award winner Richard Bartle took the stage the crowd was getting subdued. I really enjoyed his speech, a humble, somewhat rambling, and incredibly British affair. Unfortunately the crowd at this point was more than halfway into the bottle, if you follow my meaning, and were beginning to look forward to the end of the ceremony. He actually spoke long enough that, Oscars style, the production staff brought up some music to usher him off the stage.

All this probably explains why the "skit" portion of the GDCA was received so poorly. In an attempt to spoof "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", a game developer was taken out on the town to have his image improved. The problem was that if they were trying to spoof the show they didn't try very hard. Other than a moment that got some laughs where the developer leaped out of a dressing room garbed as Link, the skits were played too straight to really qualify as humour. While I understand the idea they were going for, and I'm sure it seemed like a good idea when the skit was conceived, the whole thing came off more as an in-joke that I wasn't in on than anything else.

In the end, though, the GDCA is about the awards. When the show actually got around to handing out awards (in and around special effects, skits, and lengthy intro speeches) the crowd was receptive. The recognition of Halo 2's audio was widely lauded as a good choice, and the gentleman who stood up to recognize a large number of people was extremely thankful. Similarly, all the awards that went to Half-Life 2 were well accepted. Mark Laidlaw, in particular, got a strong showing of support when he was given the award for best writing. When Half-Life 2 received the best game award no one in the room was terribly surprised, and it seemed as though people were already going for the door as soon as the announcement was made. Which is a shame, because the awards given out were well chosen, the presenters were fairly entertaining, and the production value was fairly high. The awards ceremony ended with my wondering what it was that was missing from the evening's proceedings, what it was that would have made those present more involved to the end?

Comments

Most important of all...

[Ford Prefect]

... If there's some little, independently produced game that you like the look of, or have enjoyed playing the demo of, then buy it.

Not only will you be financially helping the developers, who are probably strapped for cash at the best of times, you'll also get an indescribable warm and fuzzy feeling of smugness that you've done so. :-)