@JimD Congratulations on the *technical* landslide win~I read about the XYZZY issue,and although it was a little sad about how much support you got led to something like that, that kind of loyal fanbase must be pretty heartwarming.
I’m looking forward to when your work comes to fruition!Good luck.
@IyashiiOtaku thanks!
It was an odd situation. None of us CoG authors asked to be in the list of games to be nominated, and yet Marine Raiders, The Race, and ZE won nominations just from a simple post here and there about it. Apparently, the award organizers would rather not have nominees post links to their awards (though there are no published rules or guidelines).
Still, they have a very focused community and our sheer numbers of readers were unexpected and skewed the voting. We certainly didn’t want to complicated their awards. I am just happy to be recognized, and in the future, I think they will structure their awards to move away from public voting.
“Focused community” is one way of putting it . . . “Members Only Club” is how it comes across to me. I have to say, it smacked of elitism, as it seems to be based on which system you’ve used to develop a game rather than the quality of the game itself: I suspect the minimum requirement to join their club is a facility for the player to actually type “look” (or whatever). Pfft.
Now now Vendetta, there is no need to put down any community for any such reason. Anger like that is not warranted. They have a right to run their community however they want, and there is no need to start inter-community tension for such kind of disagreements. Each community has a right to run itself and handle itself however it sees fit. If they want to emphasize or de-emphasize certain things, they have the right to to do so.
In other news, what’s going to happen in week 6?
@Reaperoa I agree to everything you say but just hope their rules are fair and consistent in the future so ChoiceScript authors have a chance to win on merit. I hope I didn’t mess things up for future games, since I can easily see Choice of Zombies or Vendetta being in my place next year.
@Shintaro week 6 is a scene where you get to talk to other survivors, find out backstory, and other details of the NPCs. You can bypass the whole scene or play it to find out about each member of the Cathedral.
Choice of zombies?
Yes, an official game is being released also based on a zombie apocalypse setting.
Who came first? And what’s with all the zombie games?
@Reaperoa It’s not an attempt to start inter-community disagreement, it’s just a point of view. I feel that Jim got the brown end of the stick for all the wrong reasons, but I also think there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about it. Their credibility has just dropped a few notches in my estimation, is all. *shrug*
@Shintaro Well I can answer the second question. Zombie games are the new world war 2 shooter. They just keep making them and making them and making them because they just keep selling. You’d think that as a zombie fan this would be great for you, but of course like most things, quality is never quite as prevalent as quantity, so it mostly just means you’ve got a lot more drek to sort through to find the decent ones. Luckily we’ve already got one right here. Hopefully their official game will be good but not too similar to Exodus.
@Vendetta I think you’re sort of right. It’s text parser games. I mean, you woldn’t compare ArmA2 to Command and Conquer and say “This one is better!” would you? Maybe if it was like, ArmA 2 compared to Modern Warfare, but Modern Warfare is consolized garbage with a completely idiotic plot… Er… I’m losing my point here. Point is, why are you upset that they didn’t want to rate your game as a different type of game?
I expect that next year, there will be a section of the XYZZY awards solely for ChoiceScript. Or maybe for “new” IF, including things like Colloquy and Undum.
@Shoeslip Actually, my objection to the outcome is more along the lines that they deigned to accept my vote but then arbitrarily decided to ignore it because it didn’t agree with their own . . . I don’t dispute their right to do so (it’s their club, after all) just the principle (or lack thereof) behind the decision. Perhaps more to the point, once they made that decision, it meant ZE had to be disregarded in every category across the board regardless of merit or obvious popularity with actual players.
The players of ZE felt strongly enough on the subject to actually cast a vote without needing any encouragement beyond simply being informed that the awards existed, and yet the players of the various eventual “winners” (they do have players, don’t they?) obviously felt no such compunction. “We don’t tell anyone about the awards” is simply not a good enough answer–the core IF community as a whole is well aware that these awards exist. They simply couldn’t be bothered to vote, and for that reason alone ZE gets well and truly shafted? By what definition is that actually fair or right?
They should abandon the farce of a public vote, because that’s all it is–a farce.
I can see where they’re coming from, though obviously I disagree with their decision. The fact is that, usually, there aren’t a lot of votes on XYZZY, and the community in question wasn’t prepared to handle the influx of a bunch of new people (bigger than their existing core group). I’m going to assume that this isn’t the old True Art saw rearing its ugly head again, because it doesn’t sound like the people at XYZZY were objecting to the fact that Choicescript games were entered.
Anyway, firstly, I hope that next time, the awards are set up better so that this particular comedy of errors doesn’t happen again. And Vendetta, I have to say that, controversy or no, it’s probably a good thing that Zombie Exodus (and by extension Choicescript) is getting some exposure to an existing community of enormously talented writers who are likely to enjoy many of the games on our site. Abandoning the public vote won’t help anything.
The problem is that the voting will remain a farce if this is their only answer to a more-popular Multiple Choice game running rampant. I honestly believe that the only way forward (for the Interactive Fiction hobby as a whole–the very thing these guys are supposed to represent) is to simply have separate overall categories and a whole range of awards for each. One of those overall categories (with its own range of awards, not as a single minor category, which is how it’s likely to end up . . .) should be for “Multiple Choice Games”. There should be a Best New, Best Puzzle, etc for this category on its own–if only because the IF voting public has shown it to be the most popular category.
I should qualify my opinion by pointing out that I’ve been a fan of IF for a very, very long time–since “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was first released well over twenty years ago now, in fact. I still (rather sadly, perhaps) have very fond memories of finally figuring out to “put babel fish in ear” . . . There is still a very talented pool of writers keeping the hobby together and for that we should all be grateful, but I doubt I’m the first to notice the way that some of those people sneeringly deride “Multiple Choice Games” as being rather simplistic and somehow less worthy than are their own offerings–despite obvious differences in overall popularity. It is that small group I find elitist in the extreme, and they are the ones I fear will prevent the IF awards ever becoming a level playing field for all writers.
But I do hope I’m proved wrong, FWIW.
As one of the three finalists to be disappointed by this outcome, I fully understand where they are coming from. Over the past 15 years, the awards have been voted for by around 100 people in total, people who have played most of the games on offer and voted accordingly. This year, however, their awards were overrun by a new community who voted en masse for their own games. I can personally testify that I only played the game called ‘Six’ out of the non-ChoiceScript games before voting. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who didn’t play the other nominees…
The best solution for the future would be to have separate categories for multiple choice games as opposed to text-entry games. Then perhaps join them all with a ‘Best Game’ category.
These conversations prove we need a “like” button. 
A note on Zombie Exodus – only Parts 1 and 2 are on my site until Part 3 is published by CoG. Shortly after it is published, I will start posting Part 4 scenes for beta testing.
Awesome, I’m looking forward to it. ^:)^
Looking forward to it ^:)^