The Independent Games Festival is broken and needs to be fixed. To my knowledge it is the only respected award of any industry that is given to something that is not only unfinished but may be unfinished for years. That is absurd and the submission requirements should change.
Before moving on I want to issue a preemptive apology. I mention several awesome games by name and I’m sorry. I have a huge amount of respect for all the devs involved and it is not my intent to offend in any way. :(
Current Events
By chance I came across a website today for an game called Faraway1. http://www.playfaraway.com/ It proudly proclaims IGF Finalist for Excellence in Design and even has a trailer front and center. Unfortunately it’s a teaser trailer that shows zero gameplay and the game isn’t out yet. It was nominated for a major and prestigious award and yet the website doesn’t even have a single screenshot.
The award show is held at GDC each March and submissions are due the preceding October. That means Faraway was submitted to IGF almost a year ago but is still unavailable.
A History
Games frequently are nominated for and win IGF awards long before they are available to the public.
Braid won Innovation in Game Design in March 2006. It was not released on XBLA until August 2008. Castle Crashers won Excellence in Visual Art in 2007 and was also released in August 2008. Fez won Excellence in Visual Art in 2008 and is not available today, after over three and a half years. Monaco won the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize in 2010 and is also unavailable. SpyParty was nominated for the Grand Prize in 2011 and is not likely to be considered “finished” for quite some time.
These are just a few of the more extreme and infamous examples. However in skimming the list a large percent of nominated games are released ~6 months after IGF.
An Argument Against
Why does it matter? Because giving awards to an unreleased game doesn’t make any sense! Giving awards to games that aren’t released for multiple years is ridiculous and insulting2 to the games that actually ship.
Here is a trailer for Pixar’s next film Brave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYg0VgPy6Uk It’s pretty much hair rendering and animation porn. If Pixar cut together a technical effects reel and submitted to competitions they could clean house at technical award shows. That would be silly! Awards are not typically given to in progress works. Why should games be any different?
An Argument For
I’ve had this discussion with friends in the past and have heard a good argument. What makes the IGF different is that it’s about indie games. The publicity from a nomination can lead to hard to obtain platform contracts and publishing deals that would not otherwise be acquired. For devs living off ramen it may be the difference in the game being completed or being shelved while they get a day job. It’s an emotionally compelling stance.
Another Argument Against
But I don’t buy it. For each unreleased game that wins awards how many deserving and released games are passed by? How many devs release a great game that doesn’t get noticed forcing them to hang up their dream and go corporate?
Trainyard is the counter-example. It’s an iphone puzzle game that went entirely unnoticed for 4 months before hitting a blog and soon thereafter exploding with popularity. It’s a fantastic story everyone should read if they haven’t already. http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/ I’d hate to think such a success story was missed because a game was overlooked for it’s incomplete counter-parts.
I know that every year after the IGF the first thing I do is look up every winner and nominee and buy the ones that interest me. I was at the award show this year and actually bought a nominated iphone game while the show was still going on! The games that were unreleased, such as Faraway amusingly enough, I have completely forgotten about in every way. That’s a monstrously missed marketing opportunity.
The group marketing possibilities if every nominated game was available are huge. Imagine the Steam and iOS storefronts the week of IGF. You could have a promotion with every nominee being front and center. As an added bonus you could list games from previous years. It’d be a gift that keeps on giving. This option is lost if the games aren’t already available.
Proposal
I have a simple proposal. Games should not be eligible for nomination for the IGF if they are not playable by the general public. It can be finished on Steam or it can be in open beta like Minecraft. It counts so long as a random person from the public can acquire the game and play. Being playable on trade show floors does not count.
IGF submissions are in October with nominees announced in early January and the award show in March. I would make a rule that the game must be available to the public by January 1st. This allows devs to submit in October, release for the holidays, and still get nominated. A game that slips into February can be submitted the following year.
If raising awareness for unreleased games is an explicit goal then a new category can be created. Name it “Most Exciting Game Under Development”, allow 10 nominees instead of 5, and call it a day. The PAX 10 covers that already, but it’s an option nonetheless.
Conclusion
I love indie games. I love giving indie devs my money for their games. I believe it makes way more sense for the IGF to give awards to games that are available to the public and that it would be a net win for the indie community. What do you think?
Footnotes
- Here’s a trailer from it’s IGF page. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lc09u3Zgtc&feature=player_embedded It looks super awesome and I want to give my money to the dev for it. The IGF trailer is curiously not on iOS so I wonder if target platform changed. I wonder if that’s due to it’s warm IGF reception in any way?
- It’s a slap in the face from the IGF, not from the devs of the unreleased game. I am not blaming devs for submitting unreleased games. It would be foolish not to!