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Rich
12-12-2003, 11:59 AM
IGF Finalists Announced
http://www.igf.com/

The Independent Games Festival has chosen 20 finalists for next year's GDC-sponsored awards event. Head over to the IGF website and czech 'em out!

Open Category:

acmi {{park}}
Anito: Defend A Land Enraged
Bontăgo
Facade
Fashion Cents
Fuzzee Teevee
Savage: The Battle for Newerth
Spartan
Starshatter
Take Command: 1861 The Civil War


Web/Downloadable category:

AlphaQUEUE
Beesly's Buzzwords
Billiard Boxing
Chomp! Chomp! Safari
Dr. Blob's Organism
Dungeon Scroll
Gish
Oasis
Space Station Manager
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
Gary Whitta
12-12-2003, 01:11 PM
Games I predict Desslock will like:

Anito: Defend A Land Enraged
Bontăgo
Facade
Savage: The Battle for Newerth
Spartan
Starshatter
Take Command: 1861 The Civil War
Dungeon Scroll
Space Station Manager

Games I prdict he will not like:

Fashion Cents
Fuzzee Teevee
Billiard Boxing
Chomp! Chomp! Safari
Dr. Blob's Organism
Gish
Oasis
JD
12-12-2003, 01:31 PM
Got and installed Anito yesterday. Haven't had much time to play a lot, but so far it's looking promising.
Brian Rubin
12-12-2003, 03:12 PM
Starshatter frigging rocks! I'm in the closed beta, and I adore it. It's the first non-sucky space sim (i.e. X-Com Interceptor, which had a dynamic campaign, yet sucked rocks) I've seen to have a dynamic campaign, a HUGE selling point to me.
XPav
12-12-2003, 03:26 PM
Starshatter frigging rocks! I'm in the closed beta, and I adore it. It's the first non-sucky space sim (i.e. X-Com Interceptor, which had a dynamic campaign, yet sucked rocks) I've seen to have a dynamic campaign, a HUGE selling point to me.
I just finally got my ass in gear and fired up the beta yesterday. I think its what I want, but there is a learning curve, and I'm working my way through that.
GMicek
12-12-2003, 11:20 PM
The finalists are certainly interesting. Not only did the best games not make it, the most innovative ones didn't either. Amazing!

Anyway, there are a few great games in there, but a couple left me scratching my head.
Brad Wardell
12-12-2003, 11:22 PM
Only one game that was in my group to judge on made it. Space station manager.
GMicek
12-12-2003, 11:30 PM
Starshatter was the only one from my group to make it.
Xemu
12-13-2003, 12:43 AM
How is Savage an IGF game? It's on the shelves at EB... I guess I'm not up to date on how they define "independent". Maybe we should submit AOM. :)
Matthew Gallant
12-13-2003, 12:53 AM
How is Savage an IGF game? It's on the shelves at EB... I guess I'm not up to date on how they define "independent". Maybe we should submit AOM. :)
I'm just afraid of what's going to happen if Savage doesn't win every single award. The developers might rumble with the judges.
GMicek
12-13-2003, 01:39 AM
The IGF rules have a couple major flaws in my opinion. One of which is that to be considered independent the game and their developers cannot be funded by a company that is a member of the ESA or the ELSPA.

So, yeah, if McDonalds makes a game they're more than welcome to enter the competition.
Ben Sones
12-13-2003, 08:16 AM
Yeah, they really need to have some sort of budget limit as well. It's absurd to put games like Savage (budget of $1-$1.5 million) up against titles with less than one percent of that funding.

Then again, I think Starshatter (budget of less than $10,000) is a better game than Savage, so maybe it will all shake out in the end.
Jonathan Blow
12-13-2003, 09:18 AM
Hey, GMicek and Brad (and whoever else judged some of the IGF games)...

I didn't get to see any of the non-finalist submissions this year. But as always I am looking for games to invite to the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, so if you could point me at any of the games you thought were innovative but didn't make it, that'd be cool. (If you can send a binary that'd be awesome, but contact info for the author or a web page would do also....)

My email address is jon@number-none.com.

-Jonathan.
Troy S Goodfellow
12-13-2003, 02:32 PM
Considering the rather dismal performance of Slitherine's first two ancient strategy games (Legion and Chariots of War), I'm a little surprised to see Spartans on the list. From the screens it looks like a low budgets Rome: Total War.

Troy
milo
12-14-2003, 09:42 AM
The finalists are certainly interesting. Not only did the best games not make it, the most innovative ones didn't either.
Oh, way to take the wind out of my sails... ;)

Question for Greg and Brad:

Now that the competition has entered the final round, are you guys still judging the ten finalists? Or do they have a smaller panel of judges now?

--milo
http://www.starshatter.com
GMicek
12-14-2003, 12:46 PM
The finalists are certainly interesting. Not only did the best games not make it, the most innovative ones didn't either.
Oh, way to take the wind out of my sails... ;)

You suck! Ok, just kidding. But, people will bitch and moan, but if the game kicks ass and people play it then it's all good. I think the finalists chosen in the IGF every year are strange, there's very little consistancy.

Now that the competition has entered the final round, are you guys still judging the ten finalists? Or do they have a smaller panel of judges now?

Not sure actually. This is the first year I've been involved. I don't think all the judges will be involved because the developers only have to provide 10 copies of the game for the initial round, havn't seen anything that says they need to provide more copies.