majoon

>>Publishers have a business model that pushes commercial success to the exclusion of creativity.

It's not only the publishers who are devoid of creativity. They may choose to develop "safe" titles, but there is a shameful dearth of talented professionals in this industry. Do you know how many up-and-comers want to make FPS's or MMORPG's? I blame the developers.

>>What is frustrating is that the issue is not being hotly debated or considered and the publishers and developers are doing nothing to change the status quo.

It sounds like you're hanging out with the wrong people. Give Indiegamer.com a try sometime -- probably the most concise single collection of indie developers on the web. We would all certainly welcome your presence! :)

>>I’m not sure how many other developers have that same creative mindset and that worries me.

Even when left to their own devices, indies behave just like the risk-averse publishers: they will most frequently take the path of safety. And they have very good reason to. Of anyone developing games, the poor-in-the-basement indie is the LEAST financially stable. They don't often have entire catalogs of games to keep a single miss afloat: Very frequently one or two misses will kill an indie developer.

I'm not that worried about it. How dirty do you think penises are, anyway? Not only is urine sterile, but your unit is tucked away all day in the saftey of your underpants. Someone walking out of a stall is another story...

#40: And risk negative bias in upcoming festivals? No thanks. Rest assured that I'm a contributing member of the independent game development community with successes and failures, just like everyone else. Besides, the quality of my titles is irrelevant in this discussion. Don't get me wrong: In general, I think these guys are fine. But this was a childish stunt that hardly deserves applause, especially since the whole thing was a farce to begin with.

eatme: Incidentally, I just contacted Simonc and concluded that it may simply be a lexical disparity. Perhaps the IGF is outgrowing its position as a reflection of innovative ideas and is now making the rather awkward transition toward awarding quality and excellence. (Which is fine, provided the awards reflect that. "Innovation in..." doesn't.)

#26: I don't know where you tried to go, but http://www.slamdance.com/games/ works fine for me. As for your experiments comment, I don't understand what you mean. However, when dealing out awards prefixed with "Innovation," it's ideal that the games in question actually innovate in some way, and the IGF winners were simply not innovative.

Ryan (if you're the Ryan I suspect you are), I'm sorry you didn't win. Fizzwizzle rawked!

That's a nice little masturbatory fantasy, but during most of the dialog between myself and Chris, he indicated the lack of ANY interest from publishers, money or no. Didn't TAKE money? Bah. Weren't offered... They are such ego-massaging children. Please, don't encourage them with your applause. This latest title was a visual feast -- for sure -- but it lacks any coherent marriage of the graphics and the sub-par gameplay mechanics. You guys go over the deep end for a crappy game with a neat graphical style and then you wonder why other developers focus their attention entirely on graphics.

The game is crap and shouldn't have won any awards other than, perhaps, innovation in visual art. Technical excellence? Which part? Rendering primitives without gouraud shading counts as technical excellence? And the grand prize? Even Seumas (God rest his soul) would have been disappointed by this overly-hyped selection that very likely only won because the game had already earned significant mindshare over the past year, due largely in part to an over-active personal relations manager.

Unfortunately, I suspect this misaligned award-giving is caused by a complete lack of diversity on IGF's judge roster. A quick glance at the IGF judges list and you will find most of the entries are members or ex-members of the mainstream gaming industry. There are two women. And no casual developers are listed. A couple editors from fly-by-night indie news sites, one of which isn't even open anymore. Where are the thoughtful souls, like Dan Cook or Ron Gilbert -- two of game development's most enlightened minds?

The IGF has been going downhill for years and is becoming little more than a joke to anyone who understands what it means to leverage the power of "indie" to innovate. What was once seen as a significant contribution to the independent game development community has since been dilluted into a cesspool of favoritism, ignorance, and sponsor battles. (Nobody else thinks it's unfit to have a sponsored award in an INDEPENDENT game development festival?) The mere fact that Darwinia was even nominated as a finalist for anything more than innovation in visual art is indicative of the lack of any true value left in the IGF awards.

Support Slamdance and other indie game award festivals that have the RIGHT idea about what means "innovation."