AGS Awards 2023 - The future of the awards

[cat]

Wow, it's November already! The next AGS Awards are around the corner. Now would be a good time to start catching up playing this year's games. 

More importantly, though, I would like to discuss the future of the AGS Awards. We, the awards team (cat, @Kastchey and @Snarky), noticed a steady decline in interest. Fewer people nominate and vote, provide resources or attend the ceremony.

Nomination and voting
Good news first, @AGA has confirmed that he will take care of the voting page again. We will be able to do nominations and voting like always. However, there is a noticeable decline in the number of people who nominate and vote. While I think there will be still enough to have a significant result for 2023, it is still worrying.

Is there anything we can do to increase participation? Should we reduce the number of categories (e.g. best graphics and best animation could be merged, best gameplay could be dropped etc.)? Any other ideas?

The ceremony
The ceremony where the results are revealed has been the highlight of the AGS awards for many years. However, it comes with several problems:
* It's getting harder and harder to collect the required resources as many people either deliver them late, in weird formats or not at all. Even when they are collected, someone has to prepare them and put them in the client. We have lives beside AGS and this is taking quite some time.
* Fewer and fewer people are attending. Last year was the lowest number we ever had, as far as I remember. The huge effort of preparing the ceremony seems wasted time for such a small crowd.

Was the timing the problem? Was it just the wrong date and everything would be better with a tighter schedule and a ceremony earlier in the year? Is the ceremony not interesting anymore?

We considered various options for replacing the ceremony:

• IRC only, as in the good old times
• Chat only, but using Discord
• A discord voice call with a shared powerpoint presentation
• No ceremony at all, the result is just posted in the thread

What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you going to participate in voting or join a ceremony next year?

[Postmodern Adventures]

Oh come on, community! We can't let the AGS awards cease to exist! Personally, for me the ceremony is more attractive and fun than the Oscars themselves!  And this year, the proliferation of titles in AGS has been great and has produced great games that I would like to see win several awards.

I have always admired the work of the team in charge of the ceremony and I know how much work that takes. It would be sad not to walk the red carpet again with the avatar we have chosen and be able to press the applause button for the winners. But I think a video introducing the nominees and choosing the winners could be a possibility (like the Agoty Awards, per example) and would take less work than organizing the traditional ceremony.

[eri0o]

Well, 2023 still had new AGS games, maybe a little less in the commercial side but it still had, from the top of my head, Dreams in the Witch House, Menial: A Utopian Bagel Simulator, Broken Windows Chapter 4, Tunnel Vision, Stranger in Utopia and Shards of God. There were other games and demos, and a few newcomers to the engine and some long time users returning to it.

About the resources, I wonder if instead of having them delivered for the award ceremony there could be some incentive to put them in the AGS Game Database somehow, the problem is possibly storage, but like a music file that represents the game and screenshots and maybe even some way to listen this music and see these screenshots directly from the Game DB, and then asking for the resources could be just a reminder for people to make sure things are updated there.

The good thing of asking for the resources is they work to remind people of the dates - and then I guess the hard part is the game developers themselves reminding to be present at the time of the ceremony. I don't have particular thoughts just that I find the ceremony pretty sweet but I also understand that it's hard to find time as our lives get gradatively busy and I fell some new users use AGS as a stepping stone to game dev and then migrate to other engines - which is fine but it makes hard to have community members that stay and participate in community activities.

[Crimson Wizard]

Is there any way to get statistics of games made in AGS per year, at least ones registered in database?
It may be curious to see the graph and compare how this number changed over the decade(s).

[cat]

This is not about the games - there are enough of them. And more importantly, while the number may decrease, the quality is going up from year to year. There are lots of possible winners for each category. This is solely about the awards.

[Postmodern Adventures]

That's what I was writing. Those numbers probably don't mean anything.I mean, there are probably fewer games than in the past decade. But the number of high-quality games has increased in recent years. There are even free games made in AGS that rival in quality those made in other engines. I look at you, Shards Of God!

[rongel]

Oh I certainly hope that there's a ceremony, now that I finally have a game that I can participate with 

But I can understand that it takes a lot of time to make it happen. Hopefully there's some way to make it easier / faster to organize.

[Stupot]

I have a few thoughts:

Earlier ceremony
I do think having the ceremony earlier would help keep people interested. Last year it was right at the end of May, and I think that is rather late.

One idea is to set the date in stone earlier on so that we all know when to look forward to it and have more of a build up.

Better banners
I don't think the red text banners at the top of the forum are as effective as they could be. They're supposed to be noticeable and remind/inform us, and they do at first, but they soon just become easy to scroll past, which is bad when the text changes for the next stage of the process.

I suggest a more engaging and eye-catching banner, not just in the forum but on the main website, too, all building to that set date mentioned earlier.

Separate MAGGIES
Traditionally, the MAGGIES winner is announced as part of the AGS Awards ceremony. But one option would be to have this announcement a little earlier. It could help by giving people something exciting to whet their appetites in the build-up to the main awards. And the MAGGIES winner could still be announced during the main ceremony, even if the winner has already been declared a month or so prior.

More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

For MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Of course nothing beats actually playing the games and this should absolutely be encouraged, but if less people can feel dissuaded from voting then it should help keep the overall buzz alive.


Anyway, those are just some thoughts. Feel free to pick and choose the best bits. Thank you to the Awards team for all your great efforts.

[Crimson Wizard]

In regards to the ceremony itself, is there anything that could make things more streamlined?

I never looked into what you do there, but assuming you need to use extra resources each time, do you have to import everything inside the game project, or your client/server thing loads them from the disk?

Which assets do you get from the game authors? Can you get them by extracting them from the game, for example (assuming you received author's permission to use them)?

[Postmodern Adventures]

I have to agree with @Stupot. The ceremony of the last year was a bit too late. I suppose there would be more than one reason for that but doing it in January/February it's a reasonable date since the euphoria of devs and the public is at its highest around these months.

I have one suggestion is that the award team take a sabbatical year (they've earned it!) and simply make a thread in the forum with the list of winners. We will miss the ceremony but the final  purpose of it is to announce the winners.

[Danvzare]

It'd be a shame if the ceremony stopped. It's such a big event, and I absolutely love it because of that. 
My brother is always there watching with me, so he must feel the same way, despite not even using the engine.

But if it's become that much of a chore to setup, then like Crimson Wizard said, is there anything that could be done to streamline things?

I mean, would it be possible to just change the pictures used for the nominees, and then reuse the rest with no major alterations?
I don't think we need new avatars or new functions. And while it would be nice to hear the music of the games that are nominated for best music, I think it'll be ok if we don't hear it.

Then again, I've never even so much as helped with the award ceremony, so I don't know how difficult it is to use for even the simplest of tasks. 

[cat]

Thanks for your ideas, Stu!

Earlier ceremony
I do think having the ceremony earlier would help keep people interested. Last year it was right at the end of May, and I think that is rather late.

One idea is to set the date in stone earlier on so that we all know when to look forward to it and have more of a build up.

Ok, noted. Ceremony earlier.

Better banners

They are done by AGA. Maybe he could put up a banner image, but then again there has to be someone who CREATES such an image...

Separate MAGGIES
Traditionally, the MAGGIES winner is announced as part of the AGS Awards ceremony. But one option would be to have this announcement a little earlier. It could help by giving people something exciting to whet their appetites in the build-up to the main awards. And the MAGGIES winner could still be announced during the main ceremony, even if the winner has already been declared a month or so prior.

Good thinking. I love MAGGIES being presented during the ceremony, but I think they also suffer by the fact that they are revealed so late in the year. MAGGIES don't have a nomination phase, just voting (actually, nomination kinda happens year round). They could be finished much earlier.

More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

I think this especially applies to nominations. Some people don't nominate because they have only played few games, but nomination isn't a "this is better than the others" thing. It's more like "this game has great graphics!", and it doesn't matter if others, that I haven't played might have great graphics as well.

For MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Another great idea!

[Ali]

We considered various options for replacing the ceremony:

• IRC only, as in the good old times
• Chat only, but using Discord
• A discord voice call with a shared powerpoint presentation
• No ceremony at all, the result is just posted in the thread

I don't play as many AGS games these days, so feel free to ignore me. I suspect this idea has been considered and dismissed. But if a goal of the awards is to draw attention to the best games made in the engine, perhaps the ceremony should be something anyone can attend/re-watch without having to downloading the (brilliantly put together and obviously a huge amount of work) client. Why not a livestream on twitch/YouTube that nominees could share among their followers on social media?

EDIT: Yes, unsurprisingly you've thought this through! I'm sorry - I had missed that the recent ceremonies had been streamed as well.

[Snarky]

In regards to the ceremony itself, is there anything that could make things more streamlined?

I never looked into what you do there, but assuming you need to use extra resources each time, do you have to import everything inside the game project, or your client/server thing loads them from the disk?

Which assets do you get from the game authors? Can you get them by extracting them from the game, for example (assuming you received author's permission to use them)?

To briefly answer this:

All assets are imported into the game project, AFAIK it doesn't read anything from a server (apart from the text chat).

Any way to source the game assets is possible, and all sorts of methods have been used in the past. Asking the creators to submit them was introduced as a way to save time and get good assets (especially music, animations and avatars), but that only works if the response rate is high.

Why not a livestream on twitch/YouTube that nominees could share among their followers on social media?

It sounds similar to the "Discord voice call" idea, but I take it you mean a format more like video streamers? (Since the ceremony has already been livestreamed on YouTube/Twitch for the last few years.) I think it's a good idea, but it seems like it would demand more of the host.

[cat]

@Ali Usually, the ceremony WAS live-streamed on Twitch/YouTube. I know some people were either watching the stream live or afterwards the recording when they couldn't attend.
The problem is, that content that is streamed, has to be created somehow...

[Cassiebsg]

Last year, was an off year for me. Sorry. I did meant to attend the ceremony, but I simply forgot. :/
Hope I manage to find the time to help with the collecting and organizing the assets this year.

"Nomination and voting"

I think I mentioned this before, but opening a dropdown menu with 100+ games, find and pick a game to nominate, then do it again *9, until you filled the first category up (I like to always nominate the max possible in each category), is exhausting. I realize we don't need to do all at once, but still, it's a lot of hard work, just to nominate.
If we added check boxes to the games DB, where the author could check the boxes that fit ones game, then we could have this "endless" list of games shorten up to only those that apply to each category (minus eventual fail/missing checks).
It would be nice to open up the dropdown menu, and instead of seeing all 100+ games in the voice category, you only had 15 or 20 to pick from, cause those are the ones that actually fit the category.

I don't know if it would help with more people nominating or not, but probably worth a try?

Another way to pick, could be to have a text box and just type the name of the game you want to nominate (having both options would be optimal). I know some members keep a list of what games they played and "score" them on the go. So I bet that just copy pasting the name in, instead of having to find it in a list would be good. I know I wished I could have done that before at least.

I know there are some categories I never vote, those are best character and best story. For character I ever hardy remember any characters name, much less type them to nominate. Also I feel I would have to have played the games to be able to judge those categories.... On the other hand, art, character art, animation, and music I can vote on even if I have't played the game, as I see screenshots or skim a lets play video, or hear the sound track.

[heltenjon]

I enjoy the ceremonies, but I realize they take a lot of work for the organizers. However, going back from that ceremony with all its bells and whistles to irc or discord only is bound to be a major downer. Probably not very twitch-worthy either.

I'm not sure I want the awards to be that much later in the year. Every year see a lot of games coming out near the end of the year, if I'm not mistaken. There's got to be enough time to actually play the games before nominating and voting. I always end up with some full length commercial game or other that I never found the time for.

More forgiveness
I think there is sometimes a pressure to have played every game in a category before voting in it. I can't be the only one who has decided against voting in a category because I wasn't able to play all the games in it. While this should definitely be encouraged, I think we should be more forgiving in this regard.

I think this especially applies to nominations. Some people don't nominate because they have only played few games, but nomination isn't a "this is better than the others" thing. It's more like "this game has great graphics!", and it doesn't matter if others, that I haven't played might have great graphics as well.

For MAGGIES in the last couple of years I have tried to include links to video play through for anyone too busy to download and play all the games. I'm trying to get this sorted even earlier for next year, so that every entry will have a video to watch. Maybe something similar could be done with all the AGS Award nominees.

Another great idea!

These are very good points. I think especially for graphics, animation and sound, one could easily nominate games after just watching videos. There's been some oversights over the years, unfortunately. I think also that for categories with only a handful of games, like non-adventure games or voice work, we shouldn't be afraid to nominate those few games that fit in the category.

It's very hard to get people to vote/rate and leave comments on the ordinary database pages, and unfortunately, I think the nominations and award votes have the same pattern.

[heltenjon]

If the goal is to get more nominations, one solution would be to grant some people the power to nominate a game on their own, without getting the 5 (?) votes necessary behind it. This could be the moderators, the organizers, some anonymous committee appointed by the organizers, or a combination.

I'm not sure if it's a good solution, though, and I would vastly prefer if our members do the nominating of their own accord. It's not strictly democratic, and we already have committees deciding certain awards.

This suggestion is made out of the assumption that the nominations is the bottleneck, but if votes are as low in numbers as the nominations, then that may be based on a false premise.

[Danvzare]

"Nomination and voting"

I think I mentioned this before, but opening a dropdown menu with 100+ games, find and pick a game to nominate, then do it again *9, until you filled the first category up

If the goal is to get more nominations, one solution would be to grant some people the power to nominate a game on their own, without getting the 5 (?) votes necessary behind it. This could be the moderators, the organizers, some anonymous committee appointed by the organizers, or a combination.

These two quotes just gave me an idea to help streamline the nomination process.
What if the dropdown box for nominations, only includes the games that were posted in the "For Your Consideration" thread, and only for the categories that the person has listed in their post.

Then the organizers can fill out the list by adding any additional games that weren't posted in the thread, but that they personally believe should have the opportunity to be nominated.

It's not a perfect solution, but it might help get more nominations by streamlining the whole thing.

[Tabata]

Just an idea to get more nominations:
You might be able to get "our" devs to contribute some free Steam/GOG-keys of their commercial games.

         

Those can be raffled of among the nominators that registered on the voting page with their username and given to the winners via pm. 
Even if older games are spend that winners already have they can use them as gift for friends.