IGF Award Winners

By: Derek Yu

On: March 12th, 2010

Andy Schatz

Former IGF Awards host Andy Schatz (pictured above) got to take the stage again tonight, only this time it was to accept both the Seumas McNally award and the Excellence in Design Award for his 4-player co-op stealth game Monaco. Other winning games included the long-lost Limbo, which won awards for Visual Art and Technical Excellence, Closure, which won Audio, and cactus’s Tuning, which won the Nuovo Award.

You can view the entire show here.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

Joe Danger
Monaco
Rocketbirds: Revolution!
Super Meat Boy!
Trauma

Excellence in Visual Art:

Limbo
Owlboy
Rocketbirds: Revolution!
Shank
Trauma

Excellence in Audio:

Closure
Rocketbirds: Revolution!
Shatter
Super Meat Boy!
Trauma

Excellence in Design:

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard For Gravity
Cogs
Miegakure
Monaco
Star Guard

cactus

Nuovo Award:

A Slow Year
Closure
Enviro-Bear 2000
Today I Die
Tuning

Technical Excellence:

Closure
Limbo
Heroes of Newerth
Joe Danger
Vessel

Student Showcase:

Boryokudan Rue
Continuity
Devils Tuning Fork
Dreamside Maroon Student Version
Igneous
Paper Cakes
Puddle
Puzzle Bloom
Spectre
Ulitsa Dimitrova

Cactus gave the best IGF acceptance speech I’ve ever heard!

Posted in Community, Competitions, Developers, IGF / GDC | Tags: AndySchatz, cactus, JonSchubbe, PlayDead, TylerGlaiel

Xander

I’m almost certain this wasn’t really here 2 hours ago.

Haha, I watched the whole thing on Gamespot earlier. The Mega64 movie trailer skit made me laugh pretty hard, but yeah.. Cactus getting an award was top notch. Also whatever audience guy joined in with ‘WOO! Jesus!’.
Mike

Huge congratulations to everyone. Watching it live was a surreal experience to say the least, but also very exciting. Looking forward to Monaco.
Mark Johns

That audience member was Phil FIsh. And we were sitting about 5 feet away from Gabe Newell. what an evening.
bateleur

OK, you’re all invited round my house now so that I actually get to *play* Monaco!
Jamal

I love Cactus, but I wished Enviro-bear would win for Nuovo.
the king

is cactus wearing a plastic bag necktie?
Wyrmling

I thought Tyler’s Uncle’s speech was really touching.

I also loved Mega 64’s Indie Man. That had me in stitches.
ChevyRay

I was really disappointed to see no movie trailer for Tuning. :D

Great job everybody!
Paul

Cactus looking as cool as a cucumber.
Eric

Is it common for one game to win the Grand Prize and another award? I haven’t really followed the awards in the past…

And oh god i can’t wait for Monaco.
marcelo

i find it really sucky that they choose games that the general(indie) public couldnt get to play yet..
l4rgo

limbo?

are there any news about the game? the page still looks the same. are they still working on it?
Alex

It seems Monaco actually ended up stealing the prize. But it was the perfect heist, they deserved it.
chrknudsen

Denmark represent! :D
Mike

Don’t really care if Sidhe is a medium-sized company, I think Shatter should have won the excellence in audio award. Really the best damn soundtrack in ages.
judgespear

I was watching it live and that had to be the most awkward few minutes I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Absolutely none of the people who went up there looked like they wanted to be there.
Jad

the love is the best feature of the ‘indie scene’, definitely! Love it.

Cactus was cool and mega64 was awesome and the rest was sorta cool too
micheal

regardless, supermeatboy won my heart
http://b-mcc.com// BMcC

Congrats to all the winners and nominees! A certain part of me wants everyone to win, but wow, seeing Andy’s face… I could have cried. Dude cares SO much, it’s amazing.
http://shigi.wordpress.com Laura

Hahaha, Cactus’ speech was so funny. I also got a kick out of zygna’s “plea to the indie community”… everyone at our table was groaning.
http://b-mcc.com// BMcC

Hehe, a mainstream game developer at the table next to mine laughed out loud at that. :)
http://gamejolt.com/profile/davioware/653/ Davioware

I laughed at Cactus’ speech. What’s that thing around his neck?
Jim

haha, brilliant games all round. I thought that the winners were top notch , a really strong year. Also can’t wait to get my hands on “Monaco”! Looks freakin awesome.

Cactus warmed my heart with that beautiful speech of his..Love the style man.
Also Andy ;) We share your love man!
jw

i love everybody

also the white wine was good the red wine was shit, if any gdc people are reading this
Jamal

Eeeagg- le…
Dodger

@jw,

Why do you have to be prejudice huh?
jw

i dont understand that
K

I’m glad Cactus got an award, he deserves the recognition, and his speech was hilarious!
b genuine

The IGF is a prestigious award and it was rude for Cactus to act the way he did. I know it was all in good fun, but we as indies need to act like adults to show the rest of the world that we are doing something important.
http://www.klikscene.com Radix

There’s no “we” in “indie”.
undertech

And there is not one, but two I’s.
b genuine

these sort of honor code conduct things is not what we need. We don’t need to act like adults to show the rest of the world that we’re doing something important, we need to do something important and then show it.

Also kanye west wants you to know that the more rude you are on an awards show, the more press you get :D
jad

sorry, that was me accidentally putting ‘b genuine’ in the name field cause I wanted to reply to him and my subconscious did silly things
Dodger

@b genuine,

The IGF is a prestigious award? Cactus was rude? Really?

The awards are great and they’re definitely beneficial to all indies. Not only the winners but all indies that aspire to do something big, great, or beautiful. They do help encourage developers, but Prestigious? Not really. I think a certain amount of fun is necessary and healthy. After all, we’re talking about game development, not spreadsheet construction and data analysis…

Most of the people that were up on stage looked pretty nervous – maybe with the exception of Andy Schatz (congrats goes to him by the way) – I think Cactus did what he does. He remained pretty cool whether he was nervous or not and it was perhaps silly but it was also funny and he made the evening that much more memorable not to mention he was one of the deserving and earned the award. I’m happy for everyone that won but if it wasn’t for Cactus the awards would have been pretty dull, not to take away from anyone else, but the Nuovo award was definitely the most memorable event of the awards thanks to him. I couldn’t help but smile and chuckle when he did get up on stage because it was hard to tell at first if he was totally nervous or cool as a cucumber and new exactly what he was doing. Either way his timing was great whether it was intended or not.

Not everyone needs to be Cactus, but Cactus needs to be like Cactus and him being up on stage made everything worth the wait anyway.

It’s a shame not more people can win, but at least events like this help motivate people, as long as it’s not their only motivation. At least all the nominees received a free copy of Unity Pro – sure it’s a cracked and pirated version but hey it’s better than nothing ;-P
http://www.microwaving.net Alex

Nobody loves me.
Kinten

Ahahaha! YES! Keep it up! I FEED ON THE DRAMA!

love you guys
yewn

Dodger:
Why did they receive a cracked version of unity pro? :S
Dodger

@yewn,

Because of the economic crisis. *wink* ;-P
http://www.microwaving.net Alex

I’m ugly and I hate myself.
Anthony Flack

I’m glad Monaco won, even though I haven’t played it (I’m assuming that means it really is as fun as it looks).

But enough with the silhouette-physics games already! Last year we had Night Game and Feist, and this year Limbo won the art award with something VERY similar again.

It’s an effective technique, we get it. But please, IGF, no more!

(Personally I think that the art award should be judged by a panel of art specialists, the audio by a panel of audio specialists etc – at the moment it seems like every judge rates every category, and frankly I wouldn’t trust an artist to judge a design competition, or a designer to judge an art competition…)
Dodger

@Anthony Flack,

That’s a fair suggestion. I agree with you, but this is one of the problems with most awards shows and it’s also a problem when being judged by a group of your peers or your friends. There’s nothing really unethical going on really, but I agree with what you’re saying. The thing is it’s kinda hard when you have devs who do all of those things, shouldn’t they qualify to judge any element? Still, this isn’t as messy (yet) as other awards shows that stand for nothing at all such as, lets say, the MTV awards, or, the VGA’s (Godawful!) You do have a point though.

@Alex,

Lighten up Francis!
Robert

Andy Schatz is so dreamy.
Laremere

@Anthony

I really think there are two sides to the coin. On one hand, having special panels to judge the winners of individual categories would make the judging more “pure” However, I’m not convinced that judging should be that “pure” After all, most people who play games aren’t top notch people in any of the categories. Sure having a panel for a category might chose certain games over what the the current pool of judges would, but if only people who are experts in the category think it’s great but it doesn’t carry as much weight with others, doesn’t that prove that it shouldn’t be the winner of that category. For instance, game artists could rave about how great art is in a game, and it could win a bunch of awards, but if in the end the average player looks at the game and isn’t impressed by the art, despite what the awards are telling them they should feel differently, what’s the point?

I do agree that the average player may not be the best of a judge in categories. They don’t know what the creators did in order to do what they did, however I think the current selections for judges are a good balance.

Any system that works on human opinions inherently is imperfect, however I don’t see why we should perfect it. Make it fair, yes, but why perfect it and lose ourselves, when we can embrace it and find so much more?
bateleur

@Anthony – Further to Laremere’s comments, the IGF is way ahead of the judging system for the Oscars! :-)

(No, really, it’s ridiculous!)
Tedward

How to apparently win the indie art award – create a puzzle platformer using all black silhouettes
the king

and they all won massive cash prizes of $17.48 + a two for one pizza hut
jw

tedward you are stupid like fuck
jw

but if you’re dinowars ted I love you
http://roachpuppy.com Chris Zamanillo

One thing I learned about this year’s unreleased (and some released) nominees after playing them is that people seem to have the completely wrong idea about most of them. Why go on bashing campaigns against games you’ve never even played? Obviously it’s still subjective, but they got nominated or won for a reason.
smallfry

I have a huge crush on Erin Robinson.