2010 IGF Finalists: Main Competition

By: Derek Yu

On: January 4th, 2010

The results are in. Your main competition finalists for 2010 are:

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

Nuovo Award:

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

Technical Excellence:

Closure
Limbo
Heroes of Newerth
Joe Danger
Vessel

Congratulations to all the finalists! Now… DISCUSS.

Posted in Community, Competitions, Developers, IGF / GDC

AndySchatz

First!
AndySchatz

sorry, i have a case of complete internet idiocy right now i am running around the room screaming.
http://www.glaielgames.com Tyler Glaiel

Second!
http://www.twitter.com/goodmorningcpt allen

such a shame VVVVVV is not anywhere on this list. It’s ten times better than Cogs.

Also don’t understand why Closure got nominated for Excellence in Audio. I can’t recall the audio in the game to be that remarkable. Oh well.

Congrats to all the finalists!
http://www.glaielgames.com Tyler Glaiel

@allen: you haven’t played the new version. ;D
http://www.glaielgames.com Tyler Glaiel

unless you’re a judge
http://www.twitter.com/goodmorningcpt allen

oh right, you didn’t submit the browser version right? Totally forgot about that. Excuse me ..
Casey

Yeah, I’m also disappointed that neither VVVVVV or Don’t Look Back are on there (Terry submitted both, right?)

Still, it looks like a good list! I’m especially happy about Star Guard getting some well-deserved recognition. Congrats everyone!
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

Casey: Not as disappointed as I am, heh.

Oh well. Congrats to all the finalists! There was some really tough competition this year.

Particularly glad to see Joe Danger in there – I played a bit of it at the Eurogamer Expo, it’s amazing.
imwill

good job guys.
David Rosen

I thought Cogs was great, and definitely deserves to be there.

I am, however, surprised that Heroes of Newerth is considered eligible for the IGF. They have a team of dozens of full-time, investor-funded, mainstream industry guys. Maybe Borderlands should have entered the competition this year? Or maybe Dragon Age.
DanMacDonald

Grats Andy, from host to finalist.. isn’t it usually the other way around? :)
David Rosen

It is hard to read this and think there is anything indie about s2 games.

http://www.mlive.com/michigan-job-search/index.ssf/2009/10/kalamazoo_michigan_office_of_s2_games_pl.html
Will Graham

Congrats to all the finalists!
David Rosen

More correct link about s2 games
Bad Sector

@David:
Are they backed by a publisher or some 3rd party investor who has creative control or has control over the game’s IP and future?

If so, they have no place being there. Otherwise they’re as indies as anyone else.
Tommunism

All I have to say is…fuck yes…and congrats to the finalists.
bateleur

No Closure in the Grand Prize list? I’m a little surprised there.

And no VVVVVV anywhere. :-(

I suppose the trouble is that with no “gameplay” category the Grand Prize takes on that role as well and gets a bit crowded as a result.

Congrats to all the finalists. I’m looking forward to playing a lot of those titles.
http://www.raitendo.com Marcus

To be honest, the fact that awesome games like Terry’s didn’t get a single nomination is a great consolation for me (who was also hoping to get nominated).

Big congrats to the finalists and honorable mentions!
http://www.playthisthing.com TheDustin

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I’m suprised VVVVVV wasn’t nominated — I expected it to win this year. Congrats to everybody who submitted a game, you’re all awesome.
ZeppMan217

Meat Boy didn’t get in excelence in design? What the hell?
kYn

Holy shit, Limbo is not vaporware after all.
godsavant

Just glad Don’t Shit Your Pants didn’t make it.
aerloth

glad to see that limbo is still in production
Jordan Fehr

Congrats to all the other finalists! We at Super Meat Boy are crazy excited!!
Moose

I’m glad to see some of these, but the heavy Joe Danger emphasis is a bit scary. Ok, it looks like a good game – but do we really want a world where a criterion for becoming a recognized indie developer is to have a job at a mainstream developer first, for networking purposes if nothing else?
FISH

i worked at a mainstream developers first, so what. 2 of them even.

too bad about VVVVV, but atleast starguard got it. i have to say if i had to chose between the 2 if have gone with star guard.

i think its a great crop, but you can defeintely see the IGF moving away from the little guty and towards more polished and ambitious titles like danger joe and SMB. and i think there’s anything wrong with that.

and of course lotsa great games didnt get in.

300 entries, 30 finalists. do the mat.
there’s prolly another 30 games that just ALMOST made it in. there’s always tons of close calls. fez was one, fro what i hear.
Super Joe

Twenty Eighth!
Sloan

Why, again, does the IGF allow entries that are not released?
Ntero

@Moose

I kind of understand why you could be worried about larger, more professional projects getting so much attention, but on the flip side, they made a fantastic game and should you really discredit them based on where some of the individuals of the team used to work?
TeamQuiggan

Why, again, shouldn’t it? Really from a developers perspective it makes sense, it gives you a bunch of exposure for your up and coming game.
Vladmir

Uhhh maybe I missed something?? Why isn’t Cave Story, or Braid on this list? I thought that those games if anything were regarded as the pinnacle of indie games, and yet the academy has passed on them both.

I mean even games like World of Goo or Crayon Physics aren’t here. This is a travesty.
paul eres

“Why, again, does the IGF allow entries that are not released?”

mainly so those games can find publishers, and, more importantly, so that publishers and find games. historically most of the games that won prizes were games that are not yet released. i’d say more than half, actually.

anyway, to repeat what was said above, vvvvvv not being anywhere in there is a bit sad, and a good example of how, while they’re improving the judging process, it still has a basic design flaw: that only a few judges play each game, and that the majority of the judges do not play more than a dozen games or so, and can only make comparisons based on the games they do play. adding more judges is nice, but it doesn’t fix that basic problem.

timw told me he played every single game. if he can do it, why not make that a requirement, even if that means fewer judges?

another thought: perhaps more finalists per category might be a good idea; 10 each instead of 5. there are enough great indie games now that that might work better.
Moose

Ntero – I don’t discredit the work done in making great games at all. But that choice of work does not exist in a vacuum. Take Joe Danger – they’ve obviously put a lot of work into it, but their blog mentions they’re expecting to publish on XBLA or PSN. If they hadn’t had prior professional jobs to have the contacts at MS necessary to do that for their FIRST indie game, would they have been economically able to justify putting in the level of effort and investment that a game like JD requires? I doubt very much that it would have been a viable proposition if they had known and expecting – as most first-time indies have to – that they have a 80%+ chance of being lost in the crowd.
Ntero

@ Vladmir
Braid, World of Goo, and Crayon Physics have all been winner in previous years, as they are older games (Braid was a winner in 2006). Each years entries are based on the games submitted this year, and therefore games created in the past year (especially since many games are entered way before completion (Fez got a number of finalist positions 2 years ago)).

I thought Cave Story was entered in this year, but I’d have to recheck.
http://adamatomic.com Adam Atomic

Playing every game is…logistically difficult. If you assume the judging period is 6 weeks, and that maybe 200 out of the 300 games even execute, and that each game takes maybe half an hour to play (roughly my experience as a judge), then optimistically you are looking at minimum 100 hours of judging time in a 6 week period, which is about 15 hours a week every week for over a month. And that’s the best case scenario! The best games can take hours to play and accurately judge, not including time required to leave feedback to each entrant.

And that doesn’t include the Student IGF.

If you roll in finished/polished games and the Student IGF, you’re easily looking at 150+ hours of judging time for a single person to check out all the submissions.

Obviously it is not impossible, but just keep in mind when you say “i don’t get why – ” that you’re talking about people committing a man-month of time on a strictly volunteer basis, and it’s a man-month spent playing largely terrible, unfinished games.

It is not impossible, but it is NOT trivial.
Ntero

@Moose

Shatter (a finalist this year) is on PSN, Braid was on XBLA and now PSN, World of Goo is on WiiWare. Super Meat Boy is a soon to be WiiWare release, and Fez is XBLA in February.

Yes, it’s a $10 000 Certification process (for XBLA, dunno PSN). But they are not the only company to roll out with a console indie game. Not even the only company to start with a console indie game. If you want to be a high quality/polish idie game company, then you know from the start, you are going to want to market on a console if you want to reach outside the general indie community.

And generally the finalists of IGF have at least a strong clue that they will not be lost in the hype and hubbub with their concept, cause it takes a good concept to get to a finalist.
DYH

Hmm, why isn’t Owlboy in the grand prize – That prize is strange isn’t it?

Rocketbirds really has a cool visual design, yeah :D

And Miegakure sure looks interesting.
http://tinysubversions.com Darius K.

@DYH – As an IGF judge, I gave Owlboy a whirl (I didn’t score it but I downloaded it to try because I heard good things). IMO it’s totally deserving of the Visual Art prize. Yet I found the overall game to be very good, but not great, and overall greatness is what I would expect to see from a Grand Prize game.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion.
phubans

Oh well, maybe next year.
Moose

Ntero, I know. However, as far as I’m aware, World of Goo was done by two ex-EA developers and Braid by a former games journalist.

As a developer, yes, you know that “you are going to want to market on a console”, but what you want doesn’t matter if publishers and similar aren’t answering your calls because you’re just another face in the crowd. These people never had to face that.

So you’re left having to take a _massive_ risk of investing a huge amount in a polished title that will have to come out on your own website on the PC, in the _hope_ that it’ll get noticed and provide you a reputation. That seems like a very bad thing to me. Something like IGF seems to be a good way to give publicity to those who don’t already have priveleged access to the contacts needed to secure it.
AndySchatz

THERE ARE A LOT OF EXCLAMATION POINTS IN THIS HERE SET OF FINALISTS. NOT ENOUGH ALL CAPS THO.
Aubrey

Also sad about VVVVVV. And congrats.

And tommy: HOT DAMN THAT’S LIKE 3 NOMS YOU GOT NOW! YOU GOT “NOM NOM NOM”!

Congrats man! Can’t wait to try SMB.
Amugaba

Some strange choices indeed.

Anyone mind explaining whats so special about vvvvvv, though? Ive only seen the video, but it looks like just another low-fi platformer with a simple twist.
paul eres

@adam — another one of my suggestions would be to extend the judging time length from about six weeks to about six months. however, it’s not even six weeks right now, it’s more like ten weeks. is there any real reason, logistically, that the judging process could not be extended a few more months? just make submission deadlines earlier.
Anthony Flack

“i think its a great crop, but you can defeintely see the IGF moving away from the little guy and towards more polished and ambitious titles like danger joe and SMB.”

Danger Joe, yeah, but SMB? It looks very much like the kind of straightforward 2d platformer typical of the “little guy” to me.

I don’t know, am I missing something here?
IndieJoJo / JonnyB0T

As others have said, I’m disappointed that VVVVVV isn’t on the list.

@Amugaba – once you play the game, it will click. Think of PoP: Sands of Time or the Klonoa games – player gets more and more acclimated to the mechanics to the point where he/she is pulling off super-crazy acrobatic* moves and some seriously hair-raising stunts. By the end of the game, you’re a badass even though you had the same exact set of moves at the beginning.

Replayability is through the roof.

*as super-crazy one-button gravitational flips can get, anyways
Simon Carless

Thanks for everyone’s feedback. We do pay attention from the IGF organizer perspective – which is why we ramped things up majorly this year, with over 1800 votes and comments from over 150 judges.

Insufficient votes per game was the complaint in previous years, and we’ve really taken that to heart. This was, needless to say, a massive logistical undertaking.

When people have favorite games that don’t make it as finalists, it does suck. (I also have opinions on games, like everyone else. I also think there are a lot of great games that are finalists this year that the commenters here cannot have played yet, and should cut a break.)

But I stand by our voting process – it’s the aggregate of all those judges, and that makes it fairer than one opinion, ultimately. And with the amount of judges we have, merely one dissenter won’t make a difference to a game’s fortunes.

One thing we may consider doing for subsequent years is ‘honorable mentions’ per category, as we did in Nuovo. That’ll help showcase great games just outside the Top 5 in each category. The Nuovo version of that seems well received.
Yo

Yeah I think the only problem that is being more apparent is the fact that only 20 games get a nod out of 300+ entrants.
Laremere

Have you considered a somewhat tiered system of voting? One statement seems to be that a large amount of the games submitted are for lack of a better word, crap, taking up too much judging time making it not feasible for more judges voting on a single game to get a larger sample. Possibly in the first half of judging the a game is only judged by half the number of judges as normal. After that stage is over, the bottom half (ish) is dropped of the list. While still adding to the scores in the first tier, judges would judge out of the remaining games. This way the games that are close contenders to being nominated are judged by 1.5 times the number of judges than in a single tier system.
To pre-clarify: I’m not suggesting a system where a game moves from one tier to the next where all scores from the previous tier are dropped. Basically a game starts out with a smaller sample of judges, and then the losing games which would have no hope of ultimately competing for victory are dropped out of the race, and then the judges work on the now smaller group of games giving each game as it gets more and more competitive a larger sample, never dropping the scores given by the first judges, but only expanding the sample base.