2012 IGF Award Winners

By: Paul Eres

On: March 8th, 2012

The IGF Winners were announced yesterday; you can watch a video of the announcements above.

Grand Prize: Fez
Design: Spelunky
Nuovo: Storyteller
Technical: Antichamber
Visuals: Dear Esther
Audio: Botanicula
Student: Way
Mobile: Beat Sneak Bandit
Audience: Frozen Synapse
XBLA Award: Super Time Force

  • Vincent

    Dickmove from Phil Fish!
    Phew! IGF becomes irrelevant!
    Kinda ridiculous…

  • JohnnBGood

    Are you the guy who keeps harping on about how corrupt the IGF is? Nobody cares about your opinion, as you have no facts at all to back it up. Now shut it.

  • A. Goodman

    Why it doesn’t surrise me?

  • http://twitter.com/OddballDave David Williamson

    So who won the design category?

  • Pat Ashe

    Spelunky won for Excellence In Design

  • Anonymous

    oops, forgot that one. i’ll edit it in, thanks

  • Cas

    No, everybody is talking about how the IGF is corrupt and irrelevant.

  • Hanrs

    Oh this is that competition where they decide the results before hand? I wish the judges would play some of the entries. I mean imagine a book competition where the judges read the first few pages of a book claiming that’s all you need to read to be able to judge it accurately. From what I understand, entrants are actually paying for entry as well.

    I’m haven’t really been  following the stuff about Fez. But I understand there’s some kind of drama behind it?

    It seems the IGF is pay for entry and you get to write “IGF entrant” on your game when it gets released, but the finalists are all friends or associates of the judges, so unknowns don’t really stand a chance unless they know people or have the backing of a big organisation or institute.

    Also theres the problem of judging games that haven’t been finished…

  • http://bobgrey.tumblr.com/ bobgrey

    You know, having anxiously followed the development of FEZ since 2007 when the first concept art was posted on the TIGsource forums, I can’t help but feel utterly betrayed at the lack of a PC version.

  • http://wilbefast.com/ Wilbefast

    If we’re going to talk about corruption, better to talk about the XBLA category. I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that one :P

    Seriously though: these circle-jerk theories are old as the hill. Sure, it would be nice to see some new faces, but I very much doubt anyone’s deliberately filtering out the new guys.
    I think it’s just that it helps to have some momentum: when you know you’re onto something, when you’ve made some money already… even if there’s no corruption involved I can understand why we keep seeing the same people year in year out. There is a bit of a glass ceiling involved, but I doubt it’s intentional, much less a conspiracy.

    I mean, I don’t see any bad games here, if anything the problem is too *little* bias, that is bias towards new names at the expense of projects that are, from an objective stand-point, just plain better.

    Whatever the case, being indie is supposed to be about not asking the establishment for permission, even when that establishment is the IGF ;)

  • autechresaint

    Hey everyone, phil fish is telling everyone to suck his dick on twitter.  What a great fellow.  Saved me from buying Fez at least..
    https://twitter.com/#!/PHIL_FISH
    “i just won the grand prize at IGF tonight. suck my dick. choke on it.”

  • Fydo

    Just curious, are the winners for Best Student Game not indie enough to get mentioned here?

  • dirtyhandofgod

    Here’s hoping Gabe and Tycho from Penny-Arcade catch wind of this and write something up. This kind of ego is really destructive to the community.

  • ( ՞ਊ ՞)?

    Haters gonna hate. 

  • http://twitter.com/phubans Paul Hubans

    I actually regret expressing previous resentment towards the IGF after not making the cut. I was at the awards show last night and I felt the winners were all sound choices. It made me really happy to see a lot of my friends up on that stage; they’re all people who, one way or another, have worked hard to get to where they are today. If one thing opened my eyes about these people, it was Indie Game the Movie. I realized that these dudes are a lot like me, and a lot like you. They weren’t born into money, they come from normal families, they have “real people problems” and they just so happened to become successful by the virtue of sharing a part of their soul with the world in digital art form. Isn’t that all any of us have wanted to do?

    I know better than anyone that it’s easy to get behind a computer and start talking shit. It happens almost automatically. You don’t see people, even if some of those people include your friends. You see words; ideas; concepts. You see things you don’t like, and you attack them unrelentingly. The worst part of my GDC experience this year was having to go around and clean up the messes I made for myself. I said some pretty shitty things and ended up hurting people I’ve met before who I considered friends. That felt horrible; that isn’t the kind of person I want to be in this industry or in general.

    I’m not saying the IGF is infallible, and perhaps it can be improved in a lot of ways, but at the same time I don’t think it’s corrupt or as fucked up as a lot of people are making it out to be. As far as the IGF goes, I’m a loser, too, if you want to look at it that way. But I think the biggest message I got from last night’s award ceremony is to keep going; keep trying and doing what you love and maybe someday you’ll be up there, too.

    Like I said before, perhaps a bit more bitterly the first time, but with or without the IGF I am going to be successful as a game developer. There’s nothing else in the world that I’d rather do than make games; there’s nothing else in the world that I know how to do, actually. I think that anyone who feels the same way is bound to succeed, and then it won’t really matter if it’s through the IGF or not. That isn’t to say that the ceremony itself isn’t legitimate or the winners didn’t deserve everything they got, because they did.

  • http://wilbefast.com/ Wilbefast

    It would be like giving the Nobel Peace prize to a president based on election promises ;)

  • Anonymous

    Also, Way (see http://www.makeourway.com/) won Best Student Game.

  • Guest

     “Oops, forgot that one. I’ll edit it in, thanks.” FTFY

  • autechresaint

    ‘haters gonna hate’  pretty sure that’s phil fish, he just tweeted the same.  You act like a child..please grow up.  At least act your age. 

  • Rob

    Thanks, I had forgotten why I don’t read the front page.

  • Anonymous

    i’m not sure what you mean by “going to be successful” — i view you as already successful, having made games that people enjoyed. that’s the real success that counts, not awards or sales. think of paste and ortoslon having fun playing the indie game legend. think of the madhouse tournament, or me meeting you at the poppenkast all those years ago and playing madhouse and pm’ing you asking for hints about how to beat the levels. think of the fanletters you have gotten. that’s success, not this flashy stuff

    and your post is nice but doesn’t really address any core issues — e.g. the reason people think the igf has problems is not because the winners were born into money, but because the igf judges measurably spend 5 minutes playing some entries or in some cases don’t play some entries at all, and because when called out on that the igf defends those judges rather than being apologetic or admitting even a little fault

    similarly i think the reason people don’t like fez winning is not because fish doesn’t have human problems or because the game isn’t good or doesn’t deserve it, or because he says over the top things on his twitter or to japanese developers, but because 4 of the people who worked on his game were previous (some current) igf judges, because it already won a previous year and re-entered, because his game already has a contract with microsoft and they feel it doesn’t need more recognition, etc.

    it just sort of seems as if you shift from being totally pro-igf to totally anti-igf regularly, instead of taking a more nuanced position: that something can be *both* great and terrible, something can both have wonderful aspects and horrible aspects, at once

  • Anonymous

    now try fixing my longer comments like that to get a sense for how much time it’d take (i made a longer comment below, to phubans, for example)

  • Anonymous

    here’s the way i’ve had it explained to me: to get on the xbla you often have to give microsoft exclusivity for about a year. once you do that, you can’t talk about how it’ll ever have a pc version, you have to act as if it’ll only always be on xbla. but after that time period for exclusivity passes, *then* you can make as many versions as you want. that period is something like a year i believe, or a year and a half, so i’d expect a pc version of fez some time after the xbla version. the same thing happened with braid, limbo, super meat boy, and many other games

  • Anonymous

    thanks, added

  • ( ՞ਊ ՞)?

     I’m not Phil Fish, but I don’t like when someone gangs up on an person for expressing their opinion.  Get off your moral high horsies.

  • Sparky

    Congratulations Derek! Really looking forward to 360 Spelunky!

  • someoneexplainthistome

     So how does this work? From what I understand, Fez doesn’t even actually exist yet and is not even out yet apart from a few screenshots and a trailer or so.

    Does your game even need to be released to be in the IGF? If I made a small working demo and a few mock up screen shots of something, could I win too?

  • Anonymous

    games need to have at least one “playable level” to be entered in the igf. so no, screenshots and mockups would not work. but a short level would

  • http://kazeskyfox.deviantart.com/ Kaze

    “Moral high horsies”? I do not think anyone has the right to act like a massive piece of work just because they won something in the best of situations, Phil has no business gloating like a dickweed when his success is rumored to be illegitimate. His whole attitude doesn’t seem geared toward painting his success in a better light, it looks more like he’s saying “I don’t give a fuck, I won, so what if it wasn’t right?” Well fuck him, I was looking forward to a PC release but now I think I’ll take my money elsewhere, preferably to someone who isn’t a smartass that needs their teeth kicked in.

  • NailBombed

    Don’t you mean looking really looking forward to possible PC port of 360 Spelunky? :P

  • Anonymous

    Somebody should make a new independant game festival that actually features independant games.

  • http://baines.livejournal.com/ Baines

    I second the idea.

    The IGF becomes more of a joke each year.

    People pay to get games judged, then the judges don’t even bother to play the games.

    The whole thing seems to be controlled by an inner circle of friends and associates. Judges also seem to cover a fairly small demographic. The result is an apparent bias towards the kinds of games that the inner circle create or favor.

    Every year seems to elicit a promise to improve, or an explanation of why things don’t work as well as people hope, but every year also results in the same complaints.

    This year added the Fez controversy.

    And now Phil Fish has decided to explode like some celebrity disaster, with his attitude about the Fez controversy, his response to the question by the Japanese developer, and now his Twitter responses.

  • Anonymous

    fish just apologized to the japanese developer (check his twitter)

  • Anonymous

    That doesn’t make him not-a-wanker.

  • News

    Imbecilic Grabass Function

  • Adam Pearce

    Both super meat boy and braid had announced pc versions when the xbla version came out. 

  • Anonymous

    can you link to something to show that? i seem to remember otherwise — i remember edmund and blow explicitly avoiding promising a pc version early on

  • Vincent
  • http://wilbefast.com/ Wilbefast

    “So what does someone get when they pay for my game? They get the
    knowledge that they are Part of the Solution and not Part of the
    Problem. They know that, in this case, they are one of the Good Guys. It
    is well-earned self-satisfaction, and it is valuable. To know they are
    doing the right thing, some people will happily pay 20 bucks. This is
    how I stay in business.
    This means that I am very, very careful to maintain a good public
    image. I try very hard to be likable and engaging and generally not a
    jerk. I don’t always succeed, but I try. The goal for an indie developer
    is to get people to like you. If they don’t want to help you stay
    around, they will help someone else.” – Jeff Vogel

    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6698/principles_of_an_indie_game_bottom_.php

  • Fez

    Yes, and probably tomorrow he’ll apologize for saying SUCK MY DICK, EAT IT, ETC… That’s what I call a great guy…NO

  • http://bobgrey.tumblr.com/ bobgrey

    Meatboy came out on Steam only a month behind the XBLA release, according to Wiki. So obviously its possible to get around the one year thing, if that is indeed a thing.

    And I was getting my impression from the first paragraph of a RockPaperShotgun article about all that IGF drama that I really could care less about.

    quote:
    “There’s no plans to bring Fez out on any other platforms?” I ask Phil Fish, as he finishes off his sandwich. He chews and I mutter an inward prayer. Oh Gods, let him say PC. “We’re not even thinking about it right now,” he says. “I mean, ultimately, I would like to see it on everything. Why not? But we do have exclusivity with Microsoft, as you do – you find it’s really hard to not do that.”The Gods are useless. Never pray.So yea. I just honestly don’t understand how its in a developer’s best interest to going exclusive with any one platform for any amount of time, unless they were straight up bribed with a mountain of cash. 

  • http://bobgrey.tumblr.com/ bobgrey

    Quote there ends at “Never pray” disqus apparently doesn’t like formatting.

  • John

    Have read a lot of comments here, some of the bitterness and some of the envy I guess are understandable I guess.  Sure, Phil Fish tweeted a comment that wasn’t very appropriate, but to be honest, I think we’ve all made mistakes at one time or another.  That’s basically how his comment comes across to me.   It was one of those things that was done in the heat of the moment.   It wasn’t a good example of how to vent or express ones joy, frustrations, anger, or appreciation.  He lacked tact and it possibly offended some people.  It would be wrong to say that we’ve never done something stupid though.  Especially in the heat of a moment where we might have felt like the center of scrutiny.  It was a mistake, plain and simple.  After reading some of the comments about his remarks, common sense tells me he probably has regrets now saying what he said (whether he’d admit to it or not), but I’m sure that given the time to go back and read what he had written, it doesn’t make him feel good.

    Regarding the whole IGF disdain that some developers are feeling (I take it young developers), Wilbefast quoted Jeff Vogul’s Gamasutra article regarding integrity, dignity, and treating others with respect and the way we’d all like to be treated.  He’s definitely got a point, but what some of the people who comment here fail to see is that Jeff Vogul isn’t participating in the IGF…  he doesn’t have to, he’s extremely successful and he has accomplished all of that success without the IGF.  Jeff sets a good example for others, as does Cliff Harris, but I think Jeff is one of those guys who practices what he preaches.  So becoming all bent out of shape over who wins and who hasn’t won at the IGF isn’t really beneficial to being productive or successful.  Bitching and complaining about something doesn’t make you more successful or help boost your career.  Some of you may enjoy the liberty of posting anonymously with negative comments about others.  IGF is supposed to be a celebration of how interesting, intriguing, innovative, entertaining, and even how popular indie games have become.  If it turns out that all of these things aren’t true then so what.  Life will go on and you’ll either keep trying to achieve the level of success that you want because you’re passionate about what you do, or you can complain about things, let the small things get to you, and simply give up.  Yes, in the grand scheme of things IGF is small and insignificant if you’re using it to gauge your own success.  It could be used as a stepping stone, or a positive way to become recognized.  The important thing is that if you’re a game developer you get out there and present your game to as many people as possible, whether your game is going to win any prizes or not.  Then, try to be the kind of human being that you would actually like yourself and treat others the way you’d like to be treated.  It doesn’t guarantee you’ll be successful, but it’s a start in the right direction.

  • Clint

    Infants Gloating Flaccidly

  • Clint

    Inferior Goat Fallacy

  • Clint

    Inept Glasses Framer

    this game is fun but i quit now

  • Anonymous

    my thought on reading this comment: i think i actually prefer anonymous hateful comments to anonymous hateful comments disguised as rational coherent comments

    it’s like, ad hominems are really bad but if they are all that is there to a comment they’re easy to read, understand, and dismiss. whereas if they’re dressed up and hidden behind layers of pretend-well-meaning text, that’s even worse

  • autechresaint

    right on.  This is why I won’t support people with out of control egos.  You make games, I make games, it’s nothing ground breaking. 

  • Anonymous

    Hey, dude, this is not a mistake Phil Fish made, go read all insults he’s given to many people on the forums, and you’ll realize it’s not a mistake, it is how he really is.

  • John

     I might be wrong about Phil Fish… honestly, I don’t know the guy.  Again, common sense tells me that someone who behaves that way has made a mistake (maybe a big one).

    In terms of treating others the way you’d like to be treated though, I know I’m right.  Crapping on other people doesn’t help anyone.  I guess my long winded point was just trying to get through that if Phil wants to get people to actually like him he shouldn’t be giving them the message to go fuck themselves.  I guess it’s preaching to the choir though, because some people just don’t learn.

    I know that truly successful people are people who are also happy with themselves and where they are in life.  That’s basically why I chose the Jeff Vogul example.  He doesn’t have to bend to anyone because he does do his best to be as human as possible without having to behave like an asshole to get his point across. 

    That’s about as good as I can explain my point of view right now.