If we look at the Oscars as a model, the nomination eligibility and submission rules never mention a fee. The Oscars do require membership for individual film industry professionals to participate in the nomination and voting process. But, nominations and voting can be of any eligible movie. And, let me reiterate that film eligibility does not require payment or membership on the part of the studio.
So, it is the members, as individuals who are given the collective ability to determine, of all the eligible films, which achievements are worthy of recognition. It is NOT the studios paying to get their movies onto some initial list for consideration…
(Though, of course, there’s the whole practice of paying for promotions, etc, to get a film noticed by the members. That’s a whole other story…)
In the case of the Choice Awards, we too have a pay to play model. That is, we require individuals to be members to participate in the nomination/voting process. But, they are allowed to nominate any game they believe worthy. After all the numbers are tallied, we simply send out emails saying, Congrats! You’ve been nominated!
The IGDA website is in need of a massive overhaul - both the frontend features/design, as well as the backend member database/systems.
One idea I’ve hinted at previously is simply making the entire IGDA site a wiki (ie, get rid of the static pages/content and just dump it all into the wiki). This is appealing for many reasons - in part, that you cannot find a simpler approach to content management than via wiki page edits.
But, there are drawbacks, one being the lack of traditional threaded discussion forums (sure, there are the talk pages, but not quite the same thing). So, I thought I’d explore some forum stats to gage the level of importance and usage of the IGDA forums.
No big surprises, I suppose. The IGDA forums very much follow the rules of thumb for “participation inequality” on the web…
Some stats:
166879 total posts since starting the forum in 2001
11268 member accounts registered in the forums, 107132 “free user” accounts (total of 118400 forum accounts)
of the top 100 posters, 45 are regular members, 5 are student members, 50 are “free users”
For the members specifically:
top 5 posters have 14469 cumulative posts (~20% of posts)
top 10 posters have 23136 cumulative posts (~32% of posts)
top 50 posters have 48474 cumulative posts (~67% of posts)
only 111 members have made 100 posts or greater
10802 (~96% of members) have made 10 or less posts
9882 (~88% of members) have made no posts at all
64760 (~90%) posts made by 232 members (2%)
4328 is highest number of posts by a member (then 3119, then 2462…)
And, the stats become way, way, worse if the free user accounts are included.
Admittedly, we’ve not pushed the forums and other than just having them, they’ve not been a central part of IGDA strategy per se.
Insightful post from David Edery on the need for Web 2.0/user-generate sites to start exploring wealth distribution schemes (eg, YouTube netting billions off the backs of free contributions, etc).
Interesting to consider how this might impact the game scene - both in terms of mods, but perhaps more so in what games like Spore are proposing. Second Life is certainly at the forefront of these user/producer boundaries.
I can personally attest to the “points farming” that the Gamerscore inspires. There’s no other excuse I can give for playing my son’s copy of Cars all the way through than to bump my profile.
Like was noted in the article, I’m quite surprised that Sony and Nintendo did not try to set up similar style schemes. Would be interesting to see some more in depth academic exploration on the effect of achievement points.
Now, I just need to connect with the guys from Gastronaut so I can score a level-2 “Six Degrees of Small Arms” achievement!
(BTW, for those with access to Edge, they have a great lengthy article on achievements in the January/171 issue.)
About three years ago, I flew down to Boston to do an interview/filming for a documentary on game culture and violence called Moral Kombat. As noted at GamePolitics, the film has been in the works for a while now and they’ve just released a trailer at YouTube…
Looks pretty slick, but the trailer really plays heavy on the anti-game side of the debate. Though, I am told, that the overall film comes across balanced, informing the viewer on all aspects of the debate.
Was great to see folks like Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy) and Tim Scheafer (Psychonauts) get much deserved recognition via the Game Developers Choice Awards in past years.
The nominations process for the ‘07 Choice Awards has just gotten underway. Make sure you get over to the site to nominate your favs!
Amazingly, the Choice Awards are still the only game industry awards that gives attributions to those folks who actually did the work being recognized. It’s a requirement and games have been disqualified in the past for the not following the rules…
Reality Panic hosts the musings and ramblings of Jason Della Rocca, the IGDA's executive director. Posts focus on the game industry and all the issues around it. Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the IGDA.
