Straight from the horse’s mouth, three judges comment on the new system used this year for IGF judging. Jens Bergensten handles describing the new judging system used (including how scores were handled) while Alex May and Michael Rose both weigh in with comments on the overall process.
As a judge this year and a finalist last year, the change of perspective was very interesting for me. I was given 14 games to judge, and less than a month in which to do it. It’s a little over two days per game in my case, and judging by the general activity of the judge comments on the individual games, many judges, like me, left it quite late before starting.
The first obstacle to overcome is having misgivings about a game before even playing it. We’ve all done it at some point – be it a screenshot, or a clumsy game description or maybe a trailer of suspect quality, it’s easy to conclude that you’re not going to enjoy a game before even installing it.
But then if a developer has put, say, a month of work in, and produced something short but sweet – but then another developer has slaved away for a whole year, crafting something wonderful with a good few hours of play to explore, should one get precedence over another? It’s a tricky one, I believe.
I’m very pleased with the moves the IGF committee has made to make the judging process transparent to people. The feedback is enormously improved from last year.
In addition to the judge’s comments, I received feedback from my own IGF entrant this year Paranormal Puzzle Society. Tomorrow I’ll post those in full along with my own thoughts and comments on the process.
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