f13.net

Half Life 2 won excellence in writing? Is this some sort of throwback to Anthony Hopkins 18 minues as Lecter in Silence of the Lambs? Please. There are a lot better ways to show how much you love the game than BULLSHIT awards. I can almost smell the brown from here.

I don't know about Halo 2 for best audio, but for best technology I'd almost be willing to give Bungie.net's use of Xbox Live stats for Halo 2 the award.

Best in visual arts: Gotta go with Half Life 2 here. The design was flawless. From the real to the horribly grotesque, just perfect. WoW, not so much - it's a love it or hate it game. Things like that can't win awards.

Donkey Konga won best innovation? Wuh wuh wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhat? Pardon me, but just because you aren't Japanese doesn't mean you have to be a MORON. Drumming games are nothing new. 1998 wants it's reward back.

Yes to I Love Bees.

How did Bartle win the FIRST penguin award? Gygax I could see. Will Wright I could see. Hell, I could even see Specter, Reynolds, Meier or Romero. But Bartle? Nokthx. Online games Just Aren't There Yet (TM). He's innovated the most slow moving sector of the industry in the history of games (short of virtual reality, har har). Either that says something about the terrible state of incest in the gaming industry or quite simply - they didn't want to give the award to a Japanese guy. Which I guess I can understand. But comeon, Pearl Harbor was a long time ago.

I think I commented on this Bartle business before. Meh, still pissy about it.

It's nice that Crytek got some recognition for Far Cry though. It was a great game. Kind of got lost in the Doom3/Half-Life2 orgy. Better than Doom3 I thought.

I'm surprised Gygax didn't get that penguin award. For better or worse, can't you trace most RPG games (and MMORPGs) back to him? 

I don't know about the writing award. Maybe they should have a "best writing until the ending comes out of nowhere and makes no sense" award. I nominate KOTOR2 and HL2.

Best writing should have gone to Vampire.  No contest.  Bugs aside, the writing was some of the best I've ever seen in a game.

Is this tongue-in-cheek humor not translating well to the internet?  I hope so...


And yeah, fuck that.  Half-Life 2 winning a writing award is a crock of shit.

Bartle certainly deserves an award, though, even if there might be other First Penguin choices that deserve mention first.  I'm just glad the man got some recognition.  He's submitted talks multiple times to GDC and they are repeatedly turned down.  I mean, I love seeing Will Wright and Raph Koster and Peter Molyneux do 3 or more talks/panels every convention, but it would be nice to have someone else up there for a change.

Bruce

That's interesting. Why is that? I'd think a guy like him would be asked to speak not turned down.

So a guy that gets constantly turned down to speak wins the award - yeah, that makes sense!

CMP makes crazy decisions every year.  Space is a ongoing issue; Will Wright's talks are always jammed and never allocated enough space.  This year, they had no small rooms for roundtables, so they had some rooms partitioned with a thin curtain and scheduled two roundtables, one in each, at the same time, which was a disaster.  You get a lot of talks on the same subject every year, because it was popular the year before, so they know it works.  They've been slow to really understand the MMOG space, or the fact that some personalities are going to draw more attention that others.  Etc.

As for Prof. Bartle specifically, I don't know their reasons.  Nor does he, probably; when my submission was turned down they didn't really get specific as to why.  Remember that there's a limited number of sessoins every year, so they have to turn down even some good submissions, and since every year there are new people attending, you naturally have to repeat some of the common topics every single year.  But I do wish they'd mix it up a little more.  I don't want them to, say, kick Dave Weinstein out, but does he really need 3 sessions or can they just give him 2 and give 1 to someone new for a change?

Bruce

The Game Developer's Choice Awards are run by the IGDA.  CMP via the GDC Advisory Board (http://www.gdconf.com/contactus/advisoryboard.htm) are the ones who actually run the conference and schedule events and approve submissions.  And the IGDA and the CMP are no longer the tight partnership they were in the past, so while they still work together on some things, the IGDA has even less input now than they did before.

Bruce

How does WoW win an award for graphical excellence?

Yeah, it runs smooth....because the graphics are simple. They could have been made years ago. I kept wanting to turn the settings up, then remembered they already were.

Both of those attributes are part of the reason, I'd suspect. The game looks good, and it runs well on low spec machines. It's effective art design.

Whores.


Vampire: Bloodlines gets fucked once again. Seriously, this is just getting stupid.

The first winner of the innovation award should have been Miyamoto, without any doubt. The man singlehandedly invented or popularized at least a couple of genres, and has innovated in a huge variety of genres.

My opinion is that Miyamoto deserves the first of basically every game design award. Because he is head and shoulders above the next competitor, it's not even close. A guy like Bartle is like Adrian Beltre to Barry Bonds.

It'd be pretty hard for me to qualify a game for "Excellence in Writing" when I could only hear every two or three words in the dialogue. Maybe it was the same for them  :roll:

The bugs were intolerable. I didn't get to this "great writing" part some of you keep talking about.

The First Penguin award isn't about who has executed the best at the position, but who was there in a particular innovation "first" and helped push it towards the mainstream.  So, it's like a Jackie Robinson award, or maybe Bruce Sutter.

Bruce

Bartle didn't help push it towards mainstream. The people who worked on The Realm and Ultima Online did. No matter how you slice it, MUDs were never and never will be mainstream. Joe 6 Pack doesn't like reading when he's playing a game. But he does like his axe of +6 nooblerness in Ultima.

There's no possible excuse anyone can give for Bartle getting this award. Also, I'm getting sick of people pointing to Terra Nova. Most of the people there don't even make games anymore, they just sit around and circlejerk about them. That's problematic to me despite the fact I enjoy much of what goes on there. We don't live in the Holy Roman Empire. Scholars need to be doing and not just saying and that's why everyone was blown away by Wright's Spore. The man delivers instead of sitting back and tossing shit against the wall and not hanging around to see if it sticks.

I can only say this, of course, because I am not a game developer. If I were, I'd be guilty of the same sins.

And that changes what I said how?

We're talking about the guy who can put everything from Donkey Kong to Metroid Prime on his resume. You don't think he did anything first or pushed anything towards the mainstream?

I can think of literally 100 people that deserve the award before Bartle. Bartle isn't doing anything for anyone, and in the history of video games is largely irrelevant. He's a minor player in a minor genre - yay.

Seriously, why would bloodlines get an award that....

1) Is an industry marketing excercise in a market that considers teenagers who can't legally buy bloodlines its target market.

2) Is about excellence in game development, wheras Bloodlines was well designed and written, but programmed by monkeys on acid.

Beyond that, this is all an excuse for a big dinner and a jolly to wherever the GDC is held. I'm unsure why we should care what the results are.

My guess is it is not an award for Shiny. It is an award for good looking graphics. Alot of people find WoW's graphics very artistic and pleasant to look at. That is what was awarded. EQ2 may have more shiney but I saw little to no art in it in my time in that game.

Except that Bloodlines didn't get the award specifically about writing, which had nothing to do with game development. 

And I would give WoW an award for graphical artistic achievement any day.  Really excellently done in my opinion.  Its probably my favorite thing about the damn game, and I usually could care less about graphics.  The amount of attention that was paid to really creating a specific style for every zone is just imprssive.  Since its not trying to be realistic, they can do quite a bit stylistically and I feel it definitely paid off.

If they gave it an award for best game starting with "W" and ending with "orld of Warcraft" you'd still find a way to bitch, so your opinion is suspect.   :-D


I'm just annoyed that, even if this were the first, they would consider it "innovative" and not "another dumbass Japanese invention, like panty vending machines."

A smiley face doesn't keep you from looking like an asshole. Half Life 2 was the best looking game last year. There's no comparison. Maybe Doom 3 but ah, no.

Half life 2 was the Shiniest looking game last year. There is a difference.

No, Doom 3 was the shiniest. It was an engine demo. Their character & landscape design wasn't near as interesting as Valves in HL2.

I don't agree with WUA on much, but you should start learning what a discussion consist of.
Assertions like "Half Life 2 was the best looking game last year. There's no comparison." makes you look like an asshole. While the addition of 'I think' or 'imo' to every sentence isn't necessary you have a really fucking annoying habit of stating every one of your halfassed (and even the few wellargued) opinions like they're absolute facts. Of course there's comparison.

WoW has brilliant visual art. While I was more stunned by Half Life 2s beautiful graphics and great looking dystopia, I can see why they picked WoW.
There's so much more art than in HL2. They've gone for individual style over eye candy. Things look good and works effectively on low spec machines. And the most important part is, that the style is truly distinguished and apart from all the standard Tolkienesque fatasy art seen in games like that (and WoW is a game like that). It's art not just filler. Like it or not - WoW has it's own style of high fantasy coupled with humour.

They'd already done the style in WC3. It wasn't anything new or completely different. It just had the ability to zoom all the way down into 1st person mode. IMO the textures in WoW bit my ass. WoW does have it's own high fantasy humorous style, again, the exact same one they used in Warcraft 3 YEARS ago. And it's why I'll never consider WoW for any sort of graphical excellence award.

HL2 deserved game of the year, hands down. That's all I'm going to say.

So you don't think WoW deserves an award for art because its style had already been established?  What in the fuck style does HL2 have?  Its just realism.  Established previously in the real world.

Who gives a shit if the style had already been established?  That doesn't change the fact that the art is varied and creative, always striving for a particular effect like artists usually do.  There's more than one area which when I first entered was such a huge graphical shift that it literally made my jaw drop.  No game that I have played has ever used color as effectively as WoW.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/screenshot.aspx?ImageIndex=77&Set=0
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/screenshot.aspx?ImageIndex=63&Set=0
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/screenshot.aspx?ImageIndex=41&Set=0
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/screenshot.aspx?ImageIndex=95&Set=0
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/screenshot.aspx?ImageIndex=109&Set=0

My city is crawling with these:

http://www.hl2.fn.pl/fotonews/9/half-life-2-200405081121328.jpg
http://gamerskey.net/ScreenShots/PC/Half%20life%202/HL2-Great-Strides_Q02.jpg


So, maybe you're right. It was just going for realistic.

In other news, all the best-known artists of the Renaissance were untalented hacks.

There should be a "Most Fun Game of the Year:" Award.

Since all this shit is subjective anyways.

For the slow:  I never made any statements about the merits of realism, rather simply pointing out that working in an established style isn't necessarily a negative thing.

And you can draw aliens in a realistic style.

(I do admit that the HL2 aliens probably still do have a bit more going for them).

Regardless, the game is for the most part very well done realism.  Which I would give an award for if WoW hadn't came out in the same year.

And I'd give WoW the award if WCIII hadn't come out YEARS ago.

As if using caps will make your previously-defeated argument make any more sense?

The only way what you are saying could make sense is if WoW used the exact same art assests as WC3, which is not the case.

Bullshit. Where was I defeated? It's not about assets, it's about style. That's what everyone argues on WoW. The style. The efficient use of polygons and colors is easy to applaud. But it doesn't make for the best graphical achievement of the year. It used the same style as Warcraft III. I never said it used the same assets. If you want to try and tell me that this:

http://www.iniziopartita.net/public/file/3029/WCIII_06.jpg

..doesn't use the same style as WoW, then you're completely deluding yourself. The incredible textures and design of HL2 is why I'm willing to chuck the award at them. Comparably, WoW's textures don't even remotely compare. And all the biggest things in HL2 (striders, beasts, buildings, etc) are far more magnificent than WoW's (Onyxia? Feh. Ogrimmar? Maybe, but doesn't compare to the center of City 17).

To distill that: In a vacuum the art of WoW doesn't compare to the art of HL2. If you want to see for yourself, go get the two art books that are available at your local EB.

In no area of HL2 was I like "this sucks". There were multiple zones in WoW I felt were bland and competely boring. What did WoW achieve, again?

I hate most of the Horde continent, I dunno why, I just hate how almost all the areas look. My favorite area by far is Darkshire. I was bummed out when I ran out of quests to do there.

I played a Troll in WoW, I didn't see anything special artwise at all.

Starting area - sucked.
Islands and troll village to south - nothing special.
Rest of starting continent - boring.
Barrens - boring.

I'm sersiously missing something. Maybe certain areas of the game are just a lot better, cause what I saw was just bland, low poly crap without any of the vaunted style people are talking about. I mean, the entire starting continent and the barrens is basically mono-colored flat wasteland.

The award is not for visual graphics but for visual arts.

It's easy to come up with something that goes for the realistic look. WoW has a proper visual identity. You instantly recognize the game has being WoW when you look at a screenshot. Not only have they achieve to render a complete MMORPG world with their own visual style but they did so with amazing details everywhere you care to go. Even the starting areas for trolls have some 'magic' in them, the Echoes Islands coming to my mind. The attention to detail everywhere you go in WoW is just mind-boggling. Every other visual ARTISTs (not the programmers) are just in awe at the work and thoughts that represents.

d

You seem to be missing the point. They're saying that HL2 does as well. Just because it's realistic looking doesn't invalidate it from having a visual style.

When talking about "games as art", I'd have to say yeah, WoW has some of the most gorgeous landscapes I've seen in games.  I have two problems with that though.
1) I can't afford $2,000 for a PC to run it up to spec.
2) I don't buy games in order to create wallpaper.

Horde starting area is pretty spartan, especially the Troll/Orc part.  There's a reason I skip through the barrens just about as fast as I humanly can and spend time in other areas. The Oasis's are pretty well done though and I like the little touches like the certain stalking cats hiding in the tall grasses.   The Sludge Fen area is an interesting insertion into the zone, so is the Ratchet/pirate coast area.

 I'll point out some of the visual highlights below.

Early on for atmosphere you have Tristfall Glades/Silverpine Forrest for the Undead.  The atmosphere the art creates is pretty creepy and fun.
Mulgore the Tauren area is really wonderfully done.  Great native american vibe.  Too bad cows are too big for PVP (easy targetting, no thanks).
Ashenvale. Too elven, but cool nonetheless.
Stonetalon Mountains.  Variety of environments in that zone including a very cool waterfall area with a Venture company logging installation.
Wailing Caverns.  Pretty good for most people's first serious instance.
Desolace, while being a shit zone, has a lot of personality.

I could go on.  There's a lot of zones with a lot of personality.  Some themes are repeated.  There are multiple swamp zones, multiple forrest zones, multiple evil creepy undead forrest zones but each has it's own spin on the theme.  Western Plaguelands i s a very grand and varied version of Tristfall Glades that you start off in as the undead.  The instances for the most part are pretty damn unique.  It's hard not to be impressed with the effort that went into places like Uldaman, Scholomance, Stratholme and Blackrock depths.

Do I have any gripes?  Sure, the armor graphics for the most part suck.  The textures on some are downright aweful.  Of course, I have my graphics options turned way down for raiding.  PvE raiding doesn't get that bad, but large scale pvp you're going to have issues even with your graphics on bottom of the barrel.

I'm not blown away by WoW's graphics, but they're easily the best and most effective I've seen in any MMORPG to date.  Perhaps also the best of any RPG I've played of late.  I'm continually pleased and sometimes taken by surprise by the details and care that they've put into the visual aspect of the game.  Best of the year for me? Yep. 

Tho it's hard to tell sometimes, the poly counts don't seem that far off...  Especially on larger models.  It'd be hard to believe the difference is very large.  (Well, except night-elf ears.  Stupid floppy things...)

Alkiera

I find it hard to believe that some of the art assets from WC3 were not reused for WoW, at the very least the original hi-res models for some of the characters or monsters or even some of the buildings.