As a reader of science fiction, I've always had a great respect for the awards that they give out, particularly the Hugo Awards, because the voters of the Hugo Awards are the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention, in other words, they are fans. This year, the special category for L.A.Con IV is "Best Interactive Video Game".
Greg Costikyan parses out exactly what that means, with a plea that to WSFC that they never do this again.
It's probably been a category long missing from the Hugos.
Awards are essentially meaningless. Funny thing for me to say, considering how full the trophy case was at Blizzard, but it's true. It's nice to receive an award and have that moment of recognition, but if the game is good enough and fun enough, it gains recognition and reputation on its own. It was always much nicer to hear a fan express praise for the game than receiving another award.
Video Games have been in the mainstream consciouness since the early 80s, but has never quite attained the prestige level of the other forms of entertainment. Now we've reached the point where gaming is recognized by other industries, but at the same time, the way they've gone about it shows a clear lack of understanding for games and the industry.
Games are not a solitary project -- there's always dozens of people involved, and it becomes hard to split who should receive the credit for the game, so rather than a producer, director or programmer or artist stepping up to accept the award for the game, it's either an executive or a public relations person, people who usually have little to do with the actual production and design of the game. There's a picture on the showing me and the rest of the Diablo II team, over 40 people, and that didn't include the Blizzard executives or the marketing and public relations people -- that was just people who had their hands in the project. Every award we had ever received was accepted by these people, and then put inside the display case in the main lobby.
Here are a couple of problems I see in the game selection and review process, and this is true for all awards, not just for Hugos:
- Getting the material out to review. While books and movies are relatively cheap to view, videogames are much more expensive -- they require a console as well as a game.
- Reviewing the game -- how does one evaluate a game in time for judging -- games usually take a while to finish -- it's not like a novel that one can finish in a night.
- Popularity and voting numbers isn't a good indicator of quality. It's more a measure of what's on people's minds.
Even so, while I'm happy that folks are recognizing games as worthy of receiving a Hugo, they may want to qualify what part of the game is the qualifier -- is it the story or the art or the design or something else entirely?
Since qualifying titles must be published in 2005, World of Warcraft (the obvious choice) is out - it was published in 2004, leaving 2005 full of dark horse candidates. Some notable games that I'd put on the list deserving of a Hugo:
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