The XYZZY Awards are an annual award, given for the best works of interactive fiction released the previous year in a variety of categories (Best Writing, Best Puzzles, and so on).
The XYZZY Awards were established by Eileen Mullin of XYZZYnews (hence the name of the award) in 1996, and have been given every year since then. For more information, check out the article on IFWiki.
To see who's won in previous years, see the historical results page.
Some new cool stuff! The awards have been pretty static for a while, and we wanted to change it up a little this year. We did some surveys, and as a result, we've decided to make three changes.
The first new award is for Best Technological Development. There are a lot of accomplishments in the IF community that aren't games -- interpreters, authoring systems, libraries, utilities, and so on, and we wanted to give people a change to recognize those accomplishments.
The next new award is for Best Supplemental Materials. In recent years we've seen a trend towards more and better feelies for games, whether it's cover art, websites, or included manuals or supplements. And even more would be even better. This award is intended to encourage those kinds of supplemental artistic materials. Note that all supplemental materials released in the year of the award are eligible, regardless of whether the game they are a supplement for was released in the same year, a different year, or hasn't been released at all. It does not, however, cover items not associated with a specific game, like (most) PAX panels or "how to play IF" instructions.
Finally, over the years the Best Use of Medium has been kind of a problem child for the awards -- nobody's been exactly sure what it means. While this sort of ambiguity can be interested, this year we are splitting it into two separate awards for the two interpretations of the award: Best Implementation for completeness of implementation, excellence in parser messages, etc; and Best Use of Innovation for most innovative game.
These awards are a little experimental at this point; whether they continue in the years to come will be determined in part by the voting this year, and whether they seem like a good supplement to the awards long-term.
Just click here!
All games released in the previous year are eligible; if you find a game isn't listed on the voting form, just mail the competition organizers and we'll get it added.
The XYZZY Awards don't currently have official play pages for the games, but you can often find pages for the games on the IFWiki, and, once the finalists come out, even a page for these very awards. Alternately, you can look up the games in the Interactive Fiction Database.
There are two rounds of voting in the XYZZY Awards. In the nomination round, all games released in the previous year can be voted on. Then, the top four finishers in each category are taken to the finalist round, where you can vote a second time, choosing between the finalists. Each voting period is roughly two to three weeks long, though the exact dates vary year to year. Finally, the winners are announced in a special live ceremony on ifMUD.
Anyone can vote in the XYZZY Awards. This includes authors, though authors cannot vote for their own games. Beta-testers and reviewers and so on may vote for whichever games they wish. You do not have to vote in every category, nor do you have to have played every eligible game to vote, though you are encouraged to play as many as you can. Because games are fun!
There are three deadlines of interest in the XYZZY Awards. The first round of voting runs (this year) until Feb 10 0:00:00 PST. The finalist voting runs (this year) until Mar 2 0:00:00 PST. The winners will be announced in a ceremony on ifMUD that takes place Mar 4 13:00:00 PST. So go vote!
The XYZZY Awards were started by Eileen Mullin and Neil deMause. Currently, David Welbourn tirelessly catalogues games of the previous year, Lucian Smith is master of ceremonies at the awards presentation, and Dan Shiovitz does the site maintenance and admin work.
If you have questions or comments about this site or the awards in general, mail the competition organizers.