{"id":394,"date":"2015-02-25T18:53:54","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T02:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=394"},"modified":"2015-02-25T18:53:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T02:53:54","slug":"best-supplemental-materials-is-now-best-use-of-multimedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=394","title":{"rendered":"Best Supplemental Materials is now Best Use of Multimedia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2010, the XYZZYs changed up\u00a0the awards roster, creating (among other things)\u00a0the new category Best Supplemental Materials.\u00a0Based on community feedback, the award was specifically crafted to focus on material\u00a0outside<\/em>\u00a0the work proper – predominantly feelies<\/a> and books.<\/p>\n

There are some historical reasons for that focus, but these don’t seem\u00a0as relevant to games being made now.\u00a0In an age where IF is overwhelmingly distributed by download – which has been the case for over two decades – feelies are inevitably a little anachronistic. A\u00a0really cool<\/em> anachronism, to be sure – but it’s tough to justify as the centre of a category, or to expect that they’ll appear in a wealth of games each year.<\/p>\n

As such, the award has always been\u00a0a little bit uncomfortably apples-and-oranges. Nobody would really deny that Aaron Reed’s\u00a0Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 <\/em>was deserving of the inaugral 2010 award – but at the same time, its competitors included a teaser image for the as-yet-unreleased\u00a0Counterfeit Monkey<\/i> – nice\u00a0work, to be sure, but odd to weigh on the same scales. Supplemental Materials\u00a0has had the lowest first-round voting of any category; I think\u00a0this indicates that it’s confusing and doesn’t quite fit with what’s needed.\u00a0Some<\/em>\u00a0voters have used it to vote for in-game art, which – as was the case with Best Use of Medium before it was split in two – suggests a need that wasn’t being clearly addressed. And text-entry always presents a problem about how specific or general a nomination should be.<\/p>\n

So this year, we’re renaming the award\u00a0Best Use of Multimedia<\/em> and making it a drop-down choice rather than a text-entry one. (We’re conscious of the irony that this bold, forward-thinking word choice puts us into the bright new era of 1997<\/a>.) The award covers\u00a0all<\/em> aspects of media used by a game, beyond straight text within the game itself: sound and graphics, presentation and fancy text effects, feelies, tie-in novels, whatever. This\u00a0does<\/em> exclude work in the IF sphere that wasn’t tied to a specific game – though if\u00a0Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7\u00a0<\/em>was released today, you could still justify it under Sand-dancer.<\/i><\/p>\n

Stay tuned for the first round. (We are running behind a little this year, for which I apologise.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2010, the XYZZYs changed up\u00a0the awards roster, creating (among other things)\u00a0the new category Best Supplemental Materials.\u00a0Based on community feedback, the award was specifically crafted to focus on material\u00a0outside\u00a0the work proper – predominantly feelies and books. There are some historical reasons for that focus, but these don’t seem\u00a0as relevant to games being made now.\u00a0In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}