IGF Multiplayer Mod of the Year news - Eternal Silence mod for Half-Life 2

I have just received this rather tasty email from the folks at the IGF.

'The organizers of the 2007 Independent Games Festival have announced the four
winners of individual categories in the IGF Modding Competition, each of whom
will now compete at GDC 2007 for the overall IGF Best Mod award.

Best Singleplayer FPS Mod has been awarded to Cut Corner Company Productions'
Weekday Warrior mod for Half-Life 2 (Gamasutra interview). The student
collective at the Guildhall at SMU produced a total conversion mod made in the
vein of the old-school adventure games, set inside a modern corporate office
environment, which includes physics-based mini-games such as office golf, darts,
and trashcan basketball.

Best RPG Mod has been awarded to Ossian Studios' Darkness Over Daggerford mod
for Neverwinter Nights. Set in the Forgotten Realms, and produced by former
BioWare producer Alan Miranda, Darkness over Daggerford gives players a
25-30-hour RPG with a strong Baldur's Gate feel, including a new world map and
extensive involvement from some of the top NWN game modders.

Best Multiplayer FPS Mod has been awarded to ES Team's Eternal Silence mod for
Half-Life 2 (Gamasutra interview), which is an impressive sci-fi space
combat/FPS hybrid that "pits two capital ships against each other in a seamless
blend" of the two modes, and includes a battlefield as large as 32768 cubic
kilometres.

Best Other Mod has been awarded to Ludocraft's Spawn Of Deflebub, a mod for
Unreal Tournament 2004 that mixes elements from dodgeball, pinball, billiards
and Break-Out in a lunatic H.P. Lovecraft-inspired futuristic story setting,
with impressive retro-psychedelic graphics. This esoteric mod has been
constructed by the creators of last year's IGF Modding finalist Dragonfly
Variations.

The four winners of the IGF Modding categories each get a $500 travel stipend to
help them travel to Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this March,
where they will show their mod as part of the IGF Pavilion. In addition, one of
the four mods will be crowned as overall Best Mod at the Independent Games
Festival Awards during GDC, receiving a cash prize of $5,000.'

Independent Games Festival Website
Gamasutra Story

Needless to say, we are all bubbling over with excitement over this, so I'll keep this short. We'll be working double-time over the next couple of months and heading down to San Francisco to show the world what ES is really made of!

Beta 2 is coming along, and I can guarantee this news will keep morale up!

Dan