MOTY 2005 Award Discussion Thread

What awards did you like? What didn't you like? Comments on the show? This is the place.

I personally agree with most of the chosen mods, the Tetris award is brilliant

Moddb.com

aw beat me to it by 45 secounds
dam it

no stand alone games
dissapointing

only 15 upcomming mods aswell

well im impressed it was well done
thanks cheese for telling me the show was on
lucky i was still awake a 3 am mapping

hope to see more upcomming mods in the next one and ones not so bf2 hyped of hl2 hyped
also a horror genre and cors stand alone games

congrats garry as i said on msn 2000 votes congratultions well desurved

well done to all those who won and all those in upcomming keep up the good work

intense you sound like a true aussie mate keep up the fantastic work ill be listenign in to the next one:thumbup:

Edited by: TKAzA

it's the 2004 moty again

same old mods always winning because of their supporting fanbase brainwashed into voting for them

hopefully we won't see that again. it'd be like star wars winning the oscars every year.

ESF winning #2 is stupid....did the mod even have an update in 2005?

Well I just want to say thanks to everyone who voted and supported our mod Last Man Standing Coop for Doom 3. I'm really surprised to see it up there with hl/hl2 mods since the doom 3 community is so much smaller. Thanks guys, I'm really glad so many of you are enjoying it. Take care.
-calimer

I was a little disappointed to see real greats like Infinity and Return to Mana not even being in there, whilst some tripe managed to find it's way in, but ah well.

hey wouldn't Golden Eye be considered released. I'm quite suprised BM: S didn't make it to overall top 15.

Edited by (in order): ::idiot::, ::idiot::

They can aways go back to the way I did mods of 200?

best new comer
best mp
best single player

have 2 mods from each respective pc game reperesent and only allow mod and gaming sites vote and moddb staff. no outside mod fan base is part of the voting. When I wrote the first mods of 2002 I asked so many people for input and I decided who won and who didnt. We had complaints so Intense came up with the voting idea. We could just have cheapalert or ambershee pick the mods of 2006 but people will still be unhappy cause this mod or that mod wasnt listed!

I wish The Hunted won best singleplayer mod of 2005!

[/self pimp]

and it should of won or put it up to the other top sp mods and let the votes commence...

reporters vote in hall of famers so carni is a reporter let him vote!

Scott is saying its going to change for next years awards so we will just have to wait and see

atleast Trench Warfare got something.

I was hoping Nosferatu was going to get something, at least 'Are you Afraid of Monsters' got something, that mod is pretty decent.

BlueWolf72 wrote: Scott is saying its going to change for next years awards so we will just have to wait and see

Well, to be fair, the voting system is the best way to represent to opinion of the community at large, although hype and fanbases tend to overshadow other great bits and pieces out there. Why not implement a system of admin nomination and voting based on that. That way, other mods can chip in and 'apply to be nominated' and then allowed or disallowed to compete as necessary. Mods that have won awards in previous years, or perhaps not made any advance this year, should also be disallowed to compete, or be set at a disadvantage?

amb: I see your logic but for example PCGamer just awarded GMOD with mod of the year 2005 and they didnt have votes they just probably had a staff meeting and said who do you think mod of the year should go to and they or a few said garrys mod and poof it was written. I dont think there is a good way to do this then just let people vote or allow the moddb staff to pick and either way no one is happy cause they didnt win. My mod only got 72 votes and you need 100. I wanted to win to!

I really agree. I think there should be more diversity in the awards next time around. My only suggestions would be:

Top 15 Mods [Released Only, as this year]
Top 5 Upcoming [Unreleased Only, as this year]
Top Mods by Genre [Released only. You can only tell if a mod truely wins the genre by playing it. No Unreleased modifications should be awarded here]
o Action
o Adventure
o Driving
o Puzzle
o Role-Playing
o Simulation
o Sports
o Strategy
o Horror << Should be included as a standard selection for new mods as well. A lot of mods today focus on this and this should be acknowledged.
Editor's Choice Quite simply, there is a lot of potential in these awards. If they are really gone over and the Editor's really put the time into choosing these mods, one can seriously deem these the greatest awards of the entire event. The Editors need to completely ignore everyone when they sit down and decide these. They need to sit down, the MOdDB Staff, and just start looking through mods and start looking at screens, playing them even, to find the greatest mods out there. To make them a joke would be downgrading the mods out there. The Editors Choice should have main awards garenteed to be on there, such as:
Editor's Choice Best Mod
Editor's Choice Best Upcoming
Editor's Choice Best Single-Player Mod
Editor's Choice Best MultiPlayer Mod
Best Audio [Released & Unreleased, most mods today have audio samples on their website]
Best Graphics [Released & Unreleased, media shots are also avaliable on internet websites]
Visual Delight [Released & Unreleased]

And I agree with the previous statement of the individual community leaders electing a mod to represent them. For Half-Life 2 it would be hlfallout.net, halflife2.net, planethalflife, and other such websites. For Doom it would be planetdoom, doom3online, et cetera. These would be awards for the top games of the year or of the time. Right now, the top games would be Quake 4, Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, et cetera. Maybe even sit down with id, Valve, and other main-stream developers and get their opinions on the best mods presently out there for their released games.

The possibilities are endless and you really need to work hard to make this work. But trust me when I say this, if you put in the hard work: the moddb awards could be the be-end of end-all of mods everywhere.

BlueWolf72 wrote: amb: I see your logic but for example PCGamer just awarded GMOD with mod of the year 2005 and they didnt have votes they just probably had a staff meeting and said who do you think mod of the year should go to and they or a few said garrys mod and poof it was written. I dont think there is a good way to do this then just let people vote or allow the moddb staff to pick and either way no one is happy cause they didnt win. My mod only got 72 votes and you need 100. I wanted to win to!

Well, that's the point of the nomination system - that way the staff can nominate projects worthy of being voted for, and mod staff can also apply to be nominated,therefore eligeable to be voted for, but only if they also fall within certain guidelines and are of sufficient quality. It keeps standards where they should be, and still allows the community at large to do the voting.

I have a streamripped version of the Award Show with all breaks/music removed. The mp3 is 96k quality, 105mb and 1:55 long. PM/email me and it can be made available for public download on moddb.

I believe you can upload it to ModDB .

Yeah I slept in and missed the show, would def. like to hear it.

There should be no problem uploading it to ModDB

Copy+pasted from other comments sections fo the site

As far as the show's concerned, I'd prefer to see those presenting and being interviewed on the show to collectively have played mods across a range of engines. I don't play mods on all engines, but there are definitely ModDB members who do play mods for WarCraft 3, Diablo, Morrowind, and so on. For each award there should be someone who has knowledge of what sort of accomplishment the mod has made, whether it's someone who mods for the same engine and can appreciate the technical achievement or someone who's most probably played the game. There was not really anything insightful from the interviewees until the very end of the show when some actual opinion was shared.

For the awards I'd like to see some of what past years have given (best visuals, audio, etc.) and more probing 'Editor's Choice' awards. I can fully accept that half of the awards will be a popularity contest (and there's nothing wrong with communities getting behind their mods to give something back to the teams that brought them enjoyable gaming), but I'd also hope the other half would have some critical opinion and really pick out the truly ground-breaking mods (and those to come). As the Games Industry is set to overtake the Film Industry I think that we should be looking at awards like the Oscars (or preferably a less-politically charged process) that span the areas of production that go into the ever-more-professional development of the modification. It's sad to say that categories like Coding, Audio and originality didn't figure in the awards (and that " Story" wasn't taken seriously) while the award for 'Most Hyped' effectively rewarded the best PR/avertising campaign!!! Maybe in the future we could have a set of award categories in the Golden Spanner forum for fans to nominate their mods.

The competition as a whole is a great item that should have the dual objective of rewarding hard work and introducing gamers to new mods so they can "Play Something Different". I think these awards gave a rather weak account of the second of these two key ideas.

I would have preferred more discussion on some of the lesser-known mods that were chosen. It's one thing to simply say that a mod won, but there will be lots of people asking themselves what genre it is and whether they'd like the gameplay. I don't think the awards really went into enough depth (or even gave a decent overview) of the winners. Granted, you can always check the mod profile to find out more, but we want to know what the 'experts' think, not what the developers and fanbois claim their mod has. I also preferred it in previous years when there were runners up for certain categories, as there's more likelihood of you finding mods that you haven't heard of to try out.

It's sad that when modding in general has the capability to produce such a myriad of inventive ideas and sound gameplay concepts that those developers that run with their ideas didn't really get a look-in.

---

I'd suggest that next year a thread is made for each award and fans can nominate their mod in that thread with a few supporting arguments. The threadstarter would be kept up to date with an alphabetically ordered list of the nominated mods to avoid repetition and keep the thread clean (and behind the scenes the ModDB staff would keep a list of the nominations that get through the selection process). During the months leading up to the close of the public voting process certain members of ModDB staff would check the mod profiles and sites to come up with a shortlist that they could play through, leading up to an in-depth discussion. Between them, the judges should be able to cover the engines of the mods selected for the shortlist. In order to achieve this throughout this year (starting now) the ModDB staff should be on the lookout for experienced members of the community to call on (perhaps even to join the judges panel) in the event of an engine deserving coverage that the MOdDB staff can't provide (they're only human). Hell, I'd help out. However, the final decisions would be made by the ModDB staff based on the informed opinon shared in the shortlist discussion. A few days before the event, the shortlist could be made public, to generate a bit of discussion and ensure that even if they didn't win, other deserving mods wouldn't miss out on a bit of extra publicity.

On the other side of things I agree that there should still be a separate public vote. I also think that if you publicised the shortlist then the judges wouldn't have to make compromises like this year's "Most Hyped" award, which was only given to CnC Reborn because Dystopia had already won an award. I think, in general, the awards were good. It was nice to see Black Mesa, Eclipse, Hidden Source, Battlegrounds 2, Sourceforts, Dystopia, Fortress Forever, Insurgency Goldeneye Source and Afraid of Monsters and Garry's Mod get rewarded for the progress they've all made this year. What's more I'm now interested in finding out more about Forgotten Hope and Mistake of Pythagoras. I saw the Hall of Mirrors video and was just blown away, I started and completed Afraid of Monsters yesterday (admittedly, before they'd won their award) and have also been tipped off about Sapphire Scar which just recently won the amended Best Story category. Oh, not to mention Trench Warfare.

So, all in all, a few changes to be made but a good experience nonetheless.

I would also support a 'about thed mod' kind of deal. The people running this should have the awards FINALIZED at least a week prior to the show and then get in touch and ask to get a short paragraph about the mod from the developers themselves. Some things that make it stand out, what kind of themes there are and such. If this kind of work was put in, this would be awesome.

I think that -unless the mod is unreleased- simply playing the mod should be number one on the list of priorities. Failing that, some reliable info from other gamers who have played it (note: 'other gamers' not people who've barely played any games before).

most of all dont auth the article while the show is airing.

Why is there no best standalone game catagory? Standalone games can still be mods and are accepted by moddb, so why no recognition?

most of all dont auth the article while the show is airing

Yeah that killed the suspense and a lot of the excitement. I still stuck around to listen to the show, but it's appeal suffered greatly, which wouldn't have been so bad if there was a proper discussion of each winner and why it deserved to win over the other closest competitors. As it stood, it was mostly a rundown of the top15 mods with a few umms and aahs thrown in. But with proper discussion and . There are people in all corners of the globe who miss the opportunity to tune in to the awards, this year it was people in Australia. The same goes for awards ceremonies like the Academy Awards, which some people tape the night before and watch it in its entirety the next day if it's on too late (all the while making sure not to have the surprise spoilt). The show needs to take this into account and provide something worth taping.

Listening back to the show, BW mostly did a good job but needs to respond every time someone answers his questions. This is for three reasons: (1) sometimes the responses aren't clear because of data loss, accents, or speakers mumbling or tripping over their words (which is understandable, since they're live to millions). One example of where this happened was when some guy was talking about the prizes and he was obviously distracted by his kid in the background, so he reeled of a long list of various things. Simply breaking these down into the key ideas would make the show clearer. (2) It can lead to further discussion and allow interviewees to further clarify their response, adding or expanding on it if they feel the need or think of something else to say. Furthermore, it can also help the speakers feel a little more at ease if they don't think they have to get their point across all in one go and on demand. Repeating, or just summing-up some of these comments will make the show a more coherent experience. It doesn't have to be all comments, but anything that seems a bit minimal or under-explained should be expanded on so that the presenters are really convincing people to "Play Something Different". I know I've used that quote before in my earlier post, but that's really the mantra to the ModDB and these awards should reflect that. When Joe was talking early on about what he thought deserves to win an award he was mentioning mods worth checking out for the HL engine that could probably do with publicity.

For instance, there were a lot of comments like "Yeah, I liked the game, it's a really fun experience." The presenter should make sure the listeners know why it's a good mod, which elements make it so fun, so he could ask "Why?" or "What is it about the game that you really find enjoyable?". I think Joe gets MVP for his explanations of games and answers to questions that sounded informed and really provided the key information that players would want to ask. And Alex at least managed to improvise well when a mod was announced that obviously nobody there had played: "Any mod where you get to shoot cows deserves an award!" Try to get more people like them on the show.