Gong Show: Audience Vote Open For GDC & IGF Awards
When it comes to award ceremonies, there aren't many to take seriously. But with all its internal and external fighting, perhaps those at the annual Game Developers Conference tend to hold the most weight. We're talking relatively, here. Both the Game Developers Choice Awards, and the Independent Games Festival Awards are given away on the Wednesday evening of the week, this year falling on the 27th March. Both ceremonies now have an Audience Award, and you can begin orchestrating elaborate ways to fix those votes now.
It also means it's time to play: How Many Games In The IGF Audience Award Can't Actually Be Played By The Audience?!
This is the first year the rather silly GDC Awards will have an audience vote, letting you - the dirty public - pick a game from the overall list of finalists, and have it win some plastic. You can do that here. There's a big long list to choose from, and they are (draws breath):
Spec Ops: The Line, Assassin's Creed III, Far Cry 3, ZombiU, Call Of Duty: Black Ops II, Journey, The Walking Dead, FTL, Kid Icarus: Uprising, PlanetSide 2, Gravity Rush, Hero Academy, Trials: Evolution, Sound Shapes, Fez, Mark Of The Ninja, Dust, The Unfinished Swan, Borderlands 2, Th Room, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Virtue's Last Reward, Mass Effect 3, Dishonored, and Halo 4.
Come on, let's all vote for Fez - that would be hilarious.
The more familiar IGF Audience Award has a far more esoteric bunch to pick from, although as is more frequently the case, the same names appearing in both lists. (Although not Fez, for the first time in 25 years.) You can cast a vote here. And the choices are...
140, 7 Grand Steps, Bad Hotel, Bientot l'Ete, Cart Life, dys4ia, FTL, Gone Home, Guacamelee!, Hotline Miami, Incredipede, Intrusion 2, Kentucky Route Zero, LiquidSketch, Little Inferno, Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, MirrorMoon, Perspective, PixelJunk 4am, Samurai Gunn, Spaceteam, StarForce, Starseed Pilgrim, Super Hexagon, Super Space _____, Thirty Flights Of Loving, VESPER 5, and Year Walk.
And how many of these aren't available to the audience casting these votes? Well, there's Drinkbox's Guacamelee, Asteroid Base's Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, Simogo's Year Walk, Beau Blyth's Samurai Gunn, Jeppe Carlsen's 140, The Fullbright Company's Gone Home, and Mousechief Co's 7 Grand Steps. Seven of them. A quarter of the games in the vote. So why not pick one of those games you haven't and can't play? Good times.
You've got until the 1st March to figure out how to get your improbable choice to the top spot.