<!--quoteo(post=1590423:date=Dec 19 2006, 09:45 PM:name=emperor_awesome)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(emperor_awesome @ Dec 19 2006, 09:45 PM) [snapback]1590423[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> The difference is that DoD was still playable when it came out; you could appreciate the changes in the gameplay and it functioned as an enjoyable gaming experience, it just wasn't polished and bug-free. Eternal Silence, when it came out, was virtually unplayable and offered NO perspective on what it could be, sans-bugs and lag. Even having played it, the only idea I have of what it is supposed to offer comes from the 'features' page on the website.
Yes, as with linux, you need to 'release early and release often'. However, you don't need to release so early that people can't actually play the game in any reasonable capacity.
Edit: An open beta may have given you a lot of great gameplay feedback, but it effectively destroyed your hype. Similar to Plan of Attack - it may have been a solid game for source until counter-strike was ported over, but it released before it was ready and destroyed its credibility as a fun, playable mod. Remember daikatana? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To be completely honest, we had these same fears. In fact, when we were at Valve, we talked about this.
They said that no matter how well your game launch goes (###### or otherwise even though I think ours was pretty good) you can always win people back by still making a great game. Once the news gets out that there is new patches out for a mod, people will hear the news and start to wonder how the game is... If the game is better than before, then we've restored some faith in people and gotten some more fans. If it's still not to their liking, then they will once again ignore us until one day they will try it out again when more patches get released. It makes total sense and I had this happen so much.
It actually happened with NS to me. First of all, I never even heard of the game until roughly 1.04 was out... I then played up until around 2.x and then decided the game was horrible and stopped playing and deleted it. Once I heard about some more patches (3.x or so) I then decided it was time to try it again. Even though I still didn't like what the game has become, I gladly will still download their next major version or wait until I hear from people that the game is back to it's former glory. Note that I don't want anybody in here to say "omg 2.1 was teh best!!11" or anything. Stick to the point at hand.
In fact, it happens all the time where some games have no hype (or lose all of their hype) and then with great gameplay they can become hugely popular. A lot of student games (fl0w, Eclipse, Line Rider, etc) for example happen that way.
On another note, we had another play test today. It was really cool because we just added two more ships. A gunship and an infantry transport <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> They are all really fun to play with. Though the transport was sorta buggy, it was still awesome to start to get the multi-person ships in the game!
*Edit* BTW, here are two new dev screenshots from today's test.
<!--quoteo(post=1591440:date=Dec 22 2006, 09:00 PM:name=Revlic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Revlic @ Dec 22 2006, 09:00 PM) [snapback]1591440[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> ES Mod isn't even finished, there's like 1 map. There's a grand total of like 4 servers and with only 1 person in it.
Sure it has the potential of becomeing a awesome mod. But it isn't even DONE YET. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think thats my point. If you are going to receive an award with financial incentives involved, the product better be damn good.
<!--quoteo(post=1589663:date=Dec 17 2006, 06:47 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TychoCelchuuu @ Dec 17 2006, 06:47 PM) [snapback]1589663[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Hey, if they gave prizes for potential, plenty of people would be swimming in them. Potential doesn't matter one bit. You know what mod had spectacular potential? Natural Selection. The trick is, though, NS then <i>delivered</i> on that potential. It didn't just fizzle away like Nigh######ch or any of the other mods that had a bunch of potential and then either died or disappointed people by not living up to it. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How's that mod doing that you were working with that had all that potential ?
I still don't understand how they can take the money without even having 1 single player on a server. I mean I'm sure I could make a mod with 0 people playing it, can I cash in too?
<!--quoteo(post=1591458:date=Dec 23 2006, 01:48 PM:name=KungFuDiscoMonkey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(KungFuDiscoMonkey @ Dec 23 2006, 01:48 PM) [snapback]1591458[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> How's that mod doing that you were working with that had all that potential ? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who knows, but is he expecting to receive $5000 and awards for releasing it when it isn't even near to playable?
Most people agree your mod has potential and that you've put a lot of work into it. But stop being arseholes just because people have (rightly) observed that it hasn't done anything worth merit yet.
<!--quoteo(post=1591467:date=Dec 22 2006, 10:27 PM:name=emperor_awesome)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(emperor_awesome @ Dec 22 2006, 10:27 PM) [snapback]1591467[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Who knows, but is he expecting to receive $5000 and awards for releasing it when it isn't even near to playable?
Most people agree your mod has potential and that you've put a lot of work into it. But stop being arseholes just because people have (rightly) observed that it hasn't done anything worth merit yet. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My purpose in posting that is to point out some irony in this thread. ES has at least made a release which is more than most mods can say. I think some of you need to get off your high horses. Many of the posts seem to be coming across as people being jealous that their pet mod did not win. If you're going to be close minded enough that you won't try out a second release then that's your loss. Those of you harping on potential as long as you keep that up, I'm just going to be laughing because you're just making yourself look ridiculous.
Relatively, ESMod has achieved the most for mods released this year. Potential is irrelevant.
Right?
Because:
ESMod is pretty much the only mod released this year. (Except for Garry's Mod 10, which was released after the award was decided) We were actually saying that about ESMod.
If you want to get technical; yes, you did make the best mod released this year. You also made the only mod released this year. Although... what about empires? If that was released this year as well, I'm gonna have to vote 'rigged contest'. Because ESMod, for all your defences, is simply not playable. Great work, keep it up, but at the current stage, nobody's playing it because nobody can. You don't deserve an award for what you've outputted at the moment.
Why are you contesting that? Nobody's saying the mod is worthless or your work is useless.. we're just saying that it's not at the stage where it deserves award. Stop being petty and get back to work if you want to create a mod worthy of awards.
<!--quoteo(post=1591580:date=Dec 23 2006, 10:03 AM:name=KungFuDiscoMonkey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(KungFuDiscoMonkey @ Dec 23 2006, 10:03 AM) [snapback]1591580[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> My purpose in posting that is to point out some irony in this thread. ES has at least made a release which is more than most mods can say. I think some of you need to get off your high horses. Many of the posts seem to be coming across as people being jealous that their pet mod did not win. If you're going to be close minded enough that you won't try out a second release then that's your loss. Those of you harping on potential as long as you keep that up, I'm just going to be laughing because you're just making yourself look ridiculous. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well I'm certainly not jealous, simply because I do not play any 3rd party source mods. If you can honestly tell me that in a year from now, people will still be playing that mod, I may give it another shot. Otherwise, I just see it as another failed source mod, not worth mine, or anyone else's who values good gameplay's time.
If the developers had any class whatsoever, they would give back the money. No playable product was released, how can it be the best?
AbraWould you kindlyJoin Date: 2003-08-17Member: 19870Members
Give the money to the poor - give the money to the poor! comeooon, let's riot! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
please?
I think the mod can be good with time. The award is a joke though.
<!--quoteo(post=1591598:date=Dec 23 2006, 05:04 PM:name=Firewater)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Firewater @ Dec 23 2006, 05:04 PM) [snapback]1591598[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> If the developers had any class whatsoever, they would give back the money. No playable product was released, how can it be the best? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> But it was playable, so I fail to see your point. The reason I stopped playing, and I'd be willing to bet it's the same for others, is that there was only one map, so no variation grated on me. And about your comment of release early, release often, they're stuck moving code around last time I knew, so it's kinda hard to release often right now.
OK, I deleted a pointless argument in this thread (3 posts). Iced Eagle has been around this community a long time as a NS fan amongst other things, no need to personally attack him.
Personally, I give my congrats to the ES team and can't wait to see their future releases.
<!--quoteo(post=1591714:date=Dec 23 2006, 07:04 PM:name=Aldaris)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Aldaris @ Dec 23 2006, 07:04 PM) [snapback]1591714[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> But it was playable, so I fail to see your point. The reason I stopped playing, and I'd be willing to bet it's the same for others, is that there was only one map, so no variation grated on me. And about your comment of release early, release often, they're stuck moving code around last time I knew, so it's kinda hard to release often right now. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your failure maybe based on your perspective. How many ES servers are up? 0. Why? because nobody wants to waste their boxes resources on that particular game. Why is that? Because the server module had significant lag issues when a player would fly outside of space, and could crash the server.
That and the games became tedious, dogfighting was more or less a roleplaying mechanism because one could just simply boost into the other team's hangar, so people who did dogfighting were really just trying to reenact popular space battles, whilst contributing nothing to the game.
Would you give an award out to a multiplayer game that currently 0 people are playing? How can a mod that nobody plays be the mod of the year?
Simon Carless here - I'm the Independent Games Festival Chairman, and I happened to come across this conversation while wandering around the blogosphere. I was a bit disappointed, actually, that there was so much vitriol about this decision - and there's also some misinformation, I think, because people haven't looked into how the IGF Modding Competition works.
Firstly, you have to have had an update of your mod in the past 12 months, yes, but you also have to actually take the time to enter and make yourself eligible - we got these entrants this year:
There's some really good mods in there, and not just for Half-Life 2, either - but the choice is limited to these games that have entered. Other mod teams should (and are quite welcome to!) enter if they want to be considered.
Our judges then took a detailed look at all the mods and weighed up both innovation and execution when making their decision. I can't speak for them (because I didn't judge), but as I understand it, they saw Eternal Silence as being one of the most interesting mods of recent months because it really _does_ do some innovative things with the game.
Incidentally, I saw someone mention Dystopia - that won best Half-Life 2 mod last year, when we had a different award configuration:
Also, to make it clear, Eternal Silence has thus far won a $500 travel stipend to help them get to GDC in San Francisco, where they will demo the mod. They are in the running for Best Mod against 3 other finalists (Best Single-Player FPS, Best RPG, and Best 'Other' Mods), so we'll see what happens.
so basically what you are telling us is that ES was the greatest Mod out of all of those other creations.
Thats not saying much for the other contestants, as they were deemed inferior to a multiplayer mod that has no playerbase.
Obviously this conversation struck a nerve in the creators, but my question is why? This is an off-topic board for an old HL1 engine mod. Why would the chairman of some game festival website care what we think?
Unless of course there is some slight truth in what goes on in this conversation.
I am really interested in reading this blog you say, I didn't know someone cared enough to write some independent thoughts about the situation at hand.
This reflects pretty poorly upon the HL2 modding community. HL2 was touted as the moddable game that would spawn hundreds more magnificent mods, and we've only really gotten dystopia out of it so far.
Firewater, because NS has had one of the largest player-followings of a half-life mod behind CS and DoD, while being based on a completely different style of play from those 2, so people pay attention to the game, even if it hasn't been too loud lately.
But thanks for reminding me why I don't play NS anymore...damn community ruining a decent game.
Here's Dan's (head ES dev) public blog: <a href="http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/" target="_blank">http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/</a>
<!--quoteo(post=1592487:date=Dec 26 2006, 10:16 PM:name=Freddeh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Freddeh @ Dec 26 2006, 10:16 PM) [snapback]1592487[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Firewater, because NS has had one of the largest player-followings of a half-life mod behind CS and DoD, while being based on a completely different style of play from those 2, so people pay attention to the game, even if it hasn't been too loud lately.
But thanks for reminding me why I don't play NS anymore...damn community ruining a decent game.
Here's Dan's (head ES dev) public blog: <a href="http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/" target="_blank">http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/</a> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ummm, I don't understand your point, nor the comment referring to the community. The only useful information is the post to the blog.
In any case, are you 2 forum trolls or something? Took you like 5 mins apiece to respond <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
I dunno who said you thought you paid off the judges, but I know I never implied that, only suspected political overtones.
If ES won Mod of the Year, then its a sad state for the HL2 modding scene. If ES is truly the mod of the year, wouldn't there be servers up for it? Its like having a team that is of championship caliber with out a venue to play in. If the championship team was just that, a town or city would be more than happy to scoop them up.
Thats not the case with ESmod. There are 0 servers up, so anyone who wants to get involved with this mod must own a dedicated server to host on the internet, or play it on a LAN with friends.
I'm not saying ES is a bad mod, its just not worthy of mod of the year. Mod of the year should have mostly everybody WOWed, but thats not the case with this game. It has great potential, its just undeveloped.
You claim that the other mods that should have won, but were buggy and had netcode issues. I don't know, but I don't think they had bugs that would crash the server if someone went out of the map.
I respect the effort that you guys put into the mod, but that doesn't mean that you deserve any financial reward. That implies that you are in a unique position and that the other mods who competed for the the reward put less effort in than you did. I think thats a slap to the face of the other creators personally. If I were you guys, I would not accept the financial reward. If you don't accept it, you will impress a ton of players over the internet that think your award is bullish. It will tell them that the ESmod has class, and that they don't feel that their mod is ready for Mod of the Year. That impress a boat load of players that may not play your mod out of simple spite. But I don't expect that at all, take the money and continue to have 0 players play your game.
Also, why do you care that the people on the NS boards are bashing the award? Its in an off-topic forum, and its a fairly civil discussion. People are bashing the mod because you won an award for a game that nobody plays man. I'm sorry but I don't see how you can accept the award and the money with a clean conscience, and neither can A LOT of potential players.
Laugh all you want at the "naysayers" but I do not think your mod will have significant impact on the HL2 mod scene, and it will have player numbers of that of dystopia, empires, and iron grip. Of course, I am not a developer, so please take my comments with a grain of salt.
The game HAS WOW'ed many fellow modders in the community, due to the seamless transitioning between space and infantry combat, it is something that they spent a huge amount of time on, and are still working on getting the kinks knocked out.
Also, Dan mentioned that the mod WAS seamless and working in beta testing and finalizing before release, it is only after release that many of these bugs cropped up, as is with many other games that I have helped beta test and that have come out with public beta's, it's not like it an un-normal thing, expecting it to be perfect out of the box is a rather high and mighty look at what modding REALLY is, which is another point of Dan's blog.
In any case, that's all I really have to say to that, most of it is stuff that Dan would have to respond to for you to get an accurate picture.
<!--quoteo(post=1592499:date=Dec 27 2006, 03:18 PM:name=Freddeh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Freddeh @ Dec 27 2006, 03:18 PM) [snapback]1592499[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> The game HAS WOW'ed many fellow modders in the community <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's his point. It impresses the fellow modders, not the players. The game has 0 servers, 0 players, and 0 interest outside of a few technical points that ES mod has failed to deliver in an alluring package [i.e playable or desirable to players willing to overlook the bugs].
Really though, it's not ES Mod's fault that the HL2 modding community is at the level where they're getting awards for what they've put out. It's just disappointing on all levels -- a large number of people bought half-life 2 with the express expectation that it would be the modding king of the PC. That ESMod is getting this award, and people are defending it, reflects only the poor quality of HL2 modding.
At its core, mods and games are there to be played. It can be as technically impressive as you want, but if it doesn't possess the simple inherent factors that promote a desire to play it, it has failed as a medium of entertainment and enjoyment. I can't see any way that ESMod deserves a modding award outside of very specific technical attempts.
Comments
The difference is that DoD was still playable when it came out; you could appreciate the changes in the gameplay and it functioned as an enjoyable gaming experience, it just wasn't polished and bug-free. Eternal Silence, when it came out, was virtually unplayable and offered NO perspective on what it could be, sans-bugs and lag. Even having played it, the only idea I have of what it is supposed to offer comes from the 'features' page on the website.
Yes, as with linux, you need to 'release early and release often'. However, you don't need to release so early that people can't actually play the game in any reasonable capacity.
Edit: An open beta may have given you a lot of great gameplay feedback, but it effectively destroyed your hype. Similar to Plan of Attack - it may have been a solid game for source until counter-strike was ported over, but it released before it was ready and destroyed its credibility as a fun, playable mod. Remember daikatana?
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To be completely honest, we had these same fears. In fact, when we were at Valve, we talked about this.
They said that no matter how well your game launch goes (###### or otherwise even though I think ours was pretty good) you can always win people back by still making a great game. Once the news gets out that there is new patches out for a mod, people will hear the news and start to wonder how the game is... If the game is better than before, then we've restored some faith in people and gotten some more fans. If it's still not to their liking, then they will once again ignore us until one day they will try it out again when more patches get released. It makes total sense and I had this happen so much.
It actually happened with NS to me. First of all, I never even heard of the game until roughly 1.04 was out... I then played up until around 2.x and then decided the game was horrible and stopped playing and deleted it. Once I heard about some more patches (3.x or so) I then decided it was time to try it again. Even though I still didn't like what the game has become, I gladly will still download their next major version or wait until I hear from people that the game is back to it's former glory. Note that I don't want anybody in here to say "omg 2.1 was teh best!!11" or anything. Stick to the point at hand.
In fact, it happens all the time where some games have no hype (or lose all of their hype) and then with great gameplay they can become hugely popular. A lot of student games (fl0w, Eclipse, Line Rider, etc) for example happen that way.
On another note, we had another play test today. It was really cool because we just added two more ships. A gunship and an infantry transport <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> They are all really fun to play with. Though the transport was sorta buggy, it was still awesome to start to get the multi-person ships in the game!
*Edit* BTW, here are two new dev screenshots from today's test.
<img src="http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h110/Iced_Eagle/index2.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h110/Iced_Eagle/index.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Excuse the crappy JPEG compression.
There aren't any servers up to play your game, how can that be considered successful?
Can you with a clear conscience accept the $5k award money when you don't even really have a product to show?
Sure it has the potential of becomeing a awesome mod. But it isn't even DONE YET.
ES Mod isn't even finished, there's like 1 map. There's a grand total of like 4 servers and with only 1 person in it.
Sure it has the potential of becomeing a awesome mod. But it isn't even DONE YET.
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I think thats my point. If you are going to receive an award with financial incentives involved, the product better be damn good.
Hey, if they gave prizes for potential, plenty of people would be swimming in them. Potential doesn't matter one bit. You know what mod had spectacular potential? Natural Selection. The trick is, though, NS then <i>delivered</i> on that potential. It didn't just fizzle away like Nigh######ch or any of the other mods that had a bunch of potential and then either died or disappointed people by not living up to it.
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How's that mod doing that you were working with that had all that potential ?
How's that mod doing that you were working with that had all that potential ?
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Who knows, but is he expecting to receive $5000 and awards for releasing it when it isn't even near to playable?
Most people agree your mod has potential and that you've put a lot of work into it. But stop being arseholes just because people have (rightly) observed that it hasn't done anything worth merit yet.
The organization or whatever should have skipped the award this year, or perhaps given it to the hidden mod.
I sense some political undertones with in this deicison.
Who knows, but is he expecting to receive $5000 and awards for releasing it when it isn't even near to playable?
Most people agree your mod has potential and that you've put a lot of work into it. But stop being arseholes just because people have (rightly) observed that it hasn't done anything worth merit yet.
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My purpose in posting that is to point out some irony in this thread. ES has at least made a release which is more than most mods can say. I think some of you need to get off your high horses. Many of the posts seem to be coming across as people being jealous that their pet mod did not win. If you're going to be close minded enough that you won't try out a second release then that's your loss. Those of you harping on potential as long as you keep that up, I'm just going to be laughing because you're just making yourself look ridiculous.
Relatively, ESMod has achieved the most for mods released this year.
Potential is irrelevant.
Right?
Because:
ESMod is pretty much the only mod released this year. (Except for Garry's Mod 10, which was released after the award was decided)
We were actually saying that about ESMod.
If you want to get technical; yes, you did make the best mod released this year. You also made the only mod released this year. Although... what about empires? If that was released this year as well, I'm gonna have to vote 'rigged contest'. Because ESMod, for all your defences, is simply not playable. Great work, keep it up, but at the current stage, nobody's playing it because nobody can. You don't deserve an award for what you've outputted at the moment.
Why are you contesting that? Nobody's saying the mod is worthless or your work is useless.. we're just saying that it's not at the stage where it deserves award. Stop being petty and get back to work if you want to create a mod worthy of awards.
My purpose in posting that is to point out some irony in this thread. ES has at least made a release which is more than most mods can say. I think some of you need to get off your high horses. Many of the posts seem to be coming across as people being jealous that their pet mod did not win. If you're going to be close minded enough that you won't try out a second release then that's your loss. Those of you harping on potential as long as you keep that up, I'm just going to be laughing because you're just making yourself look ridiculous.
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Well I'm certainly not jealous, simply because I do not play any 3rd party source mods. If you can honestly tell me that in a year from now, people will still be playing that mod, I may give it another shot. Otherwise, I just see it as another failed source mod, not worth mine, or anyone else's who values good gameplay's time.
If the developers had any class whatsoever, they would give back the money. No playable product was released, how can it be the best?
comeooon, let's riot! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
please?
I think the mod can be good with time.
The award is a joke though.
If the developers had any class whatsoever, they would give back the money. No playable product was released, how can it be the best?
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But it was playable, so I fail to see your point. The reason I stopped playing, and I'd be willing to bet it's the same for others, is that there was only one map, so no variation grated on me. And about your comment of release early, release often, they're stuck moving code around last time I knew, so it's kinda hard to release often right now.
Personally, I give my congrats to the ES team and can't wait to see their future releases.
But it was playable, so I fail to see your point. The reason I stopped playing, and I'd be willing to bet it's the same for others, is that there was only one map, so no variation grated on me. And about your comment of release early, release often, they're stuck moving code around last time I knew, so it's kinda hard to release often right now.
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Your failure maybe based on your perspective. How many ES servers are up? 0. Why? because nobody wants to waste their boxes resources on that particular game. Why is that? Because the server module had significant lag issues when a player would fly outside of space, and could crash the server.
That and the games became tedious, dogfighting was more or less a roleplaying mechanism because one could just simply boost into the other team's hangar, so people who did dogfighting were really just trying to reenact popular space battles, whilst contributing nothing to the game.
Would you give an award out to a multiplayer game that currently 0 people are playing? How can a mod that nobody plays be the mod of the year?
Either:
Your mod is unplayable and that's why nobody is playing it. (My bet)
Or:
Your mod is playable, and nobody wants to play it.
What would you rather have? A mod that has too many bugs that need sorting out at the moment, or a mod that works but nobody wants to play?
Simon Carless here - I'm the Independent Games Festival Chairman, and I happened to come across this conversation while wandering around the blogosphere. I was a bit disappointed, actually, that there was so much vitriol about this decision - and there's also some misinformation, I think, because people haven't looked into how the IGF Modding Competition works.
Firstly, you have to have had an update of your mod in the past 12 months, yes, but you also have to actually take the time to enter and make yourself eligible - we got these entrants this year:
<a href="http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2007_mod.php" target="_blank">http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2007_mod.php</a>
There's some really good mods in there, and not just for Half-Life 2, either - but the choice is limited to these games that have entered. Other mod teams should (and are quite welcome to!) enter if they want to be considered.
Our judges then took a detailed look at all the mods and weighed up both innovation and execution when making their decision. I can't speak for them (because I didn't judge), but as I understand it, they saw Eternal Silence as being one of the most interesting mods of recent months because it really _does_ do some innovative things with the game.
Incidentally, I saw someone mention Dystopia - that won best Half-Life 2 mod last year, when we had a different award configuration:
<a href="http://www.igf.com/2006finalistswinners.html" target="_blank">http://www.igf.com/2006finalistswinners.html</a>
Also, to make it clear, Eternal Silence has thus far won a $500 travel stipend to help them get to GDC in San Francisco, where they will demo the mod. They are in the running for Best Mod against 3 other finalists (Best Single-Player FPS, Best RPG, and Best 'Other' Mods), so we'll see what happens.
Regards,
Simon.
[chairman at igf dot com.]
Thats not saying much for the other contestants, as they were deemed inferior to a multiplayer mod that has no playerbase.
Obviously this conversation struck a nerve in the creators, but my question is why? This is an off-topic board for an old HL1 engine mod. Why would the chairman of some game festival website care what we think?
Unless of course there is some slight truth in what goes on in this conversation.
I am really interested in reading this blog you say, I didn't know someone cared enough to write some independent thoughts about the situation at hand.
But thanks for reminding me why I don't play NS anymore...damn community ruining a decent game.
Here's Dan's (head ES dev) public blog: <a href="http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/" target="_blank">http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/</a>
Firewater, because NS has had one of the largest player-followings of a half-life mod behind CS and DoD, while being based on a completely different style of play from those 2, so people pay attention to the game, even if it hasn't been too loud lately.
But thanks for reminding me why I don't play NS anymore...damn community ruining a decent game.
Here's Dan's (head ES dev) public blog: <a href="http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/" target="_blank">http://www.eternal-silence.net/blog/</a>
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Ummm, I don't understand your point, nor the comment referring to the community. The only useful information is the post to the blog.
In any case, are you 2 forum trolls or something? Took you like 5 mins apiece to respond <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
At least I could help with the link.
I dunno who said you thought you paid off the judges, but I know I never implied that, only suspected political overtones.
If ES won Mod of the Year, then its a sad state for the HL2 modding scene. If ES is truly the mod of the year, wouldn't there be servers up for it? Its like having a team that is of championship caliber with out a venue to play in. If the championship team was just that, a town or city would be more than happy to scoop them up.
Thats not the case with ESmod. There are 0 servers up, so anyone who wants to get involved with this mod must own a dedicated server to host on the internet, or play it on a LAN with friends.
I'm not saying ES is a bad mod, its just not worthy of mod of the year. Mod of the year should have mostly everybody WOWed, but thats not the case with this game. It has great potential, its just undeveloped.
You claim that the other mods that should have won, but were buggy and had netcode issues. I don't know, but I don't think they had bugs that would crash the server if someone went out of the map.
I respect the effort that you guys put into the mod, but that doesn't mean that you deserve any financial reward. That implies that you are in a unique position and that the other mods who competed for the the reward put less effort in than you did. I think thats a slap to the face of the other creators personally. If I were you guys, I would not accept the financial reward. If you don't accept it, you will impress a ton of players over the internet that think your award is bullish. It will tell them that the ESmod has class, and that they don't feel that their mod is ready for Mod of the Year. That impress a boat load of players that may not play your mod out of simple spite. But I don't expect that at all, take the money and continue to have 0 players play your game.
Also, why do you care that the people on the NS boards are bashing the award? Its in an off-topic forum, and its a fairly civil discussion. People are bashing the mod because you won an award for a game that nobody plays man. I'm sorry but I don't see how you can accept the award and the money with a clean conscience, and neither can A LOT of potential players.
Laugh all you want at the "naysayers" but I do not think your mod will have significant impact on the HL2 mod scene, and it will have player numbers of that of dystopia, empires, and iron grip. Of course, I am not a developer, so please take my comments with a grain of salt.
Also, Dan mentioned that the mod WAS seamless and working in beta testing and finalizing before release, it is only after release that many of these bugs cropped up, as is with many other games that I have helped beta test and that have come out with public beta's, it's not like it an un-normal thing, expecting it to be perfect out of the box is a rather high and mighty look at what modding REALLY is, which is another point of Dan's blog.
In any case, that's all I really have to say to that, most of it is stuff that Dan would have to respond to for you to get an accurate picture.
The game HAS WOW'ed many fellow modders in the community
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That's his point. It impresses the fellow modders, not the players. The game has 0 servers, 0 players, and 0 interest outside of a few technical points that ES mod has failed to deliver in an alluring package [i.e playable or desirable to players willing to overlook the bugs].
Really though, it's not ES Mod's fault that the HL2 modding community is at the level where they're getting awards for what they've put out. It's just disappointing on all levels -- a large number of people bought half-life 2 with the express expectation that it would be the modding king of the PC. That ESMod is getting this award, and people are defending it, reflects only the poor quality of HL2 modding.
At its core, mods and games are there to be played. It can be as technically impressive as you want, but if it doesn't possess the simple inherent factors that promote a desire to play it, it has failed as a medium of entertainment and enjoyment. I can't see any way that ESMod deserves a modding award outside of very specific technical attempts.
Edit: I also replied on his blog.