6th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards: Voting Information & Discussion

[Albert]

9 minutes ago, mika15 said:

Ok, one could argue about Carrot Kingdom or Jutland Skies, but to not include Robot Zed in the top 7 games of the year is a mistake, whether it was decided by 2 or 12 people.

Yeah, that is disappointing, as Robot Zed is rather good.

 

 ..Al

[+jgkspsx]

Maybe it would be a good idea to include a people's choice nomination or something? Do a poll of everything that released in each category and pick the top game that the committee didn't nominate? It is more work for the ZPH folks who already do so much, but maybe they could delegate running those polls to somebody else.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 hour ago, mika15 said:

Ok, one could argue about Carrot Kingdom or Jutland Skies, but to not include Robot Zed in the top 7 games of the year is a mistake, whether it was decided by 2 or 12 people.

I did not vote for the game for the reasons given above. There was no final ROM (demo or not) made available, so I could not judge it myself. And maybe others did the same. 

Edited February 3 by Thomas Jentzsch

[mika15]

23 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I did not vote for the game for the reasons given above. There was no final ROM (demo or not) made available, so I could judge it myself. And maybe others did the same. 

 

Appreciate that, thank you for clarifying! I have to admit that it is a very, very valid clarification.

 

It is a shame, as we did have similar scenario with Deep Catacomb by Mike Muze a year or two ago, arguably the best game that year but demo wasn’t publicly available. Guess if the creators don’t want to join the fun then nothing can be done about it. I have realised now that Sprybug was releasing lots of demos, but not after reshaping the game to its final format.

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

10 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

So, for best original 2600 game, I must choose one of the seven choices provided?  They are Berry Fun!, Dark Keep, Game of the Bear 2 Much To Bear, Kovi Kovi, Penult, Strike Zone Bowling and Tober's Nightmare.  

Is that correct?

 

Yes, those are the games that were voted to the top by the Nomination Committee out of all the qualifying Original Atari 2600 Homebrew completed in 2023.

 

10 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

So I can't vote for Caramujo or Carrot Kingdom or Spies in the Night 2 or Immunity or Quantum Tunnel or Slick's Racing or Robot Zed or Fox Hunt Arena or Heist 2 or Jutland Skies or Lost Cat or Meeow or Nightwatch at Wilford's or Stellar Drive?

Or many others also not included?  

Is that also correct? 

 

That is correct. Keep in mind that nobody is saying that any of those games that didn't make the vote are not deserving of high praise. The accomplishments of those programmers are not to be understated and the fact they did not get nominated should not diminish your enjoyment or celebration of how fun they are. Continue to play them, I definitely will!

 

Just a heads up that Spies in the Night 2 was completed in 2019 and nominated for three Atari Homebrew Awards that year. Carrot Kingdom was released on cartridge three years ago in 2021.

 

3 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

One thought for the postmortem: I am bummed that a lot of physical-only games that theoretically released at PGRE and put up for ordering shortly thereafter have only been played by people who attended PRGE. It's hard for me to vote for or against something I haven't played, and for some categories it ends up being more of a popularity contest than an actual statement of people's opinions.

39 minutes ago, mika15 said:

It is a shame, as we did have similar scenario with Deep Catacomb by Mike Muze a year or two ago, arguably the best game that year but demo wasn’t publicly available. Guess if the creators don’t want to join the fun then nothing can be done about it. I have realised now that Sprybug was releasing lots of demos, but not after reshaping the game to its final format.

 

In an ideal world the Nomination Committee and everyone voting would have access to a physical or final binary copy of every game released in 2023, but unfortunately that's not practical and I'm sure the developers and distributors would not be interested in providing everyone a free copy of their games. This is the reason we provide the newest public binary or link to a video of gameplay of the homebrew. We definitely don't want to exclude any games from competition due to people not having full access to the retail copy.

 

3 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Going forward IMO it would make more sense to use general release shipping to decide what year a game is in rather than the first hobbyist show it was released in limited quantities at.

 

Of course this isn't a problem for games with a public binary or (to a lesser extent since it is Android-exclusive) a trial version on Argon.

 

This has been a highly discussed topic in the past and we have so far settled on the shipping date or the first date the general public has been able to get their hands on it. It's hard to predict what the future holds for a game that is released in limited quantity and that may be the only release it gets. I feel that to remove a fully released game from competition because it only had a limited run would be extremely exclusionary. Each developer and distributor choose their own path of how they release their games, whether it's only a limited run of 10 or in unlimited numbers. We have found so far that using the first public availability of a game puts everyone on an even playing field.

 

2 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

Kidding aside, thanks to ZPH and the nomination committee for all the work out throughout the year that make the awards possible. The WIP Homebrew tracking threads are a great resource, and you guys put a lot of time in playing all the games to make the voting each year more manageable.

 

Thank you so much, it's always nice to hear positive feedback! It's an enormous undertaking for myself and for each of the members of the Nomination Committee to evaluate hundreds of Atari homebrew releases each year. There will always be criticism of the outcome of any subjective voting process but we continue to re-evaluate our methods each to year and strive to make the event as equitable as possible.

 

1 hour ago, mika15 said:

I have a feeling that the nominations are based mostly, if not purely on „technical” or whatever you call it, programming capabilities, and there is no emphasis on playability, originality, game mechanics and narrative.

 

Ok, one could argue about Carrot Kingdom or Jutland Skies, but to not include Robot Zed in the top 7 games of the year is a mistake, whether it was decided by 2 or 12 people.

 

We strive to have a diverse Nomination Committee made up of both developers and dedicated players of homebrew. We are also always looking for more people to join the Nomination Committee that would be willing to put in the time and energy to evaluate the hundreds of homebrew that are released each yet. It is NOT an easy or quick task and I can't thank enough the people who help in this undertaking each year.

 

1 hour ago, Albert said:

Yeah, that is disappointing, as Robot Zed is rather good.

 

Robot Zed is one of my favourites of the year too! I'm a sucker for a great platformer game and I'm so happy it was nominated for Best Music + Sound. We have a diverse group of people on the Nomination Committee which will result in an array of opinions, so you can never really predict what will rise to the top. We're always looking for more people to join the Nomination Committee to help with evaluation and provide more opinions on the games.

 

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

Maybe it would be a good idea to include a people's choice nomination or something? Do a poll of everything that released in each category and pick the top game that the committee didn't nominate? It is more work for the ZPH folks who already do so much, but maybe they could delegate running those polls to somebody else.

 

That's an interesting idea. I suspect the feasibility of people voting in an additional 21 polls, which would involve every single game released in the year, would be overwhelming for both myself and the public, not to mention I don't have the resources to award 21 more trophies/certificates for the new categories.

 

There are reasons companies only usually offer 3 choices when the release a new line of product, people get overwhelmed with choice. I think that presenting people with 42 polls would result in a sharp decline in participation. I would also suspect that people would not have the time to evaluate every single release that year now that every game released would be part of one of the polls.

 

- James

[mika15]

1 hour ago, mika15 said:

 

Appreciate that, thank you for clarifying! I have to admit that it is a very, very valid clarification.

 

It is a shame, as we did have similar scenario with Deep Catacomb by Mike Muze a year or two ago, arguably the best game that year but demo wasn’t publicly available. Guess if the creators don’t want to join the fun then nothing can be done about it. I have realised now that Sprybug was releasing lots of demos, but not after reshaping the game to its final format.

 

 

*Mick Muze, not Mike - sorry!

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

We have found so far that using the first public availability of a game puts everyone on an even playing field.

The question is really whether PRGE counts as "public availability". Maybe for people here it does, but I suspect that not even 5% of active AtariAgers attends that. IMO AtariAge games should count once Albert starts mailing them out to the worldwide customer base.

[Albert]

18 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

The question is really whether PRGE counts as "public availability". Maybe for people here it does, but I suspect that not even 5% of active AtariAgers attends that. IMO AtariAge games should count once Albert starts mailing them out to the worldwide customer base.

This should be a lot better for games released this year, I won't have the enormous pile of "Last Chance!" games to contend with (which I'm still working on), plus I will be using flash boards for most games at that point (especially 2600, Jaguar, Lynx, and some 7800 games), which will make a significant impact on the amount of time it takes me to build games.  I'll also have new shells for 2600 and 7800 games, and these shells will be easier to work with and won't have any of the compromises I run often encounter with third-party shells.  Plus by then I will have moved and will have a better "AtariAge Production Facility" setup -- a much larger, contiguous space that will make it easier to store and organize everything needed to build and ship games, with separate work areas for building games and shipping.  There are many lessons I've learned over the years I will incorporate into this new space.  And ultimately I will hire someone to help with physical production, although that probably won't be until next year.

 

This means that after this year's PRGE, I should be able to get the new games into the store much faster, and then start shipping them out immediately as well.  Plus, PRGE is two weeks sooner this year, which means I could potentially get the games into the store well before the end of October. 

 

 ..Al

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

17 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

The question is really whether PRGE counts as "public availability". Maybe for people here it does, but I suspect that not even 5% of active AtariAgers attends that. IMO AtariAge games should count once Albert starts mailing them out to the worldwide customer base.

 

This leads further and further down the path:

 

When the distributor first starts mailing them out? The first person to have it in their hands via the mail? The first 10 people to have it in their hands via mail? 2 months after getting it in their hands via mail to evaluate it? 2 months + 10 people to have it in their hands via mail? When overseas people receive it? When enough overseas people have got it and had enough time to evaluate it once they get it in the mail?

 

It starts to get very, very onerous and complicated depending on your definition and thresholds of 'public availabilty'.

 

We are keeping it simple: Was it publicly available? Yes? Then it's eligible.

 

- James

 

ADDENDUM: We would not hear the end of it if we started excluding developers' games from competition based on how many people bought them and where.

 

 

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

We are keeping it simple: Was it publicly available? Yes? Then it's eligible.

I agree that this is probably the best thing to do. 

 

And most of this issue is a result of my adding games to the store at the end of the year due to games being released at PRGE in mid-October, and then a delay before they begin shipping.  Which, as I described above, was exasperated for this wave of releases due to the Last Chance! orders.  I'm striving to make sure that doesn't happen again. 

 

 ..Al

[+jgkspsx]

1 hour ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

ADDENDUM: We would not hear the end of it if we started excluding developers' games from competition based on how many people bought them and where.

That's fair. It will be interesting to see how the affected physical-only games end up doing in the polls, and whether their creators wish they would have been in the 2024 poll instead.

[Almaric]

2 hours ago, Albert said:

This should be a lot better for games released this year, I won't have the enormous pile of "Last Chance!" games to contend with (which I'm still working on), plus I will be using flash boards for most games at that point (especially 2600, Jaguar, Lynx, and some 7800 games), which will make a significant impact on the amount of time it takes me to build games.  I'll also have new shells for 2600 and 7800 games, and these shells will be easier to work with and won't have any of the compromises I run often encounter with third-party shells.  Plus by then I will have moved and will have a better "AtariAge Production Facility" setup -- a much larger, contiguous space that will make it easier to store and organize everything needed to build and ship games, with separate work areas for building games and shipping.  There are many lessons I've learned over the years I will incorporate into this new space.  And ultimately I will hire someone to help with physical production, although that probably won't be until next year.

 

This means that after this year's PRGE, I should be able to get the new games into the store much faster, and then start shipping them out immediately as well.  Plus, PRGE is two weeks sooner this year, which means I could potentially get the games into the store well before the end of October. 

 

 ..Al

And the binaries will be available to purchase in the store too, right?  🙏

[Albert]

33 minutes ago, Almaric said:

And the binaries will be available to purchase in the store too, right?  🙏

Yes, for authors who want to make their games available digitally. 
 

  ..Al

[Sikor]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:33 AM, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

The results of the Atari Homebrew Awards will be announced LIVE on the ZeroPage Homebrew's Twitch channel on Saturday February 24th, 2023 during a special broadcast.

Hmm, it's going to be hard to make it in time for Saturday February 2023... 😜

[Cisano]

I love all this.

Only one consideration.

Maybe it is necessary to create a new category.

Games use extra chip in the cartridge, because it is impossibile or too much difficult to win versus any Champ's game.

 

Bye.

[+Karl G]

Just a small FYI: the first post says that results will be announced "Saturday February 24th, 2023".

[Albert]

1 hour ago, Karl G said:

Just a small FYI: the first post says that results will be announced "Saturday February 24th, 2023".

Fixed, thank you. 
 

  ..Al

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

6 hours ago, Albert said:

Fixed, thank you. 
 

  ..Al

 

Thank you for making that change @Albert and @Karl G for spotting it. Looks like the same date is on all the polls, fun stuff! Updating all 21 of them now... 🙂

 

- James

[Living Room Arcade]

Hey guys!  Thank for all the kind replies to my questions.  Well, I have decided to conduct my own UNOFFICIAL Homebrew Voting and Awards.  Everyone's invited!  Link.  The tentative plan is to do it after @ZeroPage Homebrew Jame's livestream show on Feb. 24, 2024.  I know you guys are busy here right now doing the OFFICIAL AHA's, but after it wraps up, I hope everyone will come and check out my UNOFFICIAL version.  Thanks!  

Edited February 5 by Living Room Arcade

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

1 hour ago, Living Room Arcade said:

Hey guys!  Thank for all the kind replies to my questions.  Well, I have decided to conduct my own UNOFFICIAL Homebrew Voting and Awards.  Everyone's invited!  Link.  The tentative plan is to do it after @ZeroPage Homebrew Jame's livestream show on Feb. 24, 2024.  I know you guys are busy here right now doing the OFFICIAL AHA's, but after it wraps up, I hope everyone will come and check out my UNOFFICIAL version.  Thanks!  

 

I'm going to answer the question you pose in your signature of "How is my behavior in this forum?"

 

You've come into this thread to post questions about how the Atari Homebrew Awards works and why certain games were not included, which is perfectly fine. A lot of people have questions about how it all works, and we answered as best and politely as we could.

 

You apparently didn't like the answers you were given and didn't agree with how the Atari Homebrew Awards is run and plan to set up your own, which is also fine. There have been a number of alternative events have taken place over the years, anyone is free to set one up, just as I did.

 

The thing that I have a problem with, that pertains directly to your 'behavior in this forum', is that you've come in this thread to promote your event. People already warned you that it's an extremely poor taste to do what you've done and you've come here after being warned, to promote it to the participants of this event. It's extremely disrespectful to the community members that have worked hard to put this event together and have worked hard on making this the most equitable and inclusive event as possible. We put on the event to find a fun way to celebrate the incredible accomplishments of all the developers over the past year and for you to come in here to tell us that we're doing it wrong and to vote in your event is, in a word, rude.

 

The other part of your signature says "Pls bear with me while I adjust."

 

I'm doing my best to bear with you but I hope you listen to my words and the words the others are saying to you and adjust as soon as you can.

 

- James

 

 

[PPR]

James.... thanks for your hard work und for many excellent videos! 

Nothing more to say... 

 

And many greetings to Tanya and the Cats - u are the best!!

 

Dr. Irata

Edited February 5 by PPR

[+littaum]

Looking forward to the 6th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards!

[+jgkspsx]

13 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

Hey guys!  Thank for all the kind replies to my questions.  Well, I have decided to conduct my own UNOFFICIAL Homebrew Voting and Awards.

That's just kinda rude, dude.

[+jgkspsx]

Anyway, I played almost everything up for awards (skipped 5200/8bit because I just couldn't fit it in) and posted my (non-vote-giving-away) impressions in the weekly time tracker, if anybody is curious:

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Anyway, I played almost everything up for awards (skipped 5200/8bit because I just couldn't fit it in) and posted my (non-vote-giving-away) impressions in the weekly time tracker, if anybody is curious:

 

Nice! You've done a very detailed writeup on your adventures through playing the nominated games, great read!

 

- James