On Monday, a group of 27 judges, myself included, announced
our nominees for the E3: Best of Show award. The winners will be announced in two weeks,
but I’ve already received a lot of messages from developers who questioned whether
the editors made informed choices when picking the nominees. I think so, but it’s
obviously impossible for game editors to see each and every game on the show floor. Titles
such as Duke Forever and Homeworld were guaranteed locks going into the show, but there
were also some surprise titles (such as Tom Hall’s Anachronox and Psygnosis’
Drakan) which made a big splash with quite a few editors at the show and made it onto the
list. Sure, there were pre-conceived notions about key games to check out at the show, but
I think most editors are open-minded and looking to break the story on the next big thing.
(We did so on a great new game called Urban Chaos from British-based developer Mucky
Foot).
However, giving a "Best of Show" award is a tough thing to do – Do you
rate games based on their potential or what is actually shown on the show floor? Some
companies contacted me this week asking why their games weren’t nominated, and in
many cases the problem involved a lot of near-finished product going head-to-head with
game prototypes. Titles such as Grim Fandango from LucasArts looked very polished at the
show, whereas titles like Total Annihilation: Kingdoms were merely a group of screenshots
accompanied by a grand concept statement. It’s often very difficult to decide whether
you should judge based on what’s presented over what’s promised or vice versa.
Some gamers have written to express their displeasure with the fact games nominated in
most of the major categories are from top-of-the-line developers. Someone even accused me
of taking the easy road in voting for the awards by simply selecting what products were
shown by the triple-A developers out there. Although I think it’s true certain
developers peak the interest of the press because of their reputation, I also spent a lot
of time looking at new games from wet-behind-the-ears developers who are doing their first
projects. Yet, especially when voting for games that are a year away, reputation does
count a lot – Why was Tiberian Sun nominated over other RTS games even though its
gameplay was still very much in development? Because the editors know that Westwood
doesn’t release a real-time strategy game before making sure it’s balanced.
Therefore, we could look at the technology on the show floor and, by extrapolation,
imagine the balance of Red Alert coupled with Westwood’s new technology for the game.
I’m relatively happy with our list of nominees this year, and for those developers
who are upset their games weren’t included, they should note that nothing precluded
them from contacting all the judges involved with the awards and pitching their games to
us over e-mail. Getting new products and companies noticed is often a two way street
– both developers and the press have to be proactive in their approach. If there was
more ambition on the part of the developers I think we would have seen some other
interesting games on the Best of E3 list that weren’t from top-tier developers. But
there’s no doubt about it: Reputation does play a role, although a game like
Homeworld (nominated in three categories) is from a brand new developer with no
reputation. Go figure.
The bottom line is that the Best of E3 awards is a good step for the industry – it
gives companies a sense of accomplishment and gives gamers a good idea of the top games at
the show. Although I’d never attempt to do a "top 25" list of games at the
show as some of the other sites have – simply because it’s too hard to funnel
thousands of products into one list – I think the idea of voting for the best games
in certain genres is a positive trend for the industry and the consumer.
