I absolutely love that "You Have To Burn The Rope" was nominated in the Innovation category. This year's IGF nominees are all quite awesome and I'm looking forward to playing them all in March!

Sad that I didn't make the cut but I'm happy for all of you guys; I wish you the best of luck in March.

I just wish there was a distinction between large teams of full-time office employees with private funding and true garage developers squeezing in their nights and weekends... "indie" is getting to be a really fuzzy word these days. Not that I had a chance against other games in a true indie category either, LOL. Lots of good games this year.

I second that. Years ago I had a friend that worked at an "indie" office with a game at GDC. They had publisher backing, and millions poured into development. I was never sure where the "indie" part came from, they sure as hell weren't working from their garages.

Does anyone know why "You Have To Burn The Rope" was nominated? I understand the humor, but isn't it disrespectful to the teams who actually put a lot of effort into their games?

Ryan, since I also help run the IGF, I'll put what I just replied in a similar thread on TIGSource:

"Here is Kian’s commentary on being nominated:

http://www.mazapan.se/news/2009/01/07/independent-games-festival/

I think it’s an interesting response.

As for why it was nominated - hey, it was empirically voted one of the most innovative titles by the judges. It’s as simple as that.

But it’s a cheeky innovation of concept, rather than gameplay innovation, and I can understand why that rubs some people the wrong way.

I stand by it, just as we and the other organizers stand by the IGF. It’s what the judges thought, after all."

We are truly chuffed at getting three nominations for Eden!

To address Benjamin's concern - "Indie" has nothing to do with whether you are working from a garage or not (same goes for indie music), the definition is closer to describing non-publisher or non-externally controlled creativity. The PixelJunk series has been an enormous financial risk for us here at Q and is fully self-funded - it really embodies our independence from publishers because we saved and scrimped for 5 years in order to be able to strike out by ourselves with PixelJunk.

I agree a category could be added for "best student game" perhaps, which can only accept titles submitted by people who don't have jobs in the games industry yet.

@Dylan

So by that logic Dylan, idSoftware could submit Rage, Epic could submit GoW if they felt like sweeping a competition... I guess it's just a difference of opinion but the term "garage" implies to me a certain fundamental financial struggle, not the physical act of sitting in a garage =). I don't doubt that you saved and scrimped for a long time, that could be said for any indie developer however.

I'm not trying to take away anyone's thunder and Q does good work, but you have to agree that the golden rule applies to games 90% of the time (who has the gold makes the rules). With growing complexity of modern games a solo developer just doesn't stand a chance against a paid team of full time employees.

My original point was that I feel that there should be some kind of division of categories based on financial restrictions (or it should at least be an officially weighted factor in judging games). The current system is designed for the rich to get richer with a random anomaly that sneaks in each year. There are $1M budget games competing with $0 budget games. It's Trump vs. the hobo down the street; who has the slight advantage here? =). Are you really okay with that?

Oh well, like I said; a difference of opinion.

Categories in a field so large and diverse could have helped.