Sunday 21 December 2014

AIF Hall of Fame - Past winners

Just a reminder that voting for the AIF Hall of Fame 2014 will close at 1200 GMT 31 December. Things are still pretty tight, so your vote could be decisive.

Vote here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-TcL4QM8rdwMnkyZPCM5xaQTtnccgWVh0WJ8RJ5okX8/viewform

However, in case you’re not sure what the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award (to give it its proper name) is all about, I thought it might be worthwhile to review some of the past winners.

2002 – Badman
Back in 1991, Badman wrote an AGT game called X-Trek, which was basically the starting point for AIF as we know it. Consequently, when the first Erins were held in 2002 he was given the award that bears his name.

2003 – Choices
Choices wrote two very well received games, Rogue Cop and Dear Brian (the latter with Christopher Cole). However, his most influential work was probably a series of library extensions for TADS that cemented that system’s popularity with the AIF community.

2004 – NewKid
NewKid was probably the first superstar AIF author. Having started his career with a TNG game (as was the style at the time), he established himself as a top author with Ideal High School, which was the first ‘big’ AIF game to be written in TADS and won an Erin for Best New Age Game in 2002. NewKid would follow that up with Generic New York Apartment, which was the first AIF game to seriously employ multimedia. In 2005 he returned to AIF with Ideal Pacific Coast University, which won five Erins

2005 – Christopher Cole
Christopher Cole is one of AIF’s most prolific authors, best known for romps like Gamma Girls, the Camp Windy Lake series, Mount Voluptuous, and Pool Party (the latter with A.Bomire). He also organised the very first Minicomp, way back in 2003.

2006 – Scarlet Herring
Scarlet Herring only wrote one AIF game (1996’s Moist) but it turned out to be a very important game as it established many elements and mechanics (most notably the arousal system for sex scenes) that would be standard in AIF for years to come.

2006 – A.Bomire
Another prolific author (Tomorrow Never Comes is a personal favourite of mine), and winner of the very first Minicomp. He would organise his own in 2004, and join with Christopher Cole in 2005 to organize the CCAB Comp. On top of that he managed to find time to be a regular contributor to Inside Erin (the AIF newsletter) and do an awful lot of beta-testing.

2007 – BBBen
The iron man of AIF. His first game was The Sleep Over (which would spawn the hugely popular Crossworlds series) way back in 2003, and he’s still going today, releasing Super Pervert Action: Crisis in 2014. Another regular contributor to Inside Erin, he also organised the Erins in 2006, 2007, and 2009.

2009 – GoblinBoy
Undoubtedly the most popular AIF author of all time. He won the Erin for Best New Author in 2006 with a nearly unanimous vote and just got better from there. Probably best known for School Dreams Forever (SD3), which set new standards with its extensive use of graphics and non-linear gameplay.

[Let me know if I missed anything. I was going by ifwiki and my memory, so mistakes are quite possible]

Saturday 13 December 2014

AIF Hall of Fame 2014 - Vote now!

For those who don't know, the Erins (the annual community-voted awards, which haven't been held since 2009 due to lack of games) included a write-in category called the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award, where people who'd made outstanding contributions to AIF or the community in general could be nominated. The person with the most nominations received the award, which was effectively a Hall of Fame since it could only be won once.

The cessation of the Erins meant that a number of deserving people never got recognised for their hard work, and this is my attempt to rectify that.

Vote here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-TcL4QM8rdwMnkyZPCM5xaQTtnccgWVh0WJ8RJ5okX8/viewform

The Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award is given to the most influential figure in the AIF community, someone who has helped direct and shape it into what it has become today. This can be anyone, it doesn't have to be an author, and it relates to everything they've done for the community (rather than just what they've done this year).

Previous winners are Badman (2002), Choices (2003), NewKid (2004), Christopher Cole (2005), A. Bomire and Scarlett Herring (2006), BBBen (2007), and GoblinBoy (2009), so they are not eligible for this year's award. As the organiser of this year's voting, ExLibris is also not eligible.

Voting will close at 1200 GMT 31 December 2014. All going well, the results should be announced on New Year's Day here and on the AIFCentral subreddit.

If you want to campaign for someone, feel free to do so in the comments below.