Thursday 1 January 2015

And the winner is...

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to announce that the winner of the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014 is Purple Dragon!

Voting was very tight, but PD emerged the winner and enters the AIF Hall of Fame:

"For services to AIF and keeping the community alive."

"Instrumental in keeping the Erins alive for a while and also as a beta tester."

"For running the Minicomp for several years on Yahoo! groups, which I hope continues on in strong form."

"The AIF community was on its arse for a few years between 2009 and 2012. PD desperately held everything together, trying to manufacture content for the newsletter and organise the comps at a time when most people just sat on the forum asking when GoblinBoy was coming back. Finally, he fell on his own sword in a glorious sacrifice that galvanised the whole community into what it has now become. Thanks PD."

Honourable mention to A. Ninny, who pushed PD hard all the way and has to be a favourite for 2015:

"He created games to a high standard, was the foremost tester in the community and ran things like the newsletter. His games were also under-recognized at the time."


"The Sex Artist."

"What didn't A. Ninny do for AIF? His work was mostly behind-the-scenes, but it was significant none-the-less. As a beta-tester, he wasn't one of the best. In my opinion, he was THE best. I do a significant amount of beta-testing for AIF now, and his methodology and reporting style has influenced my own ever since he first tested one of my games. His tenure as editor of the AIF newsletter marked a significant improvement both in the newsletter itself, and in the website behind it. As far as games, he didn't author a bunch of games, but the ones he did were all good. He took on the challenge of writing a sequel to Moist by Scarlett Herring, a daunting task when you consider the esteem in which that game is held by most of the AIF community. While I can't in all honesty say that he surpassed the original, he did an excellent job in following it up. Lastly, if I'm not mistaken, it was his idea to actually host an Erin's awards show (of sort) at the ifMUD. Or, at least he organized it (as it may have been the result of discussion)."

If there had been an award for Best New Author of 2014, Palmer would have been a shoe-in

"Really great game implementing graphics and good story into one. Possibly may become the next GoblinBoy."

"He made a damn good game."

"For his successful attempt at bringing character development to a new level with ESA, while blogging about his experience and listening to and implementing player ideas."

"For his innovative game Emily - Sister Attraction."

"Because great game."


Those three were the clear frontrunners in this year's voting. Clustered behind them were a number of people, including one of the unsung heroes of AIF, Matrix Mole ("Quietly and selflessly providing storage & web hosting to the entire AIF community."). Alongside him, a number of retired authors also received much deserved recognition, including Adam Hendine ("While Adam's been silent for a long time his work was some of the first that got me into AIF and the games are still well-written, witty, and extremely sexy."), One-Eyed Jack ("OEJ is one of 'big names' in AIF history. As the once-prolific author of a classic series (Sam Shooter), he deserves to be honoured alongside past recipients of the award."), Lucilla Frost ("I vote for Lucilla Frost, she changed the way in which female PC's and authors were portrayed and, to the best of my knowledge, no-one has come even close to matching her, for her efforts."), and Vachon ("For his persistence").

Finally, big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote.

Addendum: after thinking it over, I realised it was a bit unfair of me not to repeat all of the comments, so here they are:

ArianeB

"Because it's a shame she doesn't have one yet!"

"The 4 games (Date Ariane, Ariane Blackjack, Something's In the Air, and the 10th anniversary Date Ariane update) are thoughtfully designed and reasonably well implemented.

Date Ariane is identified as 'the original HTML dating game' from which many, many others have drawn inspiration. Ariane Blackjack has not received much press since it was a fairly unimpressive, somewhat banal strip blackjack game. The RenPy effort, Something's in the Air, was quite an opus; good graphics, good stories, high degree of replay value with a bit of 'gotta catch 'em call' hooks built in (it was surprising how much effort everyone put in to find all possible endings and reveal all the character diary text for each of the major characters.)

Also, the sheer amount of effort that went into revamping Date Ariane into the 10th anniversary edition; especially with the effort that went into reinforcing the continuity between the revamp and the Something's in the Air storylines was quite impressive.

While other authors inspired by Ariane, like HTML dating game authors Chaotic and the team of Tlaero and Phreaky, may have produced more games in the same timeframe, the cookie cutter nature of their works pales in comparison to the techniques implemented by Ariane"


Lamont Sanford

"Three solid full length games (well, two) with graphics. Biggest contributor not on the list."

"Pleasantville and RTP are both excellent games with lots of replayability and good graphics."

One-Eyed Jack

"Creating one of the best damn series going"

"Great writing, fantastic humour, and the only one who has made multiple games that I return to that has *not* already won the award."

Sly Old Dog: "For Rachel's Bad Day :D"

And finally, a couple of people who'd already won the lifetime achievement award, but got votes anyway:

BBBen: "Is the last real AIF creator"

GoblinBoy: "School Dreams 3 is an amazing AIF game that raised the bar."

11 comments:

  1. Well, I think someone else should manage the voting next time. I think you definitely deserve to be considered. We should probably also have more awards in general.

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    1. As I said, if you hadn't excluded yourself I think I definitely would have voted for you.

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    2. That's very kind of you, but I think there are a lot of people more deserving than me.

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  2. Damn, I forgot about Vachon...

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  3. I think Dragon is more than deserving of the award, so congrats!

    My guess was either Dragon or Ninny, so I guess most everyone else agreed. ;)

    I like the mention of those who didn't win near the end - some I hadn't considered, but there are some good reasons for them having a shot at the award as well.

    Congrats to the winner, and a big thanks to Dragon as well as everyone else who has worked in one way or another to keep the spirit of AIF going. Happy New Year everyone!

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    1. I've now updated the post with all of the comments received, since a couple of people otherwise missed out.

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  4. Good job for your post (it's incredible that i hadn't remembered Lamont) and congratulations to PD.
    Frankly i voted A. Ninny, but surely even him deserved the reward.
    I'm happy even for Palmer, I have already said that for me was too early for a lifetime reward, but together with a good popularity he received too much trollish when he hadn't could release his game at the beginning of this year, the moment in which he needed support because bugs that from i have understood were in ADRIFT some people beginning to attack him, frankly i'm surprised he didn't leave this world and continued to develop a new game (although i think that that period left some scars).
    Deus ExLibris I had voted you at the beginning, maybe there are people that deserve the prime more than you, but you are one of the reason i have known this world in the right way, so for personal reasons I'm a bit partial for you.

    XXX

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  5. Thanks for putting up that comment about me! In the year I won the award the voting form lost all the comments, so I never got to read any of the comments about why people thought I should win.

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  6. Wow! Thank you so much to everyone who voted for me, this comes as quite a surprise. Actually a huge surprise since I didn’t even realize the voting was going on until just a few minutes ago.

    I wish I had, because it means that I didn’t get a chance to vote. If I had, my vote would have been, of course, for . . . myself. Wait, did I say that out loud? Seriously though I couldn’t possibly have voted for anyone but A. Ninny.

    I consider A. Ninny, A. Bomire, and BBBen the sort of holy trinity of AIF. Er, unholy trinity? Sexy trinity? Anyway, enough blasphemy, the point is that without those three I’m not sure there would even be an AIF community today. Certainly not one with the same rich history that we have. They all wrote games, yes, and they are some pretty damn good games. However, more important than that in my eyes is all the work they did behind the scenes. Beta testing, game reviews, articles, tutorials, too many things to mention.

    They were always willing to help out and give advice to anyone who needed it. They were all three part of the newsletter from the start and kept plugging away at it, month after month, until the current editor finally gave up and put it on an indefinite hiatus. All three involved not just in writing their own games, but also tirelessly helping others with theirs in any way they could. They welcomed me into their midst, made me feel at home, and didn’t even complain too much about my constant nagging. I never could have done it without them.

    Add to all that the fact that A. Ninny managed to do such a great job in editing the newsletter for nearly three solid years and we arrive back at where I started. That for me, there really would have been no other choice.

    But for this year that isn’t the way it worked out so I’ll just say thank you again. I’m truly humbled and very appreciative for this great honor.

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    1. Congrats again, PD! I'll have to show you the secret handshake.

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