A Cacowards style celebration for Quake?

AgentStrange

AgentStrange

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Jul 9, 2022
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There's obviously a lot of crossover between the two communities so it's a bit sad to see that Quake doesn't have its own end-of-year celebration like Doom. Of course, the Cacowards are unofficial and are handled by one particular forum, but the impact that they have in the Doom community is palpable. I'd like to gauge interest in doing something like that for Quake. There's just over 900 days left until the franchise hits its 30th anniversary in 2026. The Quake scene is still incredibly active and the recent releases of the Nightdive remasters have been incredibly well received. John Romero himself is planning to release a new episode in the future. Now feels like the perfect time to start something like this. What do you guys think?
 
This has definitely been discussed before, ie. the quaddies, but while it does have benefits, it does have a number of caveats in that it invariably turns things into a competition, which has two main problems in my eyes. One, it will 100% create some form of drama as all competitions do. Two, it will probably stifle creativity because people will be more inclined to make maps that have mass-appeal and/or appeal to the tastes of the judges, and personally, I like it when people take risks in maps - there are already thousands of standard gameplay maps out there.

I'm personally pretty middle-of-the-road on it. And I doubt Romero will be getting to Quake anytime soon, he just announced a 32 map wad for doom 2.
 
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I've the "stifle competition" argument before but I don't understand how that could happen. I don't have experience judging things in that kind of capacity so maybe that's a blind spot for me. From my perspective, this would merely serve as a vehicle for the community to say, "Hey these are some pretty cool things that came out this year. Here's a write-up on what they are and who made them. Give 'em a try." No first or second place nonsense.
 
Some things for you to research:
My only concern is that awards will definitely make some people upset and that might start some infighting/rivalry.
(Then butthurt people will start their own awards. There is fairly recent example of this in Doom community.)

Also would be good if judges and writers were some active community members, who know community lore, and played a lot of maps/mods including old releases. Playing few releases from 2 last years and knowing that AD exists is not enough imo.
 
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As khreathor said, it's definitely worth reading the history of this sort of thing in the community, and also (especially imo) the previous thread on this site. That contains several detailed perspectives on this, including my own.

In short, "Year in Review" is probably a better way to go than actual awards or rankings, and while many people may be wary because of percieved competition, the main thing holding this back from happening is just the lack of people with time and will to do it: lots of people would much rather make stuff for Quake than write about stuff that other people made for Quake. If you want to be that weirdo, and to wrangle all the like-minded weirdos to write for it, then I think that could do a lot of good for the community.

Another related idea (again, from that thread) which I think is worth pursuing is to retrospectively curate each year from Quake's history, instead of making it solely an annual thing starting at the present. That better serves one of the key reasons that people bring this up; as a starting-point for newcomers to the community who don't know what to play.
 
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khreathor said:
Also would be good if judges and writers were some active community members, who know community lore, and played a lot of maps/mods including old releases. Playing few releases from 2 last years and knowing that AD exists is not enough imo.
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I cannot emphasise this enough.
 
Fun thing since i'm sometimes infantile : I wanted an award for making most maps in a year since im a new comer or something like that... altho just for the memes (same thing in the QC community i want a silly award as the most wholesome QC player since i'm always kind in MP games).

Not looking to achieve nothing or being called out, just trying to smile and imagine stuff, showing on a good side prizes and awards are amazing, mostly symbolic.

now anecdotes out, let me give my serious opinion:

I've been close to both Doom and Quake communities, i've stuck with Quake mostly but i think these are my points in this topic:

- Quake isn't nearly as popular as Doom, this includes custom content, i don't think we have the same volume of maps (not even mixing Slipseer, func_msgboard and Quaddicted) per year if we compare it with Doomworld... altho this is no excuse... just maybe something to take into account.
- While making an award sort of thing would give Quake mapping more traction, people would start treating it as a competition, this would generate either people making bad maps on purpose for "ugly awards" or trying to make maps to achieve the goal rather than to make fun levels.
- A year in review would work... Totally! i think this is preferrable, with mentions even! something that would do good to the community encouraging newcomers, veterans and "in the middle" mappers.
- This would also require organization, remember the type of awards we see like "Game awards" (most notable example) while i think the topic of who are judges and vote system this would also require a some sort of crew behind it... this would require time studying the maps, judges, etc... This is time consuming (i've been judge in niche awards or meme awards in some content creators communities)... and of course this would cause disrage, people calling things unfair, etc... you know The game awards? people always come out discussing why X became game of the year and not X, and of course we will forget that by the next day in the current times we're living, but i think Quake should have it's own thing but a bit more different.

A year in review could work... speciable and notable mentions so no one feels left out or feels better than the other... just to have fun and keep being the amazing talented mappers and creators we are and we will still be without causing discourage.
 
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In my view, Quake has lots of different attitudes about what constitutes good/bad creative work in Quake. It would be hard to choose judges who are fair, and it seems like it could potentially just be bad news.

I second the "Year in Review" approach. A lot of good Quake maps/mods/episodes/jams get played for a week, then forgotten about. It'd be amazing to just have nice things to say about the good stuff that has happened in the community, and encourage people to go back and give stuff a second look, rather than outright saying "This is better than that."
 
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spootnik said:
I second the "Year in Review" approach.
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At this point it's closer to a tenth :p

For the record, while the term "Year in Review" is good for getting the point across, I think we can do a lot better when it comes to actually naming such a project. I know no one went there yet, I just want to preempt it.
 
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