Similar to Doom community with well known annual Cacoward? May be it is time to establish some kind of Quakeward (my apologises for a cliche)?
Why annual Quake award still not founded?
- Thread starter SportsterV90
- Start date
is there even a demand for it? this is legitimately the first time im hearing of someone suggesting this for quake
It's been an idea passed around a bit! https://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=587
I think the hard part is judging them. Every award ceremony attracts a lot of negative feedback, since different people look for different things in Quake maps. I know myself, I wouldn't feel confident in selecting award winners that the community would be happy with.
But perhaps a year-end digital magazine where the year's top Quake content could be made. Not necessarily ranking things, but featuring the general top ones. It could generate hype, and give notice to people's hard work. Perhaps even modders themselves could say their mod was featured as kind of an award in itself.
I think the hard part is judging them. Every award ceremony attracts a lot of negative feedback, since different people look for different things in Quake maps. I know myself, I wouldn't feel confident in selecting award winners that the community would be happy with.
But perhaps a year-end digital magazine where the year's top Quake content could be made. Not necessarily ranking things, but featuring the general top ones. It could generate hype, and give notice to people's hard work. Perhaps even modders themselves could say their mod was featured as kind of an award in itself.
Has anybody followed the Cacowards? Who organize the event? They might have some good lessons to teach the Quake community on how to do an awards ceremony. How do the nominations work, for example, or are there judges or is it purely based on voting etc.
Judging maps for what is essentially a competition is difficult as hell, and tends to piss a lot of people off when the results aren't what they expected or hoped.
I think a neutral-stance "Year in Review" sort of thing would be a better choice, that way no one gets the impression that map making is one big competition. That wouldn't be healthy for the community, I don't think.
It's been done before on occasion, and proposed on many more. The main thing stopping it so far has just been the size of the community; the people who would be doing it are often preoccupied with other things. The other problem stemming from the small community is what others here have mentioned, that it makes it feel more personal to judge and rank packs - from my very limited knowledge even in Doom's huge community it occasionally leads to some resentment.
I think a less competitive angle is a better idea. "Year in Review" as @stickflip suggests is one way to frame it. Just talking about notable releases in various categories serves the same purpose. The main thing we need is people with the time and will to do the writing and organisation. Some sort of annual round-up would certainly be nice to show community contributors some well-deserved appreciation, as well as to highlight and catalogue the most noteworthy releases for the less tuned-in players.
In terms of timing, and since we're talking about it now, perhaps doing it for Quake's birthday (June 22nd) would be better than the end/beginning of the calendar year. Might help ease fatigue with all the other things going on in Northern Hemisphere winter, as well as lining up with other Quake-related events such as QuakeCon.
I think a less competitive angle is a better idea. "Year in Review" as @stickflip suggests is one way to frame it. Just talking about notable releases in various categories serves the same purpose. The main thing we need is people with the time and will to do the writing and organisation. Some sort of annual round-up would certainly be nice to show community contributors some well-deserved appreciation, as well as to highlight and catalogue the most noteworthy releases for the less tuned-in players.
In terms of timing, and since we're talking about it now, perhaps doing it for Quake's birthday (June 22nd) would be better than the end/beginning of the calendar year. Might help ease fatigue with all the other things going on in Northern Hemisphere winter, as well as lining up with other Quake-related events such as QuakeCon.
I've had another thought. Since time seems to be an issue, and there's so much content already out there for Quake which could use curation, what if an individual or group took a retrospective look at each year in Quake history with no particular time constraint? This could exist alongside or instead of an annual event.
That sounds good, too! It would probably be a good idea to have someone, who was active during a given year, to give their retrospective on the year. In addition to having retrospectives for individual years, it'd be cool to feature overarching narratives or deep-dives into particular trends. How the surrounding gaming scene affected Quake maps during a particular era, for example. Or how HD textures were the vogue at one point etc.
Or if you like statistics, general interest in Quake mapping over the years. Fairweather has some cool statistics on map counts, and I also made a rough chart on Quaddicted releases in July last year. For example, you can see that the years 2009-2013 were particularly dry in terms of released maps, and user engagement in Quaddicted is the lowest for the maps in 2009-2010. But then Quake went through a renaissance starting from the mid 2010s, and still going strong.
Or if you like statistics, general interest in Quake mapping over the years. Fairweather has some cool statistics on map counts, and I also made a rough chart on Quaddicted releases in July last year. For example, you can see that the years 2009-2013 were particularly dry in terms of released maps, and user engagement in Quaddicted is the lowest for the maps in 2009-2010. But then Quake went through a renaissance starting from the mid 2010s, and still going strong.
This is a really good idea, and also takes away from the idea that it's too much of an awards ceremony type thing.
When someone all of a sudden wants to position themselves as the community consensus, shit gets flung. The Cacowards, for as much as people revere it outside of the community, still has a lot of general controversy about bias, certain writers and so-on within the Doom community itself. Making it something more neutral like a Year In Review thing would be in everyone's interest. What might also help with this is having a wide variety of writers, and generally getting the community to pitch-in somehow.
The only problem with it not being an awards kind of thing is that people outside the community generally use the Cacowards as a "must-play" list, and it would certainly be good to get outside people interested in this like they are with the Cacowards, but once you cross that line into evaluating quality / worthiness, the problem appears again.
When I ran it there was a lot of mixed emotions about it. I tried really really hard to make things impartial.
It became too much work for me, and I didn't have the investment from others to make it work the way I would have wanted it to.
If you want to read about how it went you can read up this thread on func https://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61596
It's a real trip. Probably worthwhile reading for anybody who would like to try their hand at running it themselves.
I'm more than willing to offer advice about what worked and what didn't for anybody who is interested in doing this again.
It became too much work for me, and I didn't have the investment from others to make it work the way I would have wanted it to.
If you want to read about how it went you can read up this thread on func https://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61596
It's a real trip. Probably worthwhile reading for anybody who would like to try their hand at running it themselves.
I'm more than willing to offer advice about what worked and what didn't for anybody who is interested in doing this again.