Petition Started for Video Game Hugo

Nana Amuah has started a petition at Change.org calling on MidAmeriCon II to run a special Best Video Game Hugo category next year.

That is something the con could do under WSFS Constitution Section 3.3.17 which allows a committee to create one special category.

This was my first year nominating and voting on the Hugo Awards. One thing that bothered me was why video games were not honored. Sure, games can technically be nominated for Dramatic Presentation, but do you actually ever see that happen, as opposed to movies and TV shows? There has been considerable debate over the years about this. There WAS a trial “Best Video Game” category in 2006, but only 58 people nominated for it. However, I believe that we are long overdue for a category like this. Within a decade, games have grown in stature, offering more complex storytelling and gameplay that is resonating with mainstream culture and fandom (including that of SF/F works). This very year we’ve had stellar SF/F games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Bloodborne, Kerbal Space Program, Pillars of Eternity, serialized games like King’s Quest and Life is Strange, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. None of these have a significant chance of getting recognition fron the Hugos. You might be thinking that due to recent controversy surrounding the Hugos, that this shouldn’t be a priority. However, more people than ever signed up to the WorldCon to vote this year, which I believe presents an opportunity; there may just be more people that are at least aware of what good games have been released in the speculative genres. That is why I believe that MidAmericon II should, 10 years after the fact, instate an additional one-time category for “Best Video Game” (or if you want to be more formal, “Best Interactive Presentation”)

At this writing the petition has only one signature.

As Amuah mentions, the 2006 Worldcon attempted a special Hugo of this type (“Best Interactive Video Game”), and cancelled it due to lack of response from the voters.

[Thanks to Mark (yes, you, not the other one) for the story.]

91 thoughts on “Petition Started for Video Game Hugo

  1. Personally I can’t see a video games category that wouldn’t be dominated for year after year by 5 AAA games – which unfortunately are rarely the best games IMO. Part of the problem is that video games are not competing on a level playing field – generally speaking the experience that I am looking for in a game is not what the mass market is looking for in a game.

    There are technical issues with different formats coming out in different years, and DLC too.

    Board and card games and RPGs (and their supplements) too seem a poor fit to the existing categories. I guess like video games they can be squeezed into related work* but they are such a poor fit I have never seen any of them make the longer list of nominated works let alone the final ballot.

    Again with card games such as Netrunner it becomes difficult to judge eligibility as there is new ‘content’ every few months.

    * And I would support people nominating games in that category. Although I guess if a lot of games kept getting on the final ballot we would see some activity at the business meeting – either new categories OR a change to make games ineligible.

  2. Fin Fahey –

    Dunno if you can do that with GTA,

    There’s a popular Hulkbuster Iron Man mod, people do some crazy stuff with GTA mods.

  3. One of the other technical issues is poor porting. A game can be brilliant on the Playstation, mediocre on the XBox, and downright awful on a PC.

  4. Are the characters in GTA aware of being unable to leave the game space?

    (Not long ago I played a game in which the characters were aware that some of them were being controlled by players.)

  5. Fin,
    I used that specific exams to poke a little fun; I’m sure game canon need not address the city as being under any sort of Stephen King’s Dome.

    I suppose self-awareness or not is just another feature uniquely suited to games. In lieu of impervious boundaries, we could say a largely invulnerable protagonist while driving (a la Death Proof), who can only be stopped by simple arrest. Were any of these meant to figure in the game? No, but they’re there as features.

    Like Revan or the Exile pretty much piling up a count of Sith and Darksiders in the tens of thousands. Kyle Katarn has likely single-handedly exhausted the entire ranks of the Imperial Stormtrooper corps, much less killing very nearly every Gamorrean thug henchman in the entire galaxy.

    Silly But True

  6. Another one: How do you handle patching with regards to eligibility? An MMORPG has several patches with an expansion lifecycle that add new content. Are all of them eligible? Only the expansion? Only the original release of the game? How do DLC change things? Is the DLC renewing eligibility for the whole game? Is only the DLC itself eligible?

    And remember: It isn’t just 15-20 good games, it’s 15-20 great games.

  7. I linked to this image back when we discussed the potential for a Best Video Game Hugo:

    “Over 200 Game of the Year Awards”

    The market’s oversaturated for game awards, imo, and frankly even as an avid gamer I would have trouble naming 5 games per year that wow me enough on a pure storytelling level for me to want to nominate them for a Hugo. For example, I love the latest Mortal Kombat. But would I nominate its story mode for a Hugo? Err, nope.

  8. @Meredith

    One of the other technical issues is poor porting. A game can be brilliant on the Playstation, mediocre on the XBox, and downright awful on a PC.

    Or in some cases, and given time, precisely the other way about. (Not that I want to get into PC/console wars, been there, deeply unproductive). There is a big problem with console user interfaces, which are frequently optimised for a middle-sized screen on the other side of a room using a controller. Utterly useless and clunky for desktop k&m PC players like me, they give me a headache.

    But, on PCs, these issues are generally fixable, often with a minimum of modding, plus patchable issues, well, out-and-out bugs, that the original dev house neglected eventually get cleaned up by the community. Can’t be done for console versions. But I’ve got to agree that the PC ports can be really lamentable straight out of the box.

    @Matt Y

    Yeah, should have guessed. I love the crazy world of game modding. Not my kind of game, but if it was, I’d no doubt be downloading them furiously.

    @David Shallcross

    (Not long ago I played a game in which the characters were aware that some of them were being controlled by players.)

    Brill, what’s it called? I’d give that some time, I like a bit of Meta. I do kind of imagine player characters having a faint awareness that they have a sort of patron diety, namely me. Trouble is, it can make one feel like Arioch sometimes (Dear diary: “Breakfast. Blood & souls. Blood and Souls. Blood & Souls. Elevenses. Blood & Souls. Blood & Souls… “)

  9. Silly but True –

    If invisible walls are all it takes for a game to be SFF, than it at least opens up nearly the entire field of video games to be nominated as every technological limitation that we automatically accept in a game could be explained away as magic.

    I retract my issue with Red Dead btw, I forgot about Undead Nightmare. A game where you play a cowboy riding a unicorn while hunting Bigfoot should count. That Bigfoot sub quest alone was more heartbreaking than many SFF books!

  10. @Meredith

    Another one: How do you handle patching with regards to eligibility? An MMORPG has several patches with an expansion lifecycle that add new content. Are all of them eligible? Only the expansion? Only the original release of the game? How do DLC change things? Is the DLC renewing eligibility for the whole game? Is only the DLC itself eligible?

    I can only speak for single-user, but in my experience it’s usual to distinguish between patches and DLC. Patches rarely add content, they’re fixes. But on the other hand DLCs can contain patch elements, though it’s usual (and obviously polite) to make the patch available separately.

    Also, my limited knowledge suggests that DLCs are moving more and more away from adding/changing so much content that a new game is created. Rather, the sad truth is that the dev houses are milking lots of small payments from users for tiny DLC modifications that in many cases should have been included in the original. (This is one of the things that destroyed Civ5 for me, not to speak of a totally messed-up game dynamic. Ugh. No, mustn’t start.)

  11. @Oneiros

    Yes. A video game award specifically for storytelling, which seems to be the general hope of most commenting on the subject, is going to struggle to hit 15-20 great games a year because so many games put the emphasis on other aspects. Which is fine! A lot of different requirements have to be met to make a great game. But it makes a Video Game Hugo a tricky prospect.

    @Fin Fahey

    Re: Porting: I knew I should’ve left in the line stating explicitly that that was only an example and it could happen in any direction. 🙂

    ETA: Re: Patching: MMORPGs often have free patches (either as part of the expansion or rolled into the subscription or some other model) that add story content. That’s why I addressed both patches and DLC.

  12. @Meredith

    Sorry, a small difference in terminology, I think. I have very limited experience of MMORPGs, quite deliberately, because I’d disappear into them and never come out, it’s bad enough with single-user.

  13. @Fin Fahey:

    It was Ar Nosurge, a Japanese RPG for the PS3 that came out in 2014. You switch off between playing a robot body “Earthes”, explicitly presented as being controlled from another world, and a human character “Delta”, who begins to notice that he is doing things that he wouldn’t normally do. At one point another character addresses the screen, saying, essentially, “I know you’re out there”. Likewise the characters begin to notice the shared inventory between the party with Earthes and the party with Delta, and make use of it to solve problems. Eventually Delta figures out how to expel the player from controlling him, and does so, producing the equivalent of a blue screen until the game switches back to Earthes.

    And one of the antagonists turns out to be under the control of another (imaginary) player.

  14. @Fin Fahey

    Terminology differences can be confusing, yes. I probably should have elaborated more, but it was already a monster paragraph. I suspect those terminology differences might be another strike against having a Video Game Hugo; you’d need a hell of a rules section to define the category and nomination eligibility.

    MMORPGs in particular would cause issues (while also being some of the biggest and most storyline focused sfnal games). World of Warcraft (my addiction MMO of choice) is an old game (10 years+) with regular expansions, within which are regular content patches. How do you nominate that? The expansion release might be in a different year from the final patch, without which the storyline of that expansion isn’t complete. Equally, the patches aren’t complete stories. The original release date was a decade ago. And not all MMOs are neatly organised into expansion storylines! It would be difficult to define.

  15. @David Shallcross

    Thanks. Sadly no (legal) PC version, shame because it sounds great.

    @Meredith

    Oh, that is a nightmare. But one could stay with single-user, they’re not static, to be sure, but much lower mutation rate. Well eventua;ly they’re frozen except for mods.

    Yeah, I’m still sticking with my nod at Interactive Fiction, it’s split off from video games in general, and it’s much more closely related to written narrative.

  16. David Shallcross –

    @Fin Fahey:

    It was Ar Nosurge, a Japanese RPG for the PS3 that came out in 2014.

    The last Deadpool game also constantly broke the fourth wall to address the player and that reference that it’s a video game because Deadpool.

  17. This place was bad enough when it was just book recommendations!

    At least I’m thousands of miles away from my PS3 so I can’t just run out and buy Ar Nosurge right now.

  18. RE: Fin & Meredith,

    Why invent the wheel; 10-yr old MMORPGs who saw regular expansions are essentially no different than Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones, or Dresden Files Book 19.

    The Hugos have already resolved that particular issue. Same for regional localizations (translations), as witnessed by Three Body.

    These need not be undue complications to the effort.

    The “awareness” feature can manifest as small or simply as Game of War’s “poke the minion” response; as the in-game characters shriek out when you tap them.

    Silly but True

  19. Co-sign to the problems of money, time, and inaccessability causing problems to the Best Video Game Hugo category.

    There are a fair number of *non*-2015 games that I’d love to see honored: “The Stanley Parable,” which is short, and can be played on PC or Mac, does wonderful things with the entire concept of games and player control (it’s just the player, in a deserted office, and told what to do by a snooty British narrator. Very bad and very good things happen if you specifically disobey the narrator–i.e. you come to two doors, the Narrator says “Stanley went through the door on the left,” and you, the player, go through the door on the right.

    Myst and Riven are little jewel-boxes of puzzle-storytelling.

    immorTALL might actually make you cry, and takes only 5 minutes to play through: http://armorgames.com/play/5355/immortall

    Portal, of course, gave us one of the great AI villains of all time. Bio-Shock gave us one of the great twists involving game mechanics. More recently, I’ve heard great things about Gone Home, though I haven’t played it yet.

    Wonder if there’s a way to construct a proposal for a Retro Hugo for “Best Video Game Storytelling,” with the caveat that the nominees have to be currently playable on both PC and Mac and cost $20 or less to download (priced below a hardcover book.) With a Retro Hugo, it’d be a lot easier to judge the game’s impact, and the game itself would’ve had more of a chance to get converted to multiple OSes.

  20. @Silly but True

    Why invent the wheel; 10-yr old MMORPGs who saw regular expansions are essentially no different than Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones, or Dresden Files Book 19.

    Based on the Stross-Pratchett thread, I wouldn’t be so quick to call those issues settled.

  21. A possible contender for a video game Hugo?
    From this week’s BBC Newsletter:

    Doctor Who Game Maker
    As you wait for the new series of Doctor Who to materialise, why not create your own game? Assisted by the Doctor’s ally Strax, it’s easy and fun to build a playable world for you and your friends, featuring enemies old… and new.
    Create a game

    ETA: “This email is intended for UK residents.
    Please note that some features and content in this newsletter are only available to people in the UK.”

  22. @Greg

    Wonder if there’s a way to construct a proposal for a Retro Hugo for “Best Video Game Storytelling,” with the caveat that the nominees have to be currently playable on both PC and Mac and cost $20 or less to download (priced below a hardcover book.) With a Retro Hugo, it’d be a lot easier to judge the game’s impact, and the game itself would’ve had more of a chance to get converted to multiple OSes.

    Well, if you’re doing that, I’m plumping for Alpha Centauri. One of the most SFnal games of all time and it may be TBS, but it also contains multiple stories – and a very high standard of writing for a game. £7.99 complete (including SMAX) on Amazon, probably turns up on Steam too. No Mac version, but is that really necessary, especially for a retro-game? (I remember so many Mac people moaning about their lack of game options back in the 90s. Whether that was fair or not, those games are not going to be ported now, emulation should work though.)

  23. @Meredith,

    True enough. I should add that videogames need not feel any need to shoulder any particularly unique problems different from the other Hugos on that front. However it gets resolved _there_ can easily apply here.

    I would say that for games without awards, the latest version controls with game being evaluated independent of its platform. Yes console gameplay features can be wildly different than mouse- or keyboard-driven games; same goes for phone app or touchscreen games. (And I would clearly park Angry Birds Star Wars (even original Angry Birds) as scifi. I mean if a story about beasts and birds lamenting expulsion from Eden in the shadow of the last city of Man can be nominated for a Hugo, why not a game chronicling a conflict in the war between birds and pigs?)

    But why not evaluate your best opinion of the game in your played version? If a game’s widest release had a horrible buggy and inappropriately fitting interface or gaming experience then so be it. Let the two players of the Ngage version nominate their favorite too.

    Silly but True

  24. @Fin Fahey

    Speaking as one of those Mac users in the 90s, yes it’s necessary and yes I’ll definitely resent a game without that option. 😉

    @Greg & Fin Fahey

    I don’t think you can have Retro Hugo’s for categories that didn’t exist, just for years where the Hugo’s didn’t exist at all. It’s a shame that (if I understand the rules stuff on the Stross-Pratchett thread correctly) one-off Hugo’s with wider eligibility windows aren’t legal, because a Best Retro Video Game 1985-1990, 1990-1995 etc. would probably meet the 15-20 requirement and be kind of fun. Maybe an informal not-a-Hugo could be put together and snuck into the ceremony.

    @Silly but True

    The resolution at the moment seems to be “fans argue about it a lot and when things that make it onto the ballot are considered to be not quite the spirit of the thing by enough fans, they end up low in the final rankings or under No Award” rather than anything set in the rules!

    I’d consider Angry Birds to be sfnal, but I wouldn’t consider it to have a high quality storyline. The general feeling around here seems to be that if there was a Best Video Game Hugo, it ought to reward storytelling (interactive or otherwise, and visual or textual) in particular, rather than gameplay or other game-quality considerations. Think RPG or interactive novel.

    As far as port issues go, I think potential difficulties in judging (or nominating) are a valid problem to discuss with any new (or old) category. See: Discussions about Best Series, the Best Editor categories, and Semiprozine. If the most accessible version is crap (or if its only available on one system), it won’t do as well as it should, and you can’t reasonably expect a majority of voters to spend thousands to acquire every single console, handheld and a gaming PC to try them out – or spend the time playing them in the limited voting window.

  25. There’s a fantastic (2014) game called Consortium which plays with the notion of self-awareness and the identity of the “player”, by purposefully withholding direct exposition and then stranding you in the middle of conversations in which it is clear that the other (NPC) participants can become suspicious of your failure to know basic things. And yeah, The Stanley Parable probably works even for people who aren’t versed in the material that it is satirising (which is the sign of a good piece of art to me.)
    Another tiny game that plays with meta-awareness is a game called Thomas Was Alone (who knew that you could become emotionally attached to polygons?) Or what about Ryan North’s glorious To Be or Not To Be, which recasts Hamlet as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (also available in a print version for people here who may be getting fed up with more game recommendations.)

    And The Witcher 3 is an example of a different problem I have with this whole field: that definitely has a place in Dramatic Presentation (indeed now that it has been mentioned, I must add it to my list), whereas Sunless Sea belongs in something like Novella. And yet they are both indisputably “computer” games (in that they couldn’t easily exist in any other format.)

  26. @Meredith

    Fair play. And, in the interests of peace between the factions, GoG does now have an Alpha Centauri Mac port. (And there was originally a Mac version, it just doesn’t seem to be purchasable now, I was thinking in terms of retrogaming). Believe me, I didn’t mean to revive the hoary old PC/Mac wars, by the way, I was largely expressing sympathy.

  27. @Fin Fahey

    Acceptable! 🙂

    GoG is a great shop. I wish they sold more things and I could give up Steam entirely. Steam is pretty annoying sometimes.

  28. The Retro-Hugos are for years in which there was a Worldcon, but at which no Hugo Awards have yet been awarded. You can’t create a new category out of thin air and then impose it on an arbitrary time under the current rules. If you really want to create a new category with a non-standard eligibility period, you’d need to amend the constitution to allow it to happen. Let me know if you’re really interested in trying to do it; I’ll help you word it in the correct technical form.

  29. This just doesn’t seem practical. Even assuming there were 5 valid nominees for SFF video games, trying to review them would be as bad as or worse than trying to figure out the editor categories as an average joe. I barely have time to read and watch the 5 nominees in the current categories. I certainly don’t have the time to be playing 5 multi-hour video games to determine which has the best story+whatever. And that’s setting aside the fact that I question whether most potential reviewers have the multiple game systems that would be necessary to effectively compare a variety of video games. Yes, there is story in video games, and sometimes that story can be decent genre story, and sometimes maybe the game is a vehicle for good story rather than the other way around, but the time commitment and technology burden on reviewers isn’t compatible with the Hugo award system.

  30. My personal top priority is doing what I can to get the proposed changes to the Editor and Magazine categories passed, because I think they’re all good ideas, although I can’t do much. After that a YA Not-A-Hugo would be quite nice but I’m waiting to see what the committee comes up with. Series and Video Game both seem too unwieldy to me, but of the two I suspect Series might stand a better chance of coming up with a workable proposal. I wouldn’t vote for either of them until a really good proposal has been come up with.

  31. @Meredith,

    I get the game “storytelling” angle. I just completely disagree it should be the basis for an award. That would be like because some scifi novels have a message, that the best novel award be given only for the novel’s message.

    There’s some good examples for award-worthy games with minimal (or no) storytelling. Star Control 2 (for the retro fans), arguably one of the best video games ever made according to game industry “best of” lists throughout the years. It did have a campaign mode, but what kicked it into the stratosphere of gamedom was its absolute perfection in player vs player game balance between wildly different ship powers. More recently is FTL, which would’ve been — and was — a contender for game of year when it was released by many measures.

    I think “game storytelling” is missing the point of it being a game at all and not just a story. Best Game should consider the total package; and shouldn’t also ignore story if that’s one of the factors which make a particular game the best.

    Silly But True

  32. It’s nice that they cared enough to create a petition for Best Video Game. But unless they’re willing to sit down and do all the hard work involved in defining and refining the idea into something that would persuade a majority of Business Meeting attendees to support it, it’s not going to go anywhere.

    And based on all the discussion on the subject, in this and previous File770 threads, I think that they are going to have a very difficult time writing something up that will persuade a majority of Business Meeting attendees to support it.

  33. @Silly But True:

    Wha? It wouldn’t be the first time an award has been created with a specific aim in mind. The Prometheus Award is intended for libertarian sci-fi; the Tiptree promotes women in sci-fi; Sundance’s Alfred P. Sloan Award goes to a film about science or technology… Why not set out to honour a game’s writing and storytelling?

  34. JJ on September 16, 2015 at 7:29 pm said:

    It’s nice that they cared enough to create a petition for Best Video Game. But unless they’re willing to sit down and do all the hard work involved in defining and refining the idea into something that would persuade a majority of Business Meeting attendees to support it, it’s not going to go anywhere.

    Actually, I think they’re doing the right thing, and it’s what I’ve been suggesting. It doesn’t require the Business Meeting’s permission to do an Additional Category. (I have however suggested they might want to ask next year’s BM to pass a resolution suggesting that a future Worldcon trial BVG to test the waters and to provide political cover for whoever tries it.) Based on recent behavior of the BM, I think that anyone showing up at the BM with a proposal to add BVG as a permanent category would be told, “Go convince a Worldcon to run it as a trial again to prove that things are different than they were ten years ago. If you get better results than 2006 did, then maybe we’ll consider your proposal.”

    So trying to convince a Worldcon to use their Additional Category authority to trial a new category proposal is a perfectly sound strategy. But I’m not surprised that KC turned them down flat-out, even though I told the backers that they need to start with KC.

    Note that my explaining to people how to accomplish things like getting a new category launched has nothing to do with whether or not I personally favor the idea. I just don’t like seeing the BM’s time wasted, and a new proposal for a permanent category without a trial is almost certainly a waste of BM time. I would be personally inclined to move to Postpone Indefinitely any such proposal until after we’ve seen another trial run. It is of course possible that the field is much different than it was in 2006 and that there really are around fifteen new video games that are Hugo-worthy out there. (I don’t play enough such games to have an opinion on this; I’m unlikely to nominate in such a category.) However, personally, I think that advocates for BVG are either thinking that it only needs one good game per year to make for a meaningful category or else they’re conflating games published over a longer period of time and thinking that they could (for example) nominate That Great Game from 2013 in this year’s hypothetical BVG award category.

    Incidentally, for a permanent category, you could include a longer eligibility period as a specific exception to a general rule. For example, you could try adding a category where the eligibility period for that one category was anything published in the past five years. You don’t even have to worry about something making the shortlist multiple times because there’s already a general rule that prohibits it.

  35. @Oneiros,
    I think my hang up is using as an example a Hugo for Best Graphic Story is given, not for Best Storytelling in a Graphic Story, but Best Graphic Story. A main reason being is that graphic stories are uniquely visual experiences, the graphics being just as important as story.

    The Awards for Best Dramatic Story (Long or Short) aren’t given for Best Script/Screenplay/Storytelling in Dramatic Story, since the quality of performance matters.

    I see games no differently.

    Silly but True

  36. @Silly but True

    I think the difference is that there are games with extremely weak storytelling that are nonetheless sfnal and good (Monument Valley comes to mind) that would be disappointing as Hugo winners. When was the last time a graphic story or film or television show had as little story framework as some games? The Hugo awards, at least in the fiction categories, are quite specific abut rewarding stories. It would be a shame to lose that emphasis. I’m sure other aspects of the game would also influence the number of nominations or votes (I sincerely doubt a game with great story but terrible controls would get anywhere), but I do think the story itself should be paramount for a theoretical Best Video Game Hugo.

  37. See I think the Hugos would be honored to have Monument Valley join its ranks. It’s gameplay works for its device. It’s art is not just beautiful, but also serves the game. It’s an excellent overall package. (And no, I don’t particularly think that phone apps should be discounted in terms of gameness just because it’s not PC or console)

    It has innovative gameplay. It has award worthy art. A story isn’t necessarily a requisite characteristic of a game, and this particular one need not have a deep one to make it an excellent game.

    I just happen to think there were a lot better games out last year. But I don’t think it would be out of place on a nomination ballot and think it’s fans should be able to nominate it for best game if they believe it.

    Silly But True

  38. Uhh, the artwork in Graphic Stories contributes to the story. How often do you see something completely irrelevant to the graphic novel in the artwork of a graphic novel?

    Same for films. It takes all its constituent parts to make a film worth watching and the story worth telling in that medium.

    Same is true of games. The technical accomplishments of the Uncharted series and The Last of Us add to the story, and Naughty Dog are an exceptionally accomplished studio, but the technical accomplishments aren’t why I’m so invested in those series’.

    Same is also true of novels. You can write the fanciest prose in the world, but if the story’s not actually worth reading, what’s the damn point? Thinking here of if nobody speaks of remarkable things which I only finished because I was so angry at it for being so utterly rubbish.

  39. Pingback: Potential Video Game Hugo Nominees | File 770

Comments are closed.