By Simon Carless
 Pocketwatch Games' stylish co-op caper, Monaco, was the big winner at the Twelfth Annual Independent Games Festival Awards, which was hosted by the Game Developers Conference 2010 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
Monaco received the top award at the ceremony, earning the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, as well as the award for Excellence in Design.
Other IGF award recipients for 2010, as judged by over 170 industry veterans, independent developers and indie-friendly journalists, also include PlayDead's starkly beautiful silhouetted platformer, Limbo, which won the awards for Excellence in Visual Art and Technical Excellence. Closure Team's puzzle platformer, Closure, earned the award for Excellence in Audio.
Noted independent developer Cactus received the inaugural Nuovo Award for his abstract visual puzzle game, Tuning. The Nuovo Award honors "abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games." The Nuovo Award was judged by a separate, smaller juried panel of notable game and art world figures, including previous IGF Innovation/Nuovo Award winner Jason Rohrer (Passage), Area/Code's Frank Lantz, N+ co-creator Mare Sheppard, EA division head and art-game creator Rod Humble, and more.
The IGF was established in 1998 by UBM TechWeb Game Network to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival honors the independent film community. The IGF offer finalists both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to each year's winners.
Previous breakout IGF award-winners include titles such as Braid, Audiosurf, Castle Crashers, and World of Goo, and this year's awards saw 301 Main Competition entries from all over the world, coupled with the record-breaking number of IGF Student Showcase entries and IGF Mobile entries, for a total of nearly 650 entries. S2 Games' Heroes Of Newerth won the Audience Award, after receiving the largest share of thousands of public votes cast at IGF.com in recent weeks.
To ensure the highest-quality judging for the IGF, more than 170 leading indie and mainstream game industry figures -- from 2D Boy's Ron Carmel through Spore's Soren Johnson to ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago and beyond -- were recruited to choose finalists via a carefully constructed empirical process.
Finally, the award for the Best Student Game went to Ragtime Games' shifting-tile puzzle platformer Continuity, IGF Mobile Best Game was awarded to Tiger Style's Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor, and download partner Direct2Drive's $10,000 D2D Vision Award was won by Press Play's Max & The Magic Marker.
"This year sees an impressive array of visually arresting, emotionally challenging and fun games," said Simon Carless, IGF chairman. "And after extensive, in-depth playthroughs from a panel of influential games industry figures, the cream of the crop were chosen to receive honors at the IGF. We're extremely proud of the record number of amazing entries this year, and very grateful for the independent teams who put their hearts and souls into creating captivating, addictive and original gameplay experiences."
The IGF awarded the following games in each category of the main competition — each received a cash prize of $2,500 as well as sponsor-related prizes, apart from the Grand Prize of $20,000 and D2D Vision's $10,000 award.
Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Monaco, by Pocketwatch Games
IGF Nuovo Award:
Tuning, by Cactus
Excellence in Visual Art:
Limbo, by PlayDead
Excellence in Audio:
Closure, by Closure Team
Technical Excellence:
Limbo, by PlayDead
Excellence in Design:
Monaco, by Pocketwatch Games
Student Showcase Award:
Continuity, by Ragtime Games
IGF Mobile Best Game:
Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor, by Tiger Style
Audience Award:
Heroes Of Newerth, by S2 Games
D2D Vision Award:
Max & The Magic Marker, by Press Play
For more information about the IGF, the finalists and the winners, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website.     
By the99th
In write-up of Daniel Benmergui's talk at GDC, it's mentioned that a "friend" showed him the poetry mechanic that he adapted for his game. That friend was Agustin Perez Fernandez and I know because I was there in the room rolling a J. His latest work could be his most defining yet, at least in terms of its artistic poise.
El Beso ("The Kiss") is a sort of performance art art-game, you wield the mouse as a lure for a sort of ethereal fluke draped in ribbons of light, trying to kiss against red squares to turn them blue and then grey, harvesting points. The dynamic is that these squares come in all sizes and vectors, overlapping and forcing you to dance your way through them. The opera track highlights this dance while sometimes giving an apophenic sense that the music is somehow responding to your actions, some actual procedural sound would have been an interesting feature to explore but it works. The opera also lends the game a certain air of, as the French say, "I don't know what". It's almost enough to make you pop your monacle.
After your first play through you'll notice some more things that make it come together as being more than just another experimental Jackson Pollack love explosion. The game times your overall session and doesn't really penalize you in a "game over" sense, but instead just slows you down, which affects your performance. So the better you dance with the mouse in-between the cascading overlaps of red squares, the better your score. You are the opera. Give that fat lady a kiss.
By IndieGames.com - The Weblog
 [For those who sadly can't make it out to GDC next week, we've set up a live-stream of the IGF and Choice Awards for the first time in association with the folks at GameSpot - here's the info.]
Game Developers Choice and IGF Awards organizers have confirmed that next week's awards shows will be streamed live on GameSpot.com, with TV network G4 also present to capture highlights for a GDC special.
The major CBS-owned GameSpot.com website has set up a special Game Developers Conference 2010 landing page for its coverage, and will be exclusively live-streaming the awards, which take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:30 pm PT.
The ceremonies kick off with the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards, this year presented by indie developers Kyle Gabler (World Of Goo) and Erin Robinson (Puzzle Bots), and honoring an outstanding set of finalists from the world of independent games.
The event will give out over $40,000 in awards, including the prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the Audience Award, and the 'art game'-centric Nuovo Award, as well as exclusive videos on indie games filmed by comedy troupe Mega64.
Following the conclusion of the IGF Awards, the live stream will showcase the Game Developers Choice Awards, now in its tenth year, and the leading mainstream game awards voted on by video game creators. Continue reading 
By Simon Carless
[For those who sadly can't make it out to GDC next week, we've set up a live-stream of the IGF and Choice Awards for the first time in association with the folks at GameSpot, plus some G4 TV coverage of the awards - here's the info.]
Game Developers Choice and IGF Awards organizers have confirmed that next week's awards shows will be streamed live on GameSpot.com, with TV network G4 also present to capture highlights for a GDC special.
The major CBS-owned GameSpot.com website has set up a special Game Developers Conference 2010 landing page for its coverage, and will be exclusively live-streaming the awards, which take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:30 pm PT.
The ceremonies kick off with the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards, this year presented by indie developers Kyle Gabler (World Of Goo) and Erin Robinson (Puzzle Bots), and honoring an outstanding set of finalists from the world of independent games.
The event will give out over $40,000 in awards, including the prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the Audience Award, and the 'art game'-centric Nuovo Award, as well as exclusive videos on indie games filmed by comedy troupe Mega64.
Following the conclusion of the IGF Awards, the live stream will showcase the Game Developers Choice Awards, now in its tenth year, and the leading mainstream game awards voted on by video game creators. With improved methodology, Special Award winners for this year's Choice Awards are selected by the 20 person-strong Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, and winners from this year's finalists are now being selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN) -- new invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators from all parts of the video game industry.
As well as the awards themselves, which span from Best Downloadable Game through craft-specific awards for Art, Audio, and Design to the much-coveted Game Of The Year award, notable figures present to receive special awards will include Valve's Gabe Newell, for the Pioneer Award, Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik and Robert Khoo, for the Ambassador Award, and Id's John Carmack, for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The awards will be presented by Junction Point Studios and Disney's Warren Spector (Epic Mickey), with additional exclusive Mega64 videos, and will also be recorded by U.S. TV network G4, with highlights being included in the Game Developers Conference-specific episodes of their X-Play TV show.
Both ceremonies, which take place in North Hall, Hall D, Moscone Convention Center, are open to all Game Developers Conference 2010 pass-holders to attend in person, and more detail on the show is available at the official GDC 2010 website. 
By IndieGames.com - The Weblog
By IndieGames.com - The Weblog
 Today's collection of independent game links include the announcement of an upcoming Pixeljam project, the story of how The Indie Love Bundle came about, and the launch of new web sites for Frictional Games' Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Pixelpickle's Lylian.
Pixeljam Games: Glorkian Warrior
"We are raising funds to help the development of Glorkian Warrior, a new project with comic book artist James Kochalka (American Elf). Anyone who helps back the project will get a free copy of the game when it is released."
Broken Rules: The Story Behind The Indie Love Bundle
"This is more than just a great one-time deal, this is also an experiment. If it's successful, we plan on involving many more great indies over time to make these bundles a regular event."
Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Teaser, Web Site and Pre-order
"The first real gameplay video released gives a first look at what sort of experience we are aiming for when playing Amnesia. With an estimated release date of August 2010, you can pre-order the game now and save 20% on the release price of USD20."
Critical-Gaming Network: RO9 5 of 101
"RO9 really achieves a whole new level of strategy and depth by forcing the player to control nine independent RPG adventures at once. The final product of RO9 is so refined and to the point that it's amazing the creator didn't go overboard."
Lylian Game: official Lylian site
"The official Lylian game website is finally ready. A new comic page has been added on it, and the media page is up with big chunky media goods."
sinisterdesign.net: The Top 6 Reasons to Support Indie RPGs
"Let's say that you have some disposable income, and that you're trying to decide whether to spend it on big studio games or indie RPGs. Here are the top six best reasons why you should spend at least some of it on indie RPGs."
Raitendo: Passage in 10 seconds
"The essence of Jason Rohrer's critically-acclaimed art game 'Passage' distilled into a 10 second long game." Continue reading
By Simon Carless
 [We're partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham looks at art game history, QA, and The Beatles: Rock Band, among many other things.]
This week Frank Lantz was at the Art History of Games conference and he reports back to say that, ‘Doom is too Rock ‘n’ Roll to ever be confined to a museum, man’! But not in quite so many words.
The AHoG conference was talk of the town this week, and Charles J Pratt wrote up some of the speakers he heard, covering the opening panel and a talk by the above mentioned Mr. Lantz and John Sharp on ‘avoiding the domestication of game art’ for GameSetWatch.
As a response to some of the things that came out of the conference, Corvus Elrod talks about how dictating what games aren’t through manifestos, etc, can only reduce their cultural relevance.
But if you’re looking for a more satirical take, you really can’t go past Matthew Burns’ “The new debate on games as ert” (sic). In the same week he also comes back to finish his series for Edge Online about QA testing ‘In the Dungeon’ with parts two, three and four. Another new blog began its life this week, by one Amanda Cosmos, and her first post talks about the Global Game Jam and her team’s game ‘Quest for Stick’.
Elsewhere, Michael Abbott writes about Mass Effect 2 and what it says about the evolving nature of video game genres. Abbott notes: “Bioware knows what we who write about games ought to know better. Genre classifications are essentially meaningless, and it's time to drop them and move on.”
It’s a sentiment echoed to some degree by Jim Rossignol in Rock Paper Shotgun’s latest podcast, episode 38, and the resultant audio includes a great contextualized discussion of game genres throughout history.
Gus Mastrapa at Wired’s GameLife blog says ‘21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men’, noting: "Young gamers are somehow better than older gamers. Is it because they have fewer responsibilities and more free time? Or is it their youth that keeps them sharp?" At a mere 23, I think even I count as old in this scenario.
Via fellow blogosphere overviewer and synthesiser Erik Hanson comes a tale of ‘Myst as mythology of the hyperlink’.
LB Jeffries adds to the previous week’s discussion of No More Heroes 2, picking out some of its problems. Also on NMH2, Chris Dahlen writes for his Edge column that what the sequel is missing is really ‘the loser mechanic’ from the original.
Denis Farr this week examined the rather baffling choice Bioware made with regard to male-male relationships in Mass Effect 2. Farr highlights a quote from executive producer Ray Muzyka in which he explains the choice to limit any and all Male commander Shepard’s to an essentially straight male role. As Farr notes: “This tells me that I can create my Shepard, but he or she isn’t mine, actually.”
In other commentary, Grayson Davis uses a discussion of Uncharted 2 to argue quite convincingly that our vocabulary for discussing video game graphics remains an ephemeral, hard-to-pin-down thing.
Davis wonders: “…why can I quote decade-old reviews of a game that's only distantly comparable to Uncharted 2 and find the exact same statements, almost verbatim, that I find in today's criticism? These statements aren't wrong, but they're shamefully insufficient.”
Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music runs down the new music based game ‘Chime’ that I’ve been hearing good things about. The game is part of a charity-based collective, OneBigGame that aims to raise funds for children's charities.
After a negative piece early in the week explaining how difficult the Bioshock 2 hacking mini-game is for people with colorblindness, Dan Griliopoulos (who is colourblind himself) writes about the issue for Rock Paper Shotgun.
And lastly, Nicholas Shurson -- formerly of the Form8 blog -- has started The Game Journal, hoping to attract a mature audience interested in reading about and talking about videogames. This week he’s written about the The Beatles: Rock Band in ‘Come Together’, the second post named for a Beatles song we've mentioned in as many weeks. 
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