And the winners are...

[bobz]

We're proud to present the results of what might be the first ever attempt by Linux gamers to honor their favorite games. In this first iteration of the Happypenguin Awards, 4417 votes were cast for 281 games and libraries in 25 different categories. The voting forum was visted 39479 times. Below are the 25 winners selected by you, the Linux gaming community. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to the winners!

Free Games

• Best Free Game - Frozen Bubble
  
• Best Free 3D Action Game - Cube
  
• Best Free Arcade Game - Frozen Bubble
  
• Best Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - PySol
  
• Best Free Multiplayer Action Game - BZFlag
  
• Best Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Freeciv
  
• Best Free Role-Playing Game - NetHack: Falcon's Eye
  
• Best Free Simulation Game - Flight Gear
  
• Best Free Single Player Strategy Game - [url=href=http://happypenguin.org/show?freeciv]Freeciv[/url]
  

Non-Free Games

• Best Non-Free Game - Quake 3 Arena
  
• Best Non-Free 3D Action Game - Return To Castle Wolfenstein
  
• Best Non-Free Arcade Game - Space Tripper
  
• Best Non-Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - Eric's Ultimate Solitaire
  
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Action Game - Quake 3 Arena
  
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Heroes of Might and Magic 3
  
• Best Non-Free Role-Playing Game - Ultima I: A Legend Is Reborn
  
• Best Non-Free Simulation Game - SimCity 3000 Unlimited
  
• Best Non-Free Single Player Strategy Game - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
  

Miscellaneous Categories

• Best Emulator - ScummVM
  
• Best Game Support Library - SDL
  
• Best Graphics - Unreal Tournament 2003
  
• Best Sound/Music - Frozen Bubble
  
• Best Toy - Celestia
  
• Most Original/Unique Game - Liquid War
  
• Most Promising Linux Game Project - Planeshift
  

Links:

• The Nominations
  
• The Votes
  

Because this was the first time we've attempted to organize something of this nature, there were some disagreements about categories and definitions, but overall we think it went quite well. In an attempt to make the next awards process go even smoother, we invite anyone with an opinion about the awards to voice it here in this forum. Next year, we'll be able to look back at the results and plan the Happypenguin Awards with some clear hindsight.

[jensend]

Here are some ideas. They are independent- if you don't like one or two of my ideas, don't disregard the others.

Runoffs- perhaps even instant runoffs (1st, 2nd, 3rd choice, etc)

The 'Best Free Game' and 'Best Non-Free Game' voting ought to start when the voting for the best in category voting has concluded and have as their options the category winners.

Clear category definitions. Is Gnocatan a strategy game or a board game? How about chess boards and chess engines? How did three arcade games end up in the running for 'best free strategy game'?

No duplicate winners- if a game wins Best Free/Non-Free X Category Game, then it can't win Best Free/Non-Free Y Category Game (though it could win Best Free/Non-Free Game or one of the 'special awards'). Spread the awards around.

[a-vince]

It would be nice to show the results for each category sorted by the number of votes (at least as a default option). That would show how close was the contest, which where the strongest contenders, and so on...

Anyway, congratulations for taking this initiative.

[Skydive]

A bit off-topic: it would be cool if there would be an image for each award that can be put on the web-site of the winning game. A bit like the graphics from the Rate-O-Matic but not dynamically generated. Those images could then link back to the Game Tome and it might increase popularity of the awards.
And I like the idea of 2nd and 3rd places so maybe those images could be with a gold, silver or broze medal on them and the year could also be mentioned so that great games can obtain an amount of those 'medals' in a few years time.
_________________
Check out the FreeCol project at http://freecol.sourceforge.net

[gnalle]

So Quake 3 arena is the best non-free game....
How come that it is not the best non-free 3D action game? :)

[deklund]

I agree with the idea of having run-offs, particularly for categories with a lot of nominations and a lot of close-runners. I also think having some sort of graphic for the award winners that they could place on their web site is a good idea, and furthermore having some mention of the fact that it did win the "Best of..." whatever category on the project page itself here would be nice.

I also think the nomination period should be longer next time, and maybe voting too. Since happypenguin isn't usually updated really frequently, I figure a lot of people only check by here once every couple of weeks (wasn't there a poll on this not too long ago?), so they probably missed nominating altogether, and there seemed to be a lot of somewhat obvious choices missing from the voting since no one got the chance to nominate them.

Finally, some more publicity would probably be good too, for the same reasons - and 4417 votes may seem like a lot, but that rounds out to a bit under 200 votes per category (plus obviously some categories were more popular than others), and when you have >10 choices, small things (like getting pimpage from one specific project's message board, *cough* ;) ) can have a lot of influence.

(*I do think Planeshift deserved the award it got, I almost voted for it myself and I think it was in the lead to begin with... just making a point.)

[bobz]

Hi,

We are giving the winners a nice graphic to show off their awards. I was just too lame to have the graphics complete before the announcement date...

As for run-offs, we considered doing that but decided against it under the rationale that it might overly complicate the voting process. It's HARD to get even simple concepts across to most web surfers if the concept can't be conveyed in a short sentence or two. :) The fear was that for round one, we'd have hundreds of participants and just a fraction of that for round two. On the other hand, I completely agree that when 200 people vote for 5 choices you get more meaningful results than when they vote for 20 choices. Run-off voting seems the only reasonable way to reduce the number of contestants, so maybe we'll have to try that next time.

[blindcoder]

idea for next time:

give /. only the google-cache of the results :D
_________________
The blindCoder shows us the way.

[Guest]

if that would call FreeCiV as best strategy game.... eat me!

[blindcoder]

no, thanks. just had breakfast :)
_________________
The blindCoder shows us the way.

[Guest]

Perhaps some categories for kids' games? eg. best educational; age group; free; pay-for; etc ???

[tct]

[trick]

There should be a category group for free games that are not open source (ie. free as in beer =) ), and the the non-free group should be replaced with a commercial group, so you have fx:

• Best Open Source Game
  
• Best Freely Available Game
  
• Best Commercial Game
  

[PigeonGB]

[Guest]

How about a game of the year?

Of all the games released *during* the year, vote for the best (be it free or commercial...)