There are a lot of video game awards and most of them are simply popularity contests, and therefore also stinky borefests. The one that isn’t, in my eyes, is the yearly Independent Games Festival awards – the IGFs.
The IGF Celebration Days Steam sale provides plenty of examples as to why, with discounts from now until July 20th on winners and finalists from throughout the IGF awards’ history.
At the top of the Steam sale page you’ll find discounts on March’s IGF 2024 award winners, including 10% off Rhythm Doctor, 70% off Mediterranea Inferno (pictured above), and 40% off Venba. Scroll down and you’ll find discounts on 2024’s finalists (Cocoon! Cobalt Core! A Highland Song!) and winners from previous years (80 Days! Spelunky! Fez! Darwinia! And many more).
IGF awards are decided by, first, a large pool of journalists and developers who sort through a pile of hundreds of submitted games to advocate for a handful, and second, by a smaller group of hand-selected judges, also mostly game developers, who select the shortlist of nominees and ultimately the winners. That’s a decent system which has frequently succeeded in elevating unknown games, such Outer Wilds, which won the Grand Prize in 2015 with an alpha build created by a team of students several years before its full commercial release. More generally the IGF have succeeded, through the award categories and the judges’ discussions, in creating a culture that favours design and innovation over popularity.
The result is the advancement of our medium but also, hey, a big list of great games, now cheap.