Behind the scenes, Valve have been on an impressive streak of overhauling and adding features to help developers lately - usually right after I personally have just finished wrestling with the old version. The latest (unless I just missed this before) is this: a special type of news post that makes it easier for us to funnel you face-first into voting for us in the Steam Awards... but only in one category, of our choice.
This is an outrage. How dare they help us in one particular way but not others? Moreover, how dare they ask me to make any kind of decision? We just did that for 6.5 years, surely now we just recline and win all awards simultaneously.
You can, of course, vote for us in any and all categories - the one we pick here is just one we get a natural boost to, by lubricating the UX funnel to help us launch you more violently in that direction.
If the widget loads better for you than it does in our post-preview screen, you've already seen what we settled on. But let me run you through why this is an awkward decision, and how I'm managing to blame it on anyone but me.
Game of the Year - Maybe it was its immersive gameplay, or its gripping story... its well-crafted characters, immaculate design, or addictive multiplayer. Whatever the reason, the winner of this year's Game of the Year Award is an instant classic.
Right away this is awkward. The question of "Should we suggest you vote for us in a specific category, or just for straight-up greatness?" feels like it just comes down to a swagger test. Namely, who here thinks they have a shot of being one of the 5 most popular games among the 17,000 released this year?
Sure, the GOTY award is gonna go to a big name anyway, but I feel like here they're just doubling the degree to which awards reinforce existing popularity, rather than being an orthogonal axis on which excellence can translate to recognition and success.
TL,DR: I don't have the swagger.
Best Game on Steam Deck - This game was so good, you wanted to take it everywhere. So you grabbed your Steam Deck and did! Luckily, everything that made it endlessly playable at your desk got even better on the go.
It would be funny to enter this, given that we're currently only rated as Playable rather than Verified. Lots of people are having a great time with it on Deck, but we missed out on Verified due to some lingering keyboard mentions that are already replaced, and a few places where button labels fell slightly below the text size guidelines. But we plan to fix that soon and get our shiny green tick, so this was more of a status-update interlude than an awards complaint.
Outstanding Visual Style - Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity (though a noble goal in itself)… it describes a distinctive look and feel that suffuses an entire game.
I do wanna put us forward for this! Please vote for us here! Our artist John Roberts (yes, just one) truly brings this game to life in a way I just can't imagine anyone doing better. The game is packed with brilliant little characterful details he added that not only help the visuals tell the story and realise the world, but actively shaped my writing as we went along.
Aside: it's very funny that realistic games are explicitly banned from being considered stylish. Like how no live action movie has a visual style, and photography isn't art. But I won't make a big deal of this incorrect opinion since it benefits us in this instance.
Best Soundtrack - This unsung hero deserves to be recognized for its outstanding musical score. It's the OST with the MOST!
Another one I'd love to put us forward for - our composer Robert Arzola did a fantastic job, and I especially love our main theme.
Aside: the description oddly implies the category is meant for underappreciated titles, but on second reading I think that's all for the sake of making a 'sung' pun? But each time I wonder about that, the next sentence interrupts me with a deep concern that the writer routinely pronounces 'OST' as 'oast'.
Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Some days, only a narrative-heavy game will hit the spot, and this one packs a wallop. It's as gripping as any soap opera, and as well-tuned as a prestige-TV screenplay. Bravissimo -- for making us feel things!
OK, so you already know we went for this one. This is extra awkward, because not coincidentally, the guy writing the news post also wrote the story. But! And this is why I don't like this system: ultimately, you're not asking us what the best thing about our game is. You're asking us to guess which category we have the best shot of being nominated in.
Since a ton of popular games just don't feature any significant writing at all, my guess is if we pick this, we're jostling for position in a half-empty room. As big as a success as Wizards has been for a team our size, we're still tiny in the broader Steam ecosystem, so we've gotta pick the smallest pond to wrestle in. Is that the metaphor? Doesn't matter.
Aside: just noting that the use of 'soap opera' as the high watermark for 'gripping' did not pass without eyebrow-raise.
In case it's not obvious from my tone, the scale of this problem is minor. I just have a bee in my bonnet about it because I actually think awards can be a really positive force in the games scene. And because I know discoverability is one of the big things folks on the Steam team care about and work hard on, it feels like an own goal for this feature to nudge the Steam awards even further towards just holding up a mirror to the sales charts.
So, real quick, here's what I'd change:
- Devs get to pick up to 3 categories to put their game forward for.
- Game of the Year is just added to that list automatically. It's not meaningful to ask us if we wanna be considered for that, it just further locks out smaller and more modest devs.
- Add a Hidden Gem category. Not for us, we did fine, but to push folks to think of something they loved that didn't already get the spotlight it deserved.
OK, that's enough dressing up this beg-for-votes post, back to begging you to vote for us for Visual Style, Soundtrack, Story-Rich and - if you really want to stick to the man - Game of the Year. That'll show 'em.