"The Quake Awards" is not as catchy as the Cacowards. Quakawards? idk 

Perhaps consider adding a section to acknowledge maybe 3 people who stepped forward to help out in the community in the current year who are brand new or started helping out.

Like didn't pritchard do an exceptional amount of bug reporting last year and finding some really obscure but eye-popping ones? For ericw tools, for my engine, probably other things.

And there might be someone relatively unknown that helps out with speedmapping or Quaddicted or edited the Quake wikia a ton that no one knows about or maybe someone who makes a tutorial or utility for a map editor.

One obvious example for this year would be dumptruck_ds, but while definitely not excluding highly visible heros, there have to be invisible ones or ones that have helped that don't get noticed.

When new people step forward and help out, makes things better.

/2 cents 

 

well I did consider calling them the Shubbies or Quaddies... I like the term "Pentagram of Perfection" for the overall award winner.

I'm happy for the community to come up with a catchy awards name. 

I kinda like the name Quaddies! But if I've understood correctly, these awards are only for the first Quake, right? So isn't the quad damage a little bit too inclusive for all the Quake games, since it's in all of them?

If we go with an award named after a cute iconic monster (like the Cacoward), there's really no substitute for the shambler! Besides the monster isn't included in the later games (if we don't count little cameos). Maybe they could simply be called the Shamblers (kinda like the Oscars) or Shambler awards?

However, when I really think about it, I'm not very keen on this whole award idea, in general. I'm afraid the Quake 1 community is just too small to prevent the clique of self-awarding from forming. Are there really enough judges to rotate between the years? Will the same funcies just keep awarding the same few funcies every year?

Either the awards would have to be awarded far less frequently (every 5 years??), or we should wait for the community to grow quite a bit more, or the other Quake games should be included to increase the pool to draw judges and nominees from. Just my two cents to add to Bakers'. 

 

 

"Why'd they name it that, anyway?"
"Because the whole thing is a sham!"
"DOHOHOHOHO"

alternately
"The Shammies? Like the things you use to clean up a spilled drink?"
"Too bad it can't clean up this mess of a thread!"
"DOHOHOHOHO" 

I dislike any Shambler reference... mainly because this isn't an exercise in egotism on my part and I'd rather people didn't misconstrue it that way. 

The Gold Ones 

Henceforth, thou shall be known as Cthton-Naut. 

The Golden Spawn Awards (aka "The Golden Spawns")

Only because I realised this works pretty well:

https://i.imgur.com/ygvRbgr.png 

Film: Oscars

Quake: Ospawns 

this isn't an exercise in egotism on my part 

Golden Spawn award

Golden Globe award 

 

:) That prize, seriously man... Goldplated. 

FYI for y'all who haven't clicked through to the site yet: snaut is also posting some short retrospectives of past cool maps. I like reading 'em.

Thumbs up to the idea of an awards site as a way to give more attention to great Quake stuff. Any particular person getting a "virtual trophy" is fine, whatever, but the best part is making a collection of awesomeness that other folks can see. I mentioned elsewhere that I love the Cacowards both as a way to find maps to play and as a general celebration of fantastic Doom work still being done in the 21st century, so I'm perfectly ok with the idea of Quake trying to have something similar.

I think it can be done well and not divisively. (I do like the idea of rewarding some set of maps rather than a specific ranking.) Of course nothing from me is up for consideration here so I'm just speaking as a spectator. 

None of the shambler-reference suggestions are made because a user named Shamblernaut started this. They come to mind, because the Shambler is the most iconic monsters from Quake; much like the Cacodemon is in Doom. It makes sense to use a name like that for its iconic value alone. Quake Awards sounds very generic, and some of the other names suggested here are downright terrible. 

I agree with the post above. Shambler is a name that immediately evokes Quake 1, while Spawn reminds me of that comic book superhero :P 

Yeah, the Shambler is the perfect mascot. Would kill any confusion people had about which quake game the awards were for. 

BTW, I know this was discussed above but I'm not 100% sure that the point came across or what the resolution was...

There are a lot of maps that fit in neither of the two "best map" award categories as currently described. I.e. maps that neither are vanilla-compatible nor do they user BSP2.

One of these categories should be reworded so that it is just "everything that doesn't fit in the other category". 

I'll change it to "not vanilla compatible" 

By having what sounds like "the quake community awards as organized and voted on by the quake community" - you are basically turning what is currently a small user-base, pretty chilled-out hobby into a competition. Now, every single release a mapper puts out is essentially going to be considered a competition entry, whether they like it or not.

Is Mapper A better than Mapper B? I guess we'll know officially now! The judges have spoken! Awww, didn't make the grade? better luck next year (scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, if you know what I mean, wink wink!)

Mappers outnumber non-mappers like 10-1 here, so I can't see how this can be anything other than an exercise in self-promotion, with probably equal amounts of favoritism and ostracism going on. 

I'm not afraid to go on record as being uncomfortable with the process. The idea of the awards is great. I am aware of who the judges are and I do agree that they are a good selection. I also know that Shamblernaut has nothing but good will here and he wants to strengthen the Quake community.

I get all of it.

There is a continent of people in the community that abhor the negativity in parts of this community and want to mitigate it in their own way.

I get that too.

But I also have the experience of just having participated in the 100b4 jam and what #49 says in his post is pretty much spot on for that experience. If I had known the maps were going to be ranked, I would not have participated in that event. I guess I wasn't around for 100b 1-3 to know how this worked going in. I just figured there would be a first prize map and everyone else had the honor of participating. Instead we had a new mapper from a different community come in dead last with a map that followed the rules to a T and had a wonderful aesthetic. But it featured trick jumping.

So now with this award, a small subset of that community will be selecting, ranking and awarding "bests". That's not a community award that's a small group of "influencers" giving their opinions at best. Good people, no doubt - but it doesn't matter who it is: ranking creative endeavors with participants of varying skill levels is wrong minded in my book.

My real concern is that this was just decided upon announced - and not brought up to the community for input from the start. At least not here.

So I am uncomfortable I think for good reason. But I would guess I am in the minority. I fully expect a torrent of anonymous taunts and ridicule from this post but fuck it - hitting submit.