Ste Pickford calls for end to 'big-budget preferences'
A prominent indie developer has listed extensive criticisms of the BAFTA Game Awards and its organisers.
Ste Pickford said the glitzy annual event ‘ghettoises’ the triumphs of small-scale independent work, and is too preoccupied with big-budget triple-A titles.
He also claimed the Awards’ genre-based categories are pointless for celebrating the craft of game design, and slammed the policy to charge indies up to £700 to be considered for nomination.
“The awards appear to be set up to help market successful AAA games, rather than to highlight excellence per se,” Pickford said in an opinion piece published on Spong.
“Award categories are heavily weighted in favour of expensive, lavishly produced games rather than spotlighting great work and talented individuals across the broader spectrum of video game development,” he added.
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Pickford said that if this approach was applied to film, then blockbusters like Transformers 3 would sweep the awards night.
“It's not that we don't have video game equivalents to The King's Speech. Just like in movies some of the most interesting work is done in small, niche, low budget titles, but these rarely get a look in at the video game BAFTAs,” Pickford said.
“Increasingly these days the truly innovative and interesting work is happening in the indie scene and in lower budget titles, as the mainstream console industry focuses more and more on safe sequels and glossy updates, but the awards, as they stand, don't recognise this.
“The last few years' winners’ lists are completely dominated by games from the likes of EA, Sony, Microsoft, Activision and Nintendo; the console manufacturers and the big console publishers. These are people who make all the best-selling, biggest budget games, but are they really the only people who produce excellent and inspiring work?
Pickford opened his opinion piece with praise for the Scottish BAFTA Game Awards, which recently honoured Dundee studio Denki for its critically acclaimed indie title Quarrell.
“It's precisely the sort of game that I think should be winning awards,” he said.
As a BAFTA member I feel compelled to defend its position
I am not aware of the rules for selecting games for the Scottish BAFTAs, but I would imagine that it is restricted to games connected to Scotland, which narrows down the field massively and of course increases the chances of good quality smaller games such as Quarrell.
However the BAFTA Game Awards are open to all titles Worldwide thus considerably widening the field. BAFTA is a democratic organization and it can only put forward nominations based on the games voted for in each category by its members. Members can only vote for games they have actually played, and more people have played Call of Duty than Quarrell, thus statistically increasing the likelihood of the nomination of Call of Duty.
BAFTA is very aware of the issues highlighted by Ste and is continually looking at democratic ways to tweak the nomination process to ensure that great indie titles are not entirely overlooked.
Evidence of this is last year’s success of the fantastic indie game Limbo developed by the Danish Indie team Deadlight which had a number of nominations and came very close to winning one or two awards.
As a lifelong indie developer I also care about the profile of Indie studios and Indie games within the industry and I am proud to champion them, but we also have to respect the role and rules of established institutions such as BAFTA.
Jon Hare
BAFTA is not the happy hour at kindergarten where every kid gets a lollipop for drawing an apple!
Everyone is charged a certain amount of entry! if an indie studio with a successful title can't afford £700 as an entry fee for what is one of the most prestigious awards in Europe, i dunno what to say.. is that really too much?
TRUE certain big league games don't deserve to be there and certain indie games deserve to be close with the big league BUT their quality can't be compared. Sorry. And that comes from a prospective indie developer.
How can you possibly compare battlefield modern warfare or dragon age, skyrim, or mario galaxy or zelda or god of war even with amazing indie games such as magicka or bastion or meatboy, trine and so many others!
You simply can't!
to me the complain sounds more like:
"indie games would like to use the marketing boost of BAFTA, but £700 charged is too much!"
