Every year, the world of independent games makes leaps and bounds, with 2012 being a truly banner year. Hence why the Independent Games Festival, perhaps the most well known entity to recognize accomplishments in that particular space, is keeping pace with such advances by establishing a brand new category.
IGF chairman Brandon Boyer recently made the announcement on the official IGF website:
Hello everybody, and welcome to a special IGF 2013 mid-stream announcement that, after much careful consideration and discussion, we decided was a necessity: We're adding a new category to this year's festival, Excellence in Narrative.
This may not come as too much of a shock, because it's something that judges, entrants, and the general public have been asking for for quite some time now. Our initial decision to not add the category was not one we took lightly.
It was the subject of many rounds of internal discussion on both the necessity and logistics of adding a category devoted to recognizing narrative innovation, especially as we were making strides to remove categories and pare the festival down to a few core essentials.
But as judging kicked off in early October, it was clear that there was something special about this year's lineup of games in particular that made the absence of a Narrative category especially conspicuous. And so, because so many of our judges have said there are so many games in this year's festival that they specifically want to recognize for their world and their story, we are giving them an avenue to do so.
Boyer goes on to state that they will be defining the category in the same way that the IGF's sister festival, the Game Developers Choice Awards, does. It was also mentioned how the addition of the new category was also party due to the striking of an older one, Mobile.
This upcoming IGF will be the 15th installment, and will take place during the Game Developers Conference, happening March 25-29 in San Francisco.
