Keen Awards 2024: Winners

[szemi]

Who will make the trophies for the winners if Lava89 is inactive?

[K1n9_Duk3]

Looks like I'm late to the party. Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everybody who voted.

[SodiumtheGlitcher]

Looks like I'm late to the party. Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everybody who voted.

And congrats to you for being the K1n9est_Duk3 of the year!

[SodiumtheGlitcher]

While on the topic of awards, are the nominations going to start early just like last year's? Please keep that same thing up.

[Quillax]

Well, I think it's about time I start responding to some of the questions brought up here (I should've done this a while ago, really). However, I want to make a couple statements first:

First off, the KeenWiki article has been updated to include info about Keen Awards 2024, as well as to update the statistics. Right now, Dave216 has tied with Nisaba for most wins total!

Second, I'd like to thank you all who voted for me for Online Community Service Recognition. It feels nice to win a Keen Award after so many years of not winning one. Keeping KeenWiki up to date is something I've always liked to do, and while my takeover of Keen Awards had a bit of a rocky start, it makes me happy to see a lot of participation and enthusiasm still going on with these events! I'd like to express my gratitude to all of those who thanked me for keeping the Keen Awards torch burning! Also, thank you to the single person who voted for me for Keenest Person of the Year, whoever you may be.

Now for the responses:

And I'm glad as well that even if Keen Dreams Gold didn't become the best mod (yeah-yeah, bugs and such), but glad it became almost popular.

Your mod is just one vote below Revival of Bliss, so the competition was pretty tight at least! I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that before.

Speaking of "Most Promising Project", when I looked at it last a day before the deadline, it was tied between the updated versions of "Foray in the Forest" and "Keen Meets the Meats", and I thought that was about right so I didn't vote. Looks like someone broke the tiebreak. If I had seen that in time, I would have voted for "Keen Meets the Meats" to even it out again.

I remember a few years ago, there were a few ties going on in Keen Awards, but apparently someone broke them at the last minute. It's interesting how that happened again here. To come think about it, we haven't had a tie in any of the Keen Awards events before.

To be honest, I kinda thought of AAMBA15Y potentially belonging to a kind of a separate "Comebacks" category. However, that could be unfair to new completed projects with much more contents to see. It should be better to encourage newer projects requiring more work. Therefore, listing AAMBA15Y under the same category/thread as "Keen Dreams Gold Edition by szemi" and "Revival of Bliss by Dave216" looked like a good choice to me.

To be fair I felt the same way with Mura being nominated. And now I feel a bit like a jerk for not speaking up about it before voting started but the old one level demo already won in the same categories 3 years ago and thinking about it now I'm not sure if it should qualify to enter the contest again, at least in the overall vorticon mod category.
Nevertheless the awards still bring attention to all nominated projects whether they win or not, and that's what I think is most important.

I think this is something worth discussing for the next Keen Awards. When Foray in the Forest version 2.0 comes out, I could see that wiping the floor for Best Galaxy Mod, so I'm not sure if that should qualify when the initial release already won the award. I don't mean to put down all the hard work that goes into updating these mods (and I'm sure FitF will have a very substantial one!), but like NY00123 said, I'd rather have people make something new rather than just endlessly update their old work. It would be kind of like seeing the Oscars nominate Star Wars every time George Lucas makes a change to it, wouldn't it?

My line of thinking when nominating Mura and AAMBA is that Mura's latest demo appears to be the last release it'll ever get (and 75% of the levels are brand new), and AAMBA never got a nomination as it first released when Keen Awards was in hiatus. However, I could see why someone would get frustrated when their work gets beaten by an old project that got some tweaking in the relevant year. I'd still make an exception for projects that got a completed release for the first time, so in that case Inside the Vorticon Hyve would still count for Best Vorticon Mod. I kind of like the idea of having a "Best Comeback" or "Best Update" category, especially since I'm sure we'll get a lot of updated mods this year.

Cool stuff. I really haven't been active on PCKF or played much Keen at all lately, but i haven't abandoned keen entirely!!!!! I'm tempted to whip up some 90s cgi style trophies but no guarantees, i'm way too busy with doom modding nowadays One of these days i'm gonna make a proper Galaxy mod i swear, even if it's only like 3 levels........

I'll admit, I thought of reaching out to you to see if you wanted to make trophies! I think 90s CGI would look really cool with the Keen characters and elements. I imagine it would be kind of like the trophies from Keen Awards 2002 (though you don't need to make a unique trophy for every category, just four would be good, one per category group).

W00t, I won. Even if it was by being the only option in my category.

Yeah, fangames have become a rare breed nowadays. Back in the 90s and 2000s there were so many of them being made, but in the 2020s you could count all the fangames with just two hands. Since Best Fangame also counts mods of non-Keen games, I thought of nominating the skin mod that makes Cosmo wear Keen's clothes, but I thought the connection to Keen was perhaps too tenuous for it to count.

Who will make the trophies for the winners if Lava89 is inactive?

That's up to whoever wants to take on the task. As it's been the tradition by this point, the trophies should be 3D models rendered as images. I know not many people do 3D modelling these days, but there are still some. I think Pandakeen makes some pretty cool 3D art.

While on the topic of awards, are the nominations going to start early just like last year's? Please keep that same thing up.

My idea was to start in Keen Day, although that might depend on how things go. As I said before, I think it'd be good to get opinions on how updated versions of old mods should be handled, as it seems like an important topic.

[SodiumtheGlitcher]

I think that there should be a category for Best Update (one for Vorticons, and one for Galaxy), and any updates that are substantial enough (something more than just tiling errors and typos) can go in those categories. Inside the Vorticon Hyve did get a full release, so it should count for Best Vorticon Mod. The Life of Mars got a somewhat large update this year (replacing 2 whole levels with new ones and adding Yorp mesages), so if there is a Best Update category, it should fit there.

The only problem with this is the question "What qualifies as substantial enough?" I think that's up to you (Quillax), since you're running the show here. If you want the community to decide something like that, go ahead.

Overall, thanks for a Very Keen Year, for the 2 votes (the 3rd one was mine ), congrats to the winners, and good luck for Keen Awards 2025!