What is going on with Zero Page Homebrew?

[peteym5]

I am not speaking just of myself here, but also speaking for other program developers, artist, and publishers that make games for the Atari community. For the last several months, I have been privately speaking to others, and among our own team. We have noticed the “Zero Page Homebrew” James O'Brien has not been giving some programmers, artists, developers, and publishers that work independently of a certain Atari forum website. At one point he said he was not biased, and the list of games he has been posted have been coming from anyone. The recent Zero Page Homebrew awards appear to have excluded people like Video61, Songbird, Wave1Games, and others that are not affiliated. It would be nice for people such as myself, Video 61 and others to be recognized for our hard work. We believe that there should be fair recognition for developers and publishers that have provided a great deal to the Atari community.

[TrekMD]

I think, and I'm not saying that I agree, that because the voting takes place in AA, he is limiting to games released through the forum.  I think it should be open to everyone, though.  Any homebrew developer should be recognized and included.

[CrossBow]

It is also worth mentioning that the games that are nominated are either released publicly making them easy to play or have a demo version in most cases that give a good representation of the game as a whole.

But I have noticed that a few of the games this year are essentially (here is a YT video of it in action), and that is all that is provided to base judgement. I don't agree with such games being allowed because in my eyes, you can't judge a game properly unless you have a chance to be able to play it in some form.

I'm not actually voting this year and it is the first time I'm taking this stance. I also declined being on the nomination team last year and this year not only for similar reasons already stated, but also because I was a tester on some of these and that will always bring about some bias. James stated he doesn't vote because he feels folks will think he has a natural bias on the games and I agree with him on that. But then lots of the Devs that watch his streams etc..., said he should vote?

 

Edited February 18 by CrossBow

[slobu]

I didn't understand the nomination process this year.  That factored in to my Atari 2600 titles not getting voted on.  A couple might have gotten disqualified due to technicalities.

I am grumpy about it due to my own failings and lack of traction in the scene.  But, feelings pass.  Actions last.

 

[Jinroh]

I just discovered the thread here. Someone asked why they can't voting for Carrot Kingdom™, and the answer was "There was no public binary release." or something like that, which at the time there was. You just had to download from the Carrot Kingdom™ site, not from the other forum. 😛

That was kinda uncool IMO, along with the very limited list of games that do not including the rest of us. Like Peter said, no Songbird, Video61, etc. I don't keep up with the whole scene, but IMO the Venture port for 7800 that Peter and Lance did should have been way up the list!

Either way, I appreciate the hard work of everyone, and love checking out what I can from everyone. 💖