XYZZY Awards

XYZZY Awards
Competition (series of events)
Frequency	Annual
Part of series
Website	https://xyzzyawards.org/
Organiser	Sam Kabo Ashwell
IFDB event page	Event
IFDB series page	Series
Total entries
Events in this series
XYZZY Awards 1996, XYZZY Awards 1997, XYZZY Awards 1998, XYZZY Awards 1999, XYZZY Awards 2000, XYZZY Awards 2001, XYZZY Awards 2002, XYZZY Awards 2003, XYZZY Awards 2004, XYZZY Awards 2005, XYZZY Awards 2006, XYZZY Awards 2007, XYZZY Awards 2008, XYZZY Awards 2009, XYZZY Awards 2010, XYZZY Awards 2011, XYZZY Awards 2012, XYZZY Awards 2013, XYZZY Awards 2014, XYZZY Awards 2015, XYZZY Awards 2016, XYZZY Awards 2017, XYZZY Awards 2018, XYZZY Awards 2019, XYZZY Awards 2020, XYZZY Awards 2021, XYZZY Awards 2022
Edit this infobox

An annual popular-choice award formerly organized by Eileen Mullin of XYZZYnews, and currently organized by Sam Kabo Ashwell.

The XYZZY Awards are similar to Oscars in the movie business. The awards take place each year in the early spring, with the ceremony occurring online. The awards ceremony used to take place on ifMUD, but in 2017, the event changed venues. The award winners are now announced on Twitter instead.

There are two stages of voting. In the first stage, games are nominated by the IF community for the different categories. Any game that was published in the previous year is eligible for nomination. Games that have been nominated frequently become finalists. In the second stage, members of the community vote on the finalists to pick a winner of each category.

Browse the XYZZY Awards either by year:

• 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Or by category:

• Best Game | Best Writing | Best Story | Best Setting | Best Puzzles | Best NPCs | Best Individual Puzzle | Best Individual NPC | Best Individual PC | Best Use of Medium (1997–2009) | Best Implementation (2010–) | Best Use of Innovation (2010–) | Best Technological Development (2010–) | Best Supplemental Materials (2010–2013) | Best Use of Multimedia (2014–) | Other awards

See also:

• Statistics

History

• Originally organized by Eileen Mullin in 1997, on XYZZYnews. Over time, other volunteers assisted Eileen. In 2009, when announcing the awards, Eileen wrote, "Huge thanks to Lucian Smith, Dan Shiovitz, and David Welbourn for organizing and hosting absolutely everything."
• In 2010, the 2009 XYZZY Awards were organized by Dan Shiovitz on xyzzyawards.org (archive). "David Welbourn tirelessly catalogues games of the previous year, Lucian Smith is master of ceremonies at the awards presentation, and Dan Shiovitz does the site maintenance and admin work." The link to "email the competition organizers" went to Dan Shiovitz.
• In 2011, 2012, and 2013, the FAQ page remained the same, but Sam Kabo Ashwell posted all of the announcements to intfiction.org.
• In 2014, the 2013 XYZZY Awards were formally, officially organized by Sam Kabo Ashwell. Sam has organized every XYZZY Award since then.
• In 2024, Sam announced that he was handing over the XYZZY Awards to pinkunz.

Fine Print

• Regarding IntroComp games: The year that an IntroComp game is completed is the year that game becomes eligible for the XYZZY awards.

Trivia

• Speed-IF XYZZY and Speed-IF Century were two minicomps that used the XYZZY Awards ceremony as a setting.

Links

• XYZZY Awards. As of February 2010, this is the new website for the XYZZY Awards, beginning with XYZZY Awards 2009.
• XYZZYnews (archive). The IF newssite which originally hosted the XYZZY Awards.
• Dylan O'Donnell's page (archive) of XYZZY Award nominees and winners (1996-2004).
• XYZZY Awards at Wikipedia.