The International Gamers Awards (IGA) have been held for almost a quarter of a century and are widely considered to be one of the three major gaming awards. Their jury have just announced their nominated games for 2023. The IGA jury gives awards in three categories: Best Multiplayer Experience, Best 2-Player Experience, and Best Solo Experience. Here are the nominated games, together with their designers and their publishers.
Best Multiplayer Experience
- Challengers! (1 More Time Games) – Johannes Krenner, Markus Slawitscheck
- Darwin’s Journey  (ThunderGryph Games) – Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone
- Earth  (Inside Up Games) – Maxime Tardif
- Heat: Pedal to the Metal  (Days of Wonder) – Asger Granerud, Daniel Pedersen
- Lacrimosa (Devir) – Gerard Ascensi, Ferran Renalias
- Marrakesh  (Queen) – Stefan Feld
- Planet Unknown  (Adam’s Apple Games) – Ryan Lambert, Adam Rehberg
- Revive  (Aporta) – Kristian Ostby, Eilif Svensson, Helge Meissner, Anna Wermlund
- Tiletum  (Board&Dice) – Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini
Best 2-Player Experience
- Lacuna (CMYK) – Mark Gerrits
- Oranienburger Kanal (Spielworxx) – Uwe Rosenberg
- Splendor Duel (Space Cowboys) – Bruno Cathala, Marc Andre
- Undaunted: Battle of Britain (Osprey Games) – Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson
- Wingspan Asia (Stonemaier Games) – Elizabeth Hargrave
Best Solo Experience
- Earth  (Inside Up Games) – Maxime Tardif
- Eleven (Portal Games) – Thomas Jansen
- Legacy of Yu (Garphill Games) – Shem Phillips
- Resist! (Salt & Pepper) – Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson, Roger Tankersley
Finally, the jury recommends the following games, which just missed being nominated in one of the categories:
- Mosaic  (Forbidden Games) – Glenn Drover
- Woodcraft  (Delicious Games) – Vladimir Suchy, Ross Arnold
The winner in each category will be announced in late September. Congratulations to all the deserving designers and publishers!
IGA, Spiel, and DSP? Is IGA considered a bigger deal than the As D’or?
First of all, Derek, there may be a bias on my part, since I’ve served on the IGA jury for quite some time. But even before the IGA powers-that-be displayed that unusual lack of judgment and asked me to join, I considered the IGAs to have “third major” status, along with the SdJ and DSP awards, and most people who closely follow gaming awards would agree. Longevity is part of it, together with a jury made up of true gaming luminaries (present company excluded). The IGA’s also slot in nicely with the two German awards: the SdJ’s usually honor family games, the DSP’s tendency is to go with meatier middleweights, while the IGA’s history is to cite games on the heavier end of the scale. But I think the biggest reason the IGA’s are so well respected is that they take the “international” part of their name very seriously. They try to include jury members from throughout the globe and games from every part of the world are honored–it is by no means a regional award.
The As d’Or, on the other hand, is basically France’s Game of the Year and is closely associated with French designers and publishers. For example, here are the designers with the most As d’Or nominations over the years:
Bruno Cathala – 12
Dominique Ehrhard – 8
Philippe des Pallieres – 6
Antoine Bauza – 6
Now these are all very talented designers, but, as you can see, they are all French. 14 people have at least 3 As d’Or nominations and in that list, you will not find Knizia, Kramer, Teuber, Rosenberg, Moon, Wallace, Feld, or Kiesling. The As d’Or awards are well respected, but they are just one of many national gaming awards. To my way of thinking, both the Golden Geeks and the Dice Tower awards have more influence and higher prominence throughout the world than the As d’Or, as they honor games throughout the world and not just from one region. So yes, to me, the IGA’s are a bigger deal than the As d’Or and I don’t think that’s a minority opinion.
Larry,
You assumption are wrong on As d’Or. We are running almost exactly as the SdJ since quite some time now (around 2005 I would say) , taking into consideration games released in France the previous year.
As for SdJ we have more games from french designer (they have more from german designer) but this is never a consideration for the nomination.
We are 9 jurys working all year to test each and every release, culminating in a finalist nomination during a disputed week end around end of january.
(I say “we” but I left the jury this year after 5 years being in)
I would also mention that I think we have the best game award ceremony of the world, held during Cannes Game Festival (en February)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6_VBWTTg5Q&t=2418s if you want to look at the last one.
We know for sure that the SdJ jury is closely following what we are doing (and we have very often overlapping games section).
From Europe point of view, I am sorry but I really think your opinon is definitly a minority opinion ;-)
But of course I concur with you if you are talking about the north american audience.
North American audience? Maybe “English-speaking” would be more accurate. After all, the majority of the IGA jury members hail from outside of North America and we really do try to focus on being an “international” award and not a regional one. But I can’t say I’m certain how we’re viewed in the different areas of the world, and how the IGA’s stack up against other game awards. So I concede that the question of which awards are “major” ones may well be up to the individual–it’s not like there’s an official hierarchy of awards listed anywhere.
That’s an interesting perspective. To be honest, I’m pretty sure most gamers don’t care much at all about the annual game awards (at least, not nearly as much as I do), so discussions about which ones should be considered “majors” and such come from a small number of people. So it’s always good to hear from other sources. And I always appreciate your insights on all things gaming.
I think that’s pretty cool that an OG writer here is on the IGA panel. Is there a link to a list of the IGA winners over past years? A quick search did not turn one up.
Oh, we’ve got more than one OG writer on the IGA jury, Jacob. In addition to me, Dale, Lorna, Liga, Alan How, Mark Jackson, and Melissa Rogerson serve on the jury. Gaming is nothing if not incestuous!
For the IGA winners, here’s a list from the IGA website: https://www.internationalgamersawards.net/winners.
Well, that’s impressive! Gives this site even more credibility. Thanks for the link!
Thanks for the information!