Charlie Strong, Image: Newscom

• Charlie Strong, Florida defensive coordinator
• Kirby Smart, Alabama defensive coordinator
• Bryan Harsin, Boise State offensive coordinator
• Jeff Quinn, Cincinnati offensive coordinator
• Dick Bumpas, TCU defensive coordinator

The top winner will be announced on December 8. Last year, Kevin Wilson of Oklahoma was the winner. Both Strong and Bumpas were also in the running.

Regardless of who is named the award winner, all of these men are wonderful football coaches, and it is extremely likely that we’ll see even bigger and better things from many of these coaches. A number of past award winners have gone on to become head coaches, and I could see that happening to all of the assistant

Post from: EveryJoe

Broyles Award Finalists Announced

The feat in question? After a 60-yard pass reception, he became the second person to ever have at least 2500 yards rushing, 1500 yards in kick off returns, 1000 yards receiving, and 500 yards in punt returns. The only other person to ever reach those stats was the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush of USC. Bush is now a player for the New Orleans Saints.

CJ Spiller, playing against Duke last year. Image: Newscom

Clemson eventually lost their game to TCU 14 – 10, bringing them to a record of 2 – 2 overall and 1 – 1 in the ACC. He’s definitely someone to watch, especially if he continues at this pace. Players like him are players worth the money paid to top picks by NFL teams, but will being on a mediocre team hurt him?

Post from: EveryJoe

Congratulations, CJ Spiller

So, this year Adventure Gamers decided that they wanted to do something bold and awesome – both at the same time (which is sometimes very uncomfortable). They decided to have their very own award ceremony! And why not? They’ve been around the Internet for 10 years, giving reviews to adventure games and talking about all the new stuff us adventure game fans are bound to see coming our way.

You’d think they would’ve come up with some type of award ceremony many moons ago, really!

And this isn’t you’re regular, run of the mill, award ceremony. Oh, no. Adventure Gamers could never be “regular” (unless they’re drinking a lot of coffee over there. And if that’s the case, we probably don’t want to know). No, this award ceremony will span 3 days! That’s like the longest award ceremony ever!

This shindig started on Wednesday the 18th and will be continuing until Friday the 20th. We’ll be seeing lots of different awards being handed out such as “Best Story”, “Best Comedy”, “Best Writing”, “Best Setting”, “Best Music” and “Best Adventure” and can only mean good things for both indie developers and big production companies.

So, who won yesterday’s awards? Let’s find out:

• Best Story: Time Hallow
• Best Writing – Comedy: Sam and Max – Season 2
• Best Writing – Drama: Overclocked: A History of Violence
• Best Gameplay: Sam and Max – Season 2
• Best Concept: The Experiment

Want to keep up with the Aggie Awards? Head on over here to find out who’s going to be winning in today’s categories. Looks like there may be a few games I really need to try out coming up on these lists!

[Image courtesy of Adventure Gamers.]

Post from: EveryJoe

Adventure Gamers – The Aggie Awards

According to this news post over at Double Fine Games, Tim Schafer will be presenting along side a whole slew of famous people at the Spike TV Video Game Award Show. The award show takes place tonight on December 14th at 8 PM EST, so if you weren’t plan on watching the award show, nows your chance to see Tim live and in drag!

Okay, he probably won’t be in drag. Because that would just be weird.

Some of the games that will be seen on the award show this year include God of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Fallout 3, Little Big Planet, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space and a whole slew of other games.

I wonder what Tim will be presenting for. Can’t wait to see him and if he brings any info about Brütal Legend!

Post from: EveryJoe

Tim Schafer to Present on Spike TVs Video Game Awards

This year, Jack Black will be hosting Spike TV’s Video Game Awards on December 14th and during the award show, we’ll probably see a trailer of some sort for Double Fine’s new game, Brütal Legend. It only makes sense that Black talked to a few guys at Spike about showing the trailer for the game that he’ll be the star in. This can only make a publisher that much more excited about picking up Brütal Legend and letting us, the little people, play it.

But, that’s not why I think Jack Black is cool. Jack Black is cool, because according to this USA Today article, Jack Black’s favorite game of all time is Psychonauts. Fitting, because that game was also made by Double Fine. Also fitting because Pyschonauts is extremely awesome.

Now, what game do you think is going to win this award show? Which one will get the most awards? I’m going to have to say Fallout 3, which is still one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played. I had to force myself to stop playing the damn thing after two weeks when my house started falling apart from the lack of care. Video games are evil.

[Image courtesy of Double Fine.]

Post from: EveryJoe

Did Jack Black just get a little cooler?

It’s a good time of year for awards to be announced… especially when those awards come in the terms of free adventure games that you… yes! Even YOU… can download and play for free! Don’t you love free stuff? Well, free stuff is even better when you know it is good free stuff, so that’s why the people over at Adventure Game Studios has an award ceremony every year celebrating the awesomeness of indy developers and their adventure games.

That’s right my friends… Adventure Game Studios have recently announced its winners for the 2007 AGS Awards and there were quite a few games that won awards that were pretty ding dang awesome. Let’s take the game Nelly Cootalot – Spoonbeaks Ahoy! for example. Not only did it win in the category Best Game Created with AGS 2007, but it also won in Best Gameplay 2007, Best Dialogue Writing 2007, Best Player Character 2007, and Best Character Art 2007. I think it is safe to say that Nelly Cootalot – Spoonbeaks Ahoy! by Alasdair Beckett is probably a pretty kick ass game to play. Now, I haven’t played it, but after seeing awards like this for just ONE game, it has got to be one of the best games ever. Right?

If you’d like to see the other awards given out and what games got which awards, take a look a AGC’s Wikipedia where all the award information rests in one beautiful place.

Yay for indy developers! They make the world go… well, go around, really.

Post from: EveryJoe

2007 Adventure Game Studio Awards Announced

If you haven’t heard by now, Bone: The Great Cow Race, the wonderful game adaptation of the comic book series BONE by Jeff Smith, is up for quite the lovely little award. According to the ever so exciting TellTale Games blog, Bone: The Great Cow Race is up for the Independent Games Festival’s Audience Award. This is a competition that Gamespot has been doing for the past 9 years, so this is a pretty big deal in the game world! I mean, come on… the winning finalist will win $2,500 to blow on hookers and lollipops. There isn’t anything better to spend your winnings on, in my opinion.

Bone is up against some tough competitors. Samorost 2, a lovely point and click adventure game by Amanita Design is bound to get a few votes for this award… There is also some weird sci-fi first person shooter called Armada Online, which is a MMORPG and you can kill other players. That’s always a plus. And then there is always the weird and challenging puzzle games that look cool like Armadillo Run, which makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

There are all sorts of cool looking games to peruse, but if you want to do your adventuring duties right, you should of course vote for the adventure games like Bone: The Great Cow Race. So go… vote here. You can even download all the demos, so really you have no excuse… except maybe if you broke all your fingers in a horrific bowling accident. It’s happened. Seriously.

If you don’t, when Max becomes president, you’ll be the first to be terminated. I’m serious.

[images borrowed from telltale games. word.]

Post from: EveryJoe

Bone up for Independent Games Festival award

Ahhh… It seems like just yesterday I talked about the nominees for the 2006 Adventure Game Studio awards. Well, the results of the voting process have been tallied and the winners have been announced.

The game that took the most awards was Trilby’s Notes by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. Trilby’s Notes won awards in the following categories:

• Best Game Created with AGS for 2006
• Best Story in an AGS Game
• Best Supporting Character in an AGS Game
• Best Animation in an AGS Game

Hmm, it would appear as though I would have a new AGS game I should play… and that game is called Trilby’s Notes.

It also looks like xii games also took home several awards, which included the following awards:

What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed by Vince Twelve:

• Best Scripting in an AGS Game”
• Best Innovation

Spooks by Erin “The Ivy” Robinson:

• Best Player Character in an AGS Game (yay! she was such an awesome character)
• Best Music in an AGS Game

Congratulations to all the award winners out there. You guys are truly inspiring and awesome.

Post from: EveryJoe

AGS Award Winners Announced

According to Dreamfall creator, Ragnar Tornquist at RangarTornquist.com, Dreamfall will be nominated for Game Developer Choice Award in Writing at the Game Developers Conference 2007, which shall take place in San Fransisco March 5th through the 9th (man, was that like the longest run on sentence ever?)

Dreamfall seems to be up against some heavy hitters in that category and out of all of them, I think Dreamfall would be the one I would pick to be the winner.

Check out the other nominees:

• Bully (Rockstar Vancouver / Rockstar Games)
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (Funcom / Aspyr Media)
• Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock (Telltale Games / GameTap)
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Game Studios / 2K Games/Bethesda Softworks)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo EAD / Nintendo)

Now, I’ve never played Bully, but I have played other Rockstar games… and if it’s anything like Grand Theft Auto, then… ummm… that’s not the best writing in there. I mean, it’s a bunch of gangsters kicking some ass, right? I guess if the Sopranos can win a million awards, so can Bully. But, being an adventure gamer at heart, I hope either Dreamfall or Sam & Max Episode 1 gets the award.

If you’re interested in attending the Game Developers Conference in March 2007, you may register here. I’m sure it shall be a blast.

Post from: EveryJoe

Dreamfall To Receive Award

If you, like me, have an interest in AGS (Adventure Game Studio), but have little time to figure out which games you should play (because let’s face it, some of those games look good, but are just a dang waste of time), it is the best time of year for us. Why, you might ask? Well, because according to Adventure Gamers, the AGS Team has posted the Nominees of the 2006 AGS Awards.

You know what’s so awesome about the AGS awards? Well, come February 11th, you can see what people think are the best AGS games out there. This means little brainwork on your part or even mine. I love awards. They make my life easier. You can download the best games out there and avoid the worse without having to do any work whatsoever on your part to make sure it’s good. If people vote for it, it must be good… Right? RIGHT?!

Okay… there are some cases where it isn’t so good:

Nice ears, Georgie

What’s weird about this year’s nominees are that there are some big names out there competing with the little underground guys. With games like Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, by Hyimalaya Studios and torrent file has been compiled to make your life, oh so much easier. I love easiness.

Also, I found this tidbit in the AGS forums:

The awards ceremony proper will be on IRC from 8pm GMT on Sunday 11th February, however, so you can come along for that.

So, be sure to watch out for that IRC chat.

Post from: EveryJoe

2006 AGS Award Nominees announced