5punk Awards 2012

[Dog Pants]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 5punky awards 2012. Congratulations to all nominees and winners. This year has had its fair share of ups and downs for all of us, but from a community point of view the year has been good. Some solid games have seen us mass on TS for group shennanigans, and the coming year looks to continue the upward trend. Bashes were great as usual, and are pivotal to us being the close group we are. Thanks to all who took the effort to plan and host them. With a few new tools for the site we can hopefully generate some amusing and interesting content, and the rise of recorded stuff such as the 5podcasts and forthcoming Lets Plays could bear some brilliant results. So before we look to the future, lets take a final look over last year and mete out our awards.

Single Player Game of the Year
A fair mix of big titles and indies has marked this year's high points in SP games, and that's looking like it might be a trend which stays with the popularity of crowd funding and continued coverage of smaller games by the lies of Rock Paper Shotgun. This year's award reflects that, taking 41% of the votes and racing ahead of huge games like Dishonoured and Hitman Absolution. The winner has been a poster child for Kickstarter, and one of the first successful, finished games to emerge. The Single Player Game of the Year is the engrossing, tragic talespinning space adventure;

FTL: Faster Than Light

Multiplayer Game of the Year
A grand list of nominations this year, including a few old favourites. While there has been a clear winner, there were a few surprise entries many of us probably wouldn't have predicted we'd like in the form of DOTA2 and Mass Effect 3. Another interesting trend is that of the rise of free-to-play games. In previous years F2P would have been overlooked as cheap and low quality, or using dirty tricks to try to part you with your cash, but this year has seen some quality releases with a reasonable payment model. The sign of things to come maybe. Which leads us to this year's winner. A huge game which accomplishes a rare feat of being a very playable FPS which can accommodate hundreds of simultaneous players across several kilometers. This is Battlefield multiplied by a hundred, a stage in which tales of dogfights, mass tank battles, and infantry charges are all being written at the same time, every hour. Our Multiplayer game of the year is;

Planetside 2

Game of the Year
2012 was a good year for all kinds of games, and our nominations have reflected that. Among them we have a first person shooters, an action adventure, an MMO, a story-heavy adventure with its roots in the point-and-clicks of old, and even a console game. That's some impressive diversity, and every game had at least one vote, showing that we're just as diverse in our tastes as the developers are in their releases. The fact that we are a gaming community is telling though, and the winner is understandably a multiplayer game. While it has not fully realised its social aspects, among us and the gaming community at large, this game has shown that it is willing to take chances to shake up the genre, to do things differently where so many have been following the same formula. It wasn't the revelation everyone was expecting, but the poll results show that enough of us can see the potential to want to continue playing into the next year. The 5punk Game of the Year is;

Guild Wars 2

Vampire of the Year
Real life is encroaching on the lives of most of us, putting pressure on the amount of time we have to game. For some that means less gaming time, but for others that means sacrificing a little sleep. This award will be retired this year until such a time when we may have enough student board members to warrant it again. So for now our winner is the final award holder. This 5punker, while not necessarily the most stalwart of stay-uppers, makes up for that with frequency and amusement value. Few friday or saturday nights will go by without our Vampire appearing mid game, merrily pissed from an evening in the pub, and joining in with drunken enthusiasm. This is the kind of gaming we are about at 5punk, and for that we salute our Vampire of the Year;

Pnut

Liver of the Year
This year's award has been a two-horse race, between the nightly inebriated gaming of Pnut and the heroic alcohol consumption of FatherJack. Both are 5punky staples, but are becoming rarer. The absence of regular winners JockGit, Berk, and Ty is revealing and only goes to reinforce the achievement of both of these old hands who carry the blue-flamed torch of alcohol abuse which underlines many of our antics. In the end sheer coverage won out, and our award goes to the nominee who can regularly be found leading the zig-zagging, swaying charge of drunken gaming;

Pnut

Master of Rings
The site has been quietly trickling along for another year with a slow drip of new games and members, but without even this slight current the pond that is our lovely community would stagnate and.. erm, all the fish would die. Okay, I'm losing track of that metaphor. What I'm trying to say is that the community is kept alive by the motivation of the few, without whom we might let other things get in the way of socialising together in game and on the forum, and without which we might slowly stop coming here to see what's going on. Both nominees have been persistently working away, deliberately or by accident, to keep us playing together, to keep us posting, to drive and support new ideas. Both deserve some recognition, but only one can win. To both we should show our gratitude by joining in and challenging them for next year's award. For his regular input of new ideas, his frequent posting of talk-worthy posts, his bash organisation, his far too occasional beard-running, and his regular involvement in gaming nights (even while often not actually playing), our award goes to;

Grimmie

Meat Shield
Below the site name on the top bar is a statement which, while it has never caught on as our mantra, has epitomised our reasons for and style of playing. The Gaming Equivalent Of A Kickabout In The Park. We play for our own entertainment, not to be better than anyone else, not to win, occasionally just to piss about. So it goes without saying that this award should go to someone who embodies just that. All three of our nominees have been seen to piss about in game with hilarious and suicidal consequences, but one stands out as being more consistent. For reasons already explained in two other awards this year, the Meat Shield goes to;

Pnut

Talented Bastard
The talented bastard is a 5punky enigma. We pride ourselves on being shit, and yet when a few of our members shine with creative talent we are in awe of their ability to be good at something. Bearding and drawing have historically been strong causes of nominees in this category, and this year is no exception. Both nominees have displayed fine beardage in their creation of rich game worlds and rules systems, but our winner edges ahead by being able to create his unique brand of stylised cartoon artwork. This year's Talented Bastard is;

Grimmie

OMG HAXXOR
While gaming excellence is not something we strive for, having someone to demonstrate to us that we're not actually very good only goes to reinforce the 5punky ethos. A certain amount of ridicule and ostracism is to be expected, maybe even encouraged, but when that 5punker makes our games more fun by stopping us getting battered all night we can't criticise too much. As the name may suggest, we don't really believe that the OMG HAXXOR is actually any good. Just like the Chinese in the Olympics this year - they've just developed better ways of cheating. So setting up that fall, and apparently for being able to deftly manipulate a flying poisonous sausage in DOTA 2, our OMG HAXXOR is;

Dog Pants

How the fuck did that happen?

Funny cupcake
If there's one thing we love here at 5punk it's bumming. Ask us what our next favourite is, and I think we can all agree that a small majority would say it's for the laughs we have together. The Funny cupcake award celebrates those of us who make the rest of us laugh. This year has seen a good selection of nominations with some old hands and some new faces. All are Teamspeak regulars, which is perhaps where our funnies are most appreciated. Unusually though, this year the award is tied and the two winners are both funny in very different ways. One is blaringly outrageous, a heavy machinegun of piss-taking and bad taste. The other is dry and with impeccable comic timing, dropping a wry comment in where it has the greatest effect. Between them Friday night gaming is weekly comedy gold. The Funny cupcake award goes to our own odd couple;

Roman Totale & HereComesPete

5punker of the Year
The 5punker of the Year award goes to our 5punker who has contributed the most to ensuring this pleasant little island of calm in the choppy seas of the internet remains a place we would like to frequent. The 5otY is highly visible, working to promote the site and its ethos, by action and example. More often than not this award is given to site admins by accident or design, and even though this year has been busy for them it is no exception. Our second award this year to end in a tie, between the site owner who has been a sturdy and calming example front of house as well as quietly working on the site behind the scenes, and the site moderator who is an ever-present driving horse on the forums and who has spawned new facilities for the site. The 5punker of the Year award goes to the backbone and coccyx of the community;

FatherJack & Dog Pants

Lets not forget though, we come here for all the people we interact with. We game together because we are like minded, easy going, fun loving gamers. These awards are a bit of silly fun, but the reality of 5punk's continued existence is down to its members, from the regulars who post all day long to the lurkers who quietly read and comment only occasionally. 5punkers, thank you all for continuing to make this place what it is.

[HereComesPete]

I demand a drunken Pnut speech!

[Chickenz]

He's down the pub atm, but imagine this guy with a manc accent

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx2EDXkENIk[/media]

[Grimmie]

Thanks Pants

Must've taken a while to write all that up, but I do like reading highlights from the year during awards presentation time.

Thanks for the Talented Bastard awards guys - I'm going to try and be a bit more active on the media front (5podcasts, Videos) and horse myself to spend a few hours a week polishing D&D games to run properly. I shall have to start putting it in my calendar.

Grats Pnut for sweeping three awards, you greedy drunk, incomniac meat shield, you.

Thanks to everyone else too, let's hope 2013 is even betterer.