Nominate
The Genius
for Best Social Game
Adapting The Genius to a forum setting is a task that seems fairly difficult to do, but the mods of The Genius did a spectacular job of it.
First off I will mention that the mods chose to disable PMs for the game, and instead allowing players to communicate through forums in a way similar to One World. Player could move around every 4-6 hours to a different room, giving them new opportunities to talk to other players. This mechanic probably wasn’t strictly necessary to run a Genius game, but it made the game so much better. It added a new element to the game of having to coordinate movements with other players. It gave a great cast of players new ways to interact and form alliances. And it made the game feel more real, and made the scheming feel more intense. This couldn’t have been an easy thing to keep up and the mods did a fantastic job of it so I give a lot of credit to them for this.
The main matches of the show make up the bulk of the Genius show, so having incredible matches for a game adaption was very important. And I think the mods did equally well here. Some of these were adapted from the show, some from board games, and some were original concepts. The lineup of main matches for this game was pretty impressive though, and the vast majority of the 11 games were executed well. Even though it lasted way too long, I have to give special credit to the game “Prison Break” which was a very interesting and well-designed game that fit in with the Genius concept really well. The duels for the game were also pretty good, and I think a lot of them were better than the duels used on the show.
I’ve played a lot of games on forums over the years, and I think that this was the most impressive one that I’ve played. It was inspirational, memorable, and absolutely fantastic, and for that reason I believe it should be a contender for this award.