I woke up to some incredible news today! The Webbys nominated Tetrageddon.com!
(Under the “Weird” category, which is the cool category.)
Tetrageddon.com is 15 years old. It was created June of 2007, and I have been building it, tearing it down, rebuilding it, creating this strange weird online world… for over a decade.
Webby Nominations
Tetrageddon is a Webby Nominee in Websites and Mobile Sites – Weird: Official listing link
Webby Honors
Tetrageddon is a Webby Honoree in Websites and Mobile Sites – NetArt: Official listing link
You can vote for Tetrageddon here!
Tetrageddon.com also received an honor for NetArt. I only submitted it to these two categories… because they are fitting. Submitting to award shows like this is very expensive if you’re financing your own work, so you have to budget for it. I believe in such work, the idea of seeing it recognized as equal, so this is why I keep doing it.
It’s an incredible honor to be nominated for a Webby. I have been submitting to them for years and only ever got as far as Honoree (which is still big).
Being nominated means that out of over 14,000 submissions, Tetrageddon.com ended up in the top 12%. It’s amazing to me because this is an extremely mainstream event. I’m (more likely than not) unknown to anyone judging. At this point any past excuses people have made as to why I was nominated (ranging from “oh they felt sorry for you because you were getting harassed and that’s why you got nominated for IGF” to “it was a last minute decision to award you”), to invalidate such achievements, cannot be used here. It really buries any of that baggage.
I KNOW my work is good, and nobody can take that away from me.
Aside from killing impostor syndrome, I think it is incredible to see something made by just ONE person… a solo-dev passion project that was created without budget, and purely for the love of making net-art… being recognized alongside things that had teams and budgets.
It is my dream that projects made by people who get brushed off as “hobbyist” be given the same level of respect as projects with all the advantages in the world. Seeing my work in such a mainstream context fills me with hope. We are legit!
Tetrageddon.com was completely rebuilt and relaunched in 2021. It was among IGP’s Best Indie Games of 2021 along with other encouragements along the way. I rebuilt it so that it can live without Flash, in the larger context of the online world that I have been slowly building over the years. It has meant a lot to see people enjoying this new version. It gets traffic everyday. To me this strongly illustrates how there is still plenty of interest in web based art (as websites).
I’m over the moon about this!
I can even brag, without a hint of irony, that Tetrageddon.com was recognized by the “International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences”… it’s so real!
People’s Choice Award voting is open as of writing this. You can vote for Tetrageddon here: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2022/websites-and-mobile-sites/general-websites-and-mobile-sites/weird