The 2002 XYZZY Awards Ceremony was held at ifMUD on March 2nd, in the sadly-downsized Massive Auditorium. As in years past, the awards were presented by last year's winners.

The awards were clustered this year, with Adam Cadre winning a number of awards for Lock & Key and Emily Short taking top honors for Savoir-Faire. Emily's reaction to winning Best Game was, "I first got into writing IF because of Curses, so I've wanted for a long time to write a puzzle game. I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to pull it off, though, and I was blown away by the reception Savoir-Faire got. I'm really pleased people enjoyed it that much."

Best Use of Medium: Earth and Sky 2 (Paul O'Brian)
Best Individual PC: Pierre, from Savoir-Faire (Emily Short)
Best Individual NPC: Boldo, from Lock & Key (Adam Cadre)
Best Individual Puzzle: Setting the traps, from Lock & Key (Adam Cadre)
Best NPCs: Lock & Key (Adam Cadre)
Best Puzzles: Savoir-Faire (Emily Short)
Best Setting: 1893 (Peter Nepstad)
Best Story: Savoir-Faire (Emily Short)
Best Writing: The Moonlit Tower (Yoon Ha Lee)
Best Game: Savoir-Faire (Emily Short)

For those of you who didn't attend the ceremony, or did but couldn't keep up with everything that went on, my full transcript of the ceremony, either with or without the chatter on the #peanut-gallery channel, is available.