Cacowards

The Cacowards are a yearly feature in Doomworld, released on Doom's birthday. The series started in 2004 with the so-called 11th installment, which was an attempt to replicate the success of the previous year's 10 Years of Doom celebration, more precisely the Top 100 WADs of All Time and Top 10 Infamous WADs articles.

As of December 10, 2014, the series has had its 21st (actually 11th) installment released.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2004

The first Cacowards was the idea and creation of Stephen Browning (Scuba Steve), with assistance from Mike Lightner (Mancubus II) who hosted a voting forum and created the graphics, and a foreword by Mike Watson (Cyb). The result is an article of five pages, listing, in no particular order, ten mods deemed to have been the best of the year, and completing it with some additional awards: Best DM Level, Mordeth Award for longest development time, Mockaward for the "best comedy wad of the year", a Mapper of the Year for the map author whose contributions were the most significant this year, three Runners-Up, one Honorable Mention, and the controversial award of the Worst Wad. To fill space in the side column which contains the navigation links to the other parts of the article and presents the runners-up, some "Did you know?" factoids were inserted on the last page.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2005

The second Cacowards followed the formula of the first, still written by Steven Browning and illustrated by Mike Lightner. The foreword was this time written by Bill Koch (Bloodshedder). There were only two runners-up this year, and no honorable mention, but one mod was given the What the Hell!? mention. Some additional content started to make its way to the side-column, such as a "WAD scramble", and the "Did You Know?" started making a tradition of marking the anniversaries of Action Doom and pointing out that Mordeth and Millennium were still not released.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2006

The third installment saw the same team as the second. It introduced The Sky May Be as a category to pay homage to departed members of the community. It has two runners-up and an Escher Award.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2007

Continuing on the formula honed by the second and third Cacowards, the fourth of the series had two runners-up and no extra category this time. The "Best DM Level" category was renamed Best Multiplayer Level. It was the first were Scuba Steve would announce that this installment was probably the last he wrote, and the first were he was joined by another writer for the awards themselves, in this case Dean Joseph (deathz0r).


 * Main article: Cacowards 2008

For the fifth Cacowards, Bill Koch was temporarily replaced by Alex Pritchard (pritch) for foreword duty. Patrick Pineda and Darknation assisted Steven Browning for writing the awards themselves. It had two runners-up and the extra category This is my Boomstick.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2009

Bill Koch resumed manning the foreword station, and the awards were written with contributions from Patrick Pineda, Ryan Nematollahi (hobbs), and Michael Mancuso (esselfortium) Like previous installments, it had two runners-up. The anniversary shifted from Action Doom to its prequel, Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl. This installment also started the I'm Bored! tradition where readers are asked to create a short Doom map based on the output of a random idea generator before New Year's Eve.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2010

The seventh episode of the Cacowards had two runners-up, but with an additional five mentions.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2011

The eighth Cacowards was the first not to be written by Scuba Steve; instead it was written by Ryan Nematollahi (hobbs), with a couple of contributions by Michael Mancuso. With this came a few changes, notably the disappearance of the "Worst Wad" category because it was considered "sort of dumb" to reward people for uploading low-quality work. The "Mockaward" category also disappeared this year. Instead, a new category for Best Gameplay was introduced, echoing the "Boomstick" mention from the 2008 awards; and a new mention was made for Honoring a Newcomer. In addition, a Consolation Prize was given for Doom64 EX, a work that could not fit any category.


 * Main article: Cacowards 2012

The ninth installment of the Cacowards was delayed by Steven Browning's successor having left without writing them or even warning anybody that he would not write them. After some discussion on the Doomworld forums, the community selected a team made of Xaser, Alfonzo, and kmxexii to take the hold. Scuba Steve made a return to reinstate the Mockawards. There were five runners-up, and a special What the Pope?! mention. The navigation column also saw the introduction of the long mod listing filed under What Are We Waiting For?


 * Main article: Cacowards 2013

The tenth episode of the series saw more changes. The "Best Multiplayer" category turned into its own page with three Multiplayer Awards, and before the awards themselves a new page was inserted for the Espi Award for Lifetime Achievement, which honors someone for their contributions over an extended time, instead of a single year. To write all that, the team from the ninth Cacowards were joined by Michael Mancuso (esselfortium) and Boris Klimeš (dew). "Honoring a newcomer" was renamed Most promising newcomer and was awarded to three different persons. There were six runners-up, and a jokewad got the special mention of Sing the praise of pants...


 * Main article: Cacowards 2014

The eleventh installment saw, in addition to the regular team, writing contributions from Steven Browning and James Haley (Quasar). It had seven runners-up, plus special categories for Play Thy Role and Runners-up... for the Mockaward?. It also saw the "Most promising newcomers" category properly pluralized this time.