Since 1996, the interactive fiction community has held a series of annual awards. What the IF Competition is to short games (i.e. those which can be played in under two hours), the Xyzzy Awards are to long games1 - they represent the ultimate honor that a text adventure can receive.
The catagories for the awards are:
The awards are held live on IF Mud during early March. For more information, see http://www.xyzzynews.com/.
See Also:
1.) It is possible for a short game to win both the IF Comp and one or more Xyzzy Awards, but this is the time for the longer games - and all those not entered into the IF Comp - to really shine.
2.) Each of these catagories deals with a specific puzzle, NPC or PC. Thus, an individual game can be nominated more than once for these awards, each time for a different puzzle, NPC or PC.