Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

[Nisarg]

Quality awards shouldn't reflect what's popular in the current gaming market. They should reflect what's GOOD in the gaming market. If the Origins categories are capturing that any more, they can and should be changed. But that's a far cry from rewarding high sales with awards for quality.

The problem is that the definition of "good" is highly subjective, especially if you remove commercial success from the definition. One judge's idea of "good" might be that all RPGs should have as their underlying theme the study of little potato people. Another might hate D20. A third might have a beef against White Wolf, and another might want nothing but Naked Shemale Wrestling RPGs. And of course, you'll have the president of Earthquake Games saying "hey.. i know some rpgs that are good, MY rpgs.. how convenient, let's give the prize to them".

Also, by your logic, there is no way to judge what games get into the running in the first place. Should a game that has NEVER sold a single copy, and is publically hated by the fans, get a position because a critic thinks its "good"?
What about a game that no one has ever heard of, written by a crazy guy in a shack in Montana, who refuses to ever sell a copy?

But wait, you say, "surely the judges will all be qualified industry professionals". That's great, except how do you qualify what makes an "industry professional"? I would presume that by your logic writing successful RPGs (ie. RPGs that sell well) would NOT be the way to decide who's qualified in the industry? So hell, in that case why don't we just give the judge position to the crazy Montana shack guy?

Of course, the response to that is that his "industry peers" will determine who's qualified to judge. Except that if the "industry peer" have no standards by which to judge quality either, where do we get them from? You end up with a tiny group of intellectual elitists who have no relation to the reality of the gaming industry, and thus, are of NO importance to the gaming public. The Origins you envision becomes an incestuous mutual-patting-on-the-back of pretentious snobs.

And yes, the Oscars are neither a popularity contest, nor are they a sales prize. But they do always take both those factors into account, which is THE ONLY THING RYAN WAS ASKING TO DO.
The Oscar never goes to a movie made by a pair of drunken boy scouts that no one's ever seen. "Jedi Kid" doesn't get best actor.

And the academy has been MORE often criticized (at least, by normal human beings) of ignoring popular choices from time to time, leading to occasions where true classics get passed over in favour of nepotistic choices or artsy but obscure films.

Nisarg

 

[Joshua Randall]

An excerpt from Dancey's essay:

Our customers were telling us that we produced too many products, and that the stuff we produced was of inferior quality? We can fix that. We can cut back on the number of products we release, and work hard to make sure that each and every book we publish is useful, interesting, and of high quality.

Maybe WotC needs to go back and re-read that paragraph, because, y'know, *cough*CompleteDivine*cough*. ::

Now back to the regularly scheduled flamewar....

 

[billd91]

Also, by your logic, there is no way to judge what games get into the running in the first place. Should a game that has NEVER sold a single copy, and is publically hated by the fans, get a position because a critic thinks its "good"?
What about a game that no one has ever heard of, written by a crazy guy in a shack in Montana, who refuses to ever sell a copy?

If this is what you think of my logic, then you clearly don't understand logic. I didn't say that there was an objective definition of good either. I said that if there are systematic biases in the selection process, then it's worth trying to weed them out. And interjecting nominations based on sales is a pretty systematic bias.

But wait, you say, "surely the judges will all be qualified industry professionals". That's great, except how do you qualify what makes an "industry professional"? I would presume that by your logic writing successful RPGs (ie. RPGs that sell well) would NOT be the way to decide who's qualified in the industry? So hell, in that case why don't we just give the judge position to the crazy Montana shack guy?

Of course, the response to that is that his "industry peers" will determine who's qualified to judge. Except that if the "industry peer" have no standards by which to judge quality either, where do we get them from? You end up with a tiny group of intellectual elitists who have no relation to the reality of the gaming industry, and thus, are of NO importance to the gaming public. The Origins you envision becomes an incestuous mutual-patting-on-the-back of pretentious snobs.

Well now welcome to the real challenge of coming up with a nomination processes. How to take all of this and making something work. Nobody expects it to be perfect but by broadening the nominating group to include all publishers who actually get a product to market that year, having that group pick a subcommittee to finalize the nomination list, and maybe tightening the rules for nominating and making decisions about the nominations, the current situation can be improved without resorting to using the loaded sales factor.

There could be real solutions to the real problems of the Origins awards that are fair and equitable to the vast majority of game products that wouldn't bias the awards toward the larger companies with stronger distribution and marketing. Dancy's sales suggestion isn't one of them.

 

[Nisarg]

There could be real solutions to the real problems of the Origins awards that are fair and equitable to the vast majority of game products that wouldn't bias the awards toward the larger companies with stronger distribution and marketing. Dancy's sales suggestion isn't one of them.

But you still haven't given any reason, aside from possibly a blanket hatred of either capitalism or successful people, as to why sales shouldn't be A factor? Why should it be almost aggresively excluded as you would wish?

Most other industries, real grown-up industries, consider sales to be a significant factor of a "successful" product, not some kind of boogeyman that kills creativity. Or are you basically saying that RPG players are a bunch of ignorant rednecks incapable of knowing what's good for them, and need to be "told" what's "quality" games from the tower of the cognoscenti?

Yes, obviously not every book that sells well is automatically the "best" in its field (though it almost certainly has good marketing strategy, which is probably something we should be considering too if this is an INDUSTRY award, and not just a "creative writing contest"). But if its not the best, it wouldn't win the award even if it is one of the nominees.

And you still haven't given me your idea of what "good" is. In terms of industry success, shouldn't part of "good" mean "liked by the gaming public" or at the very least "known by the gaming public"? Shouldn't it mean "playable and entertaining" rather than "something an english lit masters with a failed author complex thinks is "art""? Shouldn't part of good mean "has succeeded in generating ongoing sales, representative of interest and appreciation on part of the gaming public", rather than "has succeeded in getting its author on the Origins judging panel"?

Nisarg

 

[billd91]

But you still haven't given any reason, aside from possibly a blanket hatred of either capitalism or successful people, as to why sales shouldn't be A factor? Why should it be almost aggresively excluded as you would wish?

Most other industries, real grown-up industries, consider sales to be a significant factor of a "successful" product, not some kind of boogeyman that kills creativity. Or are you basically saying that RPG players are a bunch of ignorant rednecks incapable of knowing what's good for them, and need to be "told" what's "quality" games from the tower of the cognoscenti?

Yes, obviously not every book that sells well is automatically the "best" in its field (though it almost certainly has good marketing strategy, which is probably something we should be considering too if this is an INDUSTRY award, and not just a "creative writing contest"). But if its not the best, it wouldn't win the award even if it is one of the nominees.

And you still haven't given me your idea of what "good" is. In terms of industry success, shouldn't part of "good" mean "liked by the gaming public" or at the very least "known by the gaming public"? Shouldn't it mean "playable and entertaining" rather than "something an english lit masters with a failed author complex thinks is "art""? Shouldn't part of good mean "has succeeded in generating ongoing sales, representative of interest and appreciation on part of the gaming public", rather than "has succeeded in getting its author on the Origins judging panel"?

Nisarg

Because sales figures don't necessarily reflect quality and for a quality award, that should be enough. The free market can produce some anti-quality results for a variety of reasons that don't have to do with quality as well. Cheap products that aren't as good as more premium offerings, as long as they meet some minimum quality that keeps them out of the cut-out bin, could sell very well by comparison and thus skew the results away from quality offerings. These are some of the very arguments I've been making all along.
Sales may not reward the most playable, most fun, most well-written, best artistically represented product on the market if that product was from a small publisher unable to get their product available from Amazon.com, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and a variety of other large stores that could be the only significant presence of gaming-oriented outlets in the area. THAT'S a systematic bias that rewarding sales can present to the awards. Why should the gaming instustry, in an effort to reward quality products, lean in that direction considering large numbers of sales are their own reward?

If you want to reward good marketing, then come up with a marketing campaign award, but don't lump that in with product quality. A good marketing campaign does not make a good product, even if that marketing camapaign is a success or is, in and of itself, a remarkable achievement in marketing.

Note also that a "successful" product is also not necessarily one worthy of being awarded by a group of industry peers. Sometimes a less successful one deserves that award more. Sometimes that best sellling, successful product is worthy of awards. But if people feel that it got its nomination just because it was the 800 lb gorilla, isn't that award tainted? Keep the bias of sales out and you won't have that problem. You would have a stronger argument that it made it into the nominations because of its merits, not because it had a sweet discount through Amazon.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I have no doubt that the Origins Awards need some reform, but Dancy's suggestion seems like a poor solution. Call me an elitist, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest that Dude, Where's My Car didn't get an automatic Oscar bid.

If there is a desire to recognize success in the market place, a separate award patterned after the RIAA's Gold/Platinum/Diamond system seems like a better idea than trying to interject sales data into a qualitative award.

 

[Desdichado]

If this is what you think of my logic, then you clearly don't understand logic. I didn't say that there was an objective definition of good either. I said that if there are systematic biases in the selection process, then it's worth trying to weed them out. And interjecting nominations based on sales is a pretty systematic bias.

Actually, it seems like just about the only way to attempt to measure empirically that quality of a product. If your "logic" consists of taking just about the only measurable attribute of quality and automatically disqualifying it, then you're right: I don't understand your "logic."

 

[Rasyr]

But you still haven't given any reason, aside from possibly a blanket hatred of either capitalism or successful people, as to why sales shouldn't be A factor? Why should it be almost aggresively excluded as you would wish?

Actually, he has. Or somebody has. The remark was made that wotc normally sells more of its worst products than a smaller company can of a product that is equal to quality as wotc's best.

When sales enters the picture, in any degree, then you are saying that those companies with bigger marketing budgets deserve more attention or special consideration. The playing field is no longer level, no matter how much

Most other industries, real grown-up industries, consider sales to be a significant factor of a "successful" product,

Operative word there being "successful", not quality. There is a difference. Can a quality product be successful? Yes. Can a successful product be of good quality? Again, the answer is yes. Is a product being successful an automatic indicator that it is a quality product? No. Is a product being of good quality a garuantee that it will be successful? The answer here is no.

There is also different levels of success as well. For many smaller companies, the number of sales that equals success is much much lower than what a company the size of wotc or white wolf would consider a success. Those two companies are at least an order of magnitude larger than just about any other gaming company in business right now.

That difference alone would have tilted the scales in the favor of larger companies - because they have the marketing and distribution channels that smaller companies do not.

not some kind of boogeyman that kills creativity. Or are you basically saying that RPG players are a bunch of ignorant rednecks incapable of knowing what's good for them, and need to be "told" what's "quality" games from the tower of the cognoscenti?

Well, that was a nice little attack you slipped in there. Nice to know that you can debate a topic without resorting to trying to put words in somebody else's mouth.

Yes, obviously not every book that sells well is automatically the "best" in its field (though it almost certainly has good marketing strategy, which is probably something we should be considering too if this is an INDUSTRY award, and not just a "creative writing contest"). But if its not the best, it wouldn't win the award even if it is one of the nominees.

Note please that the Origins Awards are supposed to be an industry award for QUALITY, not an industry award quality AND SALES.

And you still haven't given me your idea of what "good" is. In terms of industry success, shouldn't part of "good" mean "liked by the gaming public" or at the very least "known by the gaming public"? Shouldn't it mean "playable and entertaining" rather than "something an english lit masters with a failed author complex thinks is "art""? Shouldn't part of good mean "has succeeded in generating ongoing sales, representative of interest and appreciation on part of the gaming public", rather than "has succeeded in getting its author on the Origins judging panel"?

Those are all definitions of "sucessful", not definitions of "quality". One of the major fallacies in your theory derives from the way that the distribution and retail channels are setup. If a distributor does not want to carry a product (no matter how good it is), that means it will not get to as many retailers as a crappy product from some company who is carried by the distributor. This can mean that the products carried by the distributors, and thus carried by the retailers, are the ones the public gets to see more often than not. Thus what is carried by the distributors will often sell better than those not carried by distributors.

Thus, including sales in any capacity favors those products that have the marketing and distribution channels to get their products into the public spotlight.

 

[billd91]

Actually, it seems like just about the only way to attempt to measure empirically that quality of a product. If your "logic" consists of taking just about the only measurable attribute of quality and automatically disqualifying it, then you're right: I don't understand your "logic."

If sales empirically measured quality, then the best movie of all time is Titanic because, according to Box Office Mojo, it ranks as the highest in worldwide gross sales of all time. While many people consider it a good movie, I doubt we'd find all that much agreement on these boards that it's the best of all time.
Sales can depend too much on the size of the print run, the market penetration of the company, the breadth of the marketing campaign, the price of the product, and so on. These are things important to generating good sales for a product and making a successful company, but they are tangential to the actual quality of the product.

 

[Nisarg]

Then please, please, Rasyr, BillD, anyone on the "other side" of this debate, please give us your definition of "quality"!

Note that it apparently cannot include "financial success" as one of its defining terms.
And ideally, for me to take you seriously, it should amount to something more than "the games I like are obviously quality just because i feel they're good".

Why is it that, in almost anything, the crowd that say "quality can never have anything to do with financial success or the public's likes" are typically the ones who are selling something no one is buying?

Nisarg