Do Awards affect your Shopping habits?

[Festivus]

I am more likely to purchase on a good review here or at BGG than any award it might have won. Awards don't mean much to my purchasing patterns.

 

[JoeGKushner]

THe dreaded ditto post. It brings to the surface things I may have missed.

You need an option that says "I am more likely to notice award winning games". =)

Not because I intentionally search for those, but because stores tend to use them to attract sales of the product itself and the store as a whole. "Look, we sell award winning games. Here's some. Buy them. They're awesome".

I don't know if that makes me more likely to buy them, but it does give them immediate publicity. It makes me more likely to know about them. That's the first step in generating sales through addvertising.

 

[Qwillion]

I tend to look at the nominee list because that comes from judges who read 200+ products. The ENnies awards are popularity contests and while I would love to win the odds are long.

 

[Argyle King]

Based on most of the answers thus far, I think it safe to say that winning an award is far more beneficial than not for a game or product.

While there are those that ignore awards, or who are not aware of them the number of people who are less likely to look at a game because it has won an award are statistically insignificant when compared to 1) Those who actually want to examine award winners and 2) the positive word of mouth generated by the fact an award has been won. Even those who look at award winners without buying them, I would suggest, play into that second point, helping to generate and maintain the positive word of mouth that will result in more sales.

Or, in other words, a company can only gain from being part of the award process. Its hard to see a downside.

I mostly agree with this; however, there are exceptions. In particular, I think how helpful an award can be to something depends upon how justified winning that award is viewed to be. The easiest example to make is when Jethro Tull won a grammy for being a 'heavy metal' band; they were severely booed by the crowd at the time. It's something which generated negative feelings toward them instead of positive. The point being that an award can be a bad thing if people don't believe the product should have won the award.

 

[Treebore]

It makes me more likely to look and buy. I didn't even really know about many of the nominations or 2 of the winners, and so far I have one of them in my cart at Amazon.

 

[Treebore]

I agree the judges probably nominate quality and that the winners are largely "popularity" winners, which is why I look harder at the nominees more than the winners, unless something not made by a "big name" wins, then I definitely check it out, if I didn't already do so. Like Diaspora and Eclipse Phase I have already looked into, and bought one and am going to play the other soon to see what I think of it. So all the award did there is make me feel more confident about trying it out.

Now with regards to Victoriana, I had heard about it, gave it a very brief look, but now I will be looking at it much more thoroughly.

 

[wedgeski]

I consider the ENNies to be the best RPG awards out there, and have approved of many of the awards over the years. I think they're run with a genuine desire to award excellence, which is more than can be said for many other awards I could name in other areas.

I voted "I am more likely to review..." because until recently I didn't really have a game night available where I could try out some of the lesser-known systems. Now, however, I do, so I'll pay a lotr more attention to tehe winners than I might otherwise have done.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To me awards bring attention to games, yes most awards are popularity contest, but when you have something like the ENnies you take notes of the silver winners and those that are listed. From that, I say there is something there and I will pick up stuff.

Another thing is that; awards show trending in the industry, if a company is winning awards, they are doing something right. Watch them long enough and you can see the players!

 

[Marc Radle]

I think that winning awards (especially a large number of them and/or the more important awards) has to have an impact on people. A certain percentage of people will absolutely check out a game or other product if it wins an Ennie(s)

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I am not more likely to buy a game solely because it has won an award, however if I have not heard of it, award lists are one of a few ways I find good rpgs (others including reviews, reccomendations of friends, etc).