[ENnies] Categories

[FDP Mike]

1) There will be no PDF-only category.

I actually think that this decision is unfortunate. I can see the need to "level the playing field" and have all d20 products competing together; not separating out PDFs would certainly encourage this development.

Still, I wonder if the PDF medium is not distinct enough from the print medium that it should deserve separate recognition. On the one hand, the potential audience is different -- perhaps more limited both in terms of awareness and access (e.g., who uses computers and the internet? who has a credit card for on-line purchases?). On the other hand, the concerns of the medium are different -- electronic format as opposed to print format. One can do different things in a PDF than a print product (e.g., use colour [without the printing costs!], thumbnails, and so forth), and one appeals to or reaches maybe a different segment of d20 gamers through PDFs.

The issues's not one of better vs. worse. It's perhaps one of distinct differences in how things are done, at least as far as the finished product is concerned (all the design, development, layout, art, and so on are just the same).

On a related note, will there be a "best free product" category again?

2) WotC will be allowed to enter.

Fair enough. Yet there must be some means of "curtailing" WotC's market share so that the focus remains upon the quality of a product. Baraendur is right in that if WotC keeps sweeping the awards (deservedly or not), then the ENnies will lose their interest for many people, gamers and publishers alike. I like suggestions of limitations such as the amount of time one has been a registered memeber at ENWorld. Thus, one way to address this issue is to restrict the voting as much as possible to those at ENWorld -- i.e., really make the ENnies something created and decided upon the people who support and get involved with this site and this community. We pick the judges; we should also pick the winners from the choices that we entrust the judges to make. Moreover, I would suggest that as a whole, the ENWorld crowd holds a better awareness of non-WotC products than the majority of gamers out there, which in a way offers a built-in means of again "levelling the playing field."

I think there should also be a distinct, clear understanding of what qualifies a product for a particular category. A lot of discussion occurred last year regarding Oriental Adventure's placement in the Setting category, and a similar (potential) confusion should be avoided again.

3) Some heavy discussion about OGL only products, and where the line should be drawn. Opinions here would be extremely useful.

I would make a "Best d20/OGL Game" category. "Game" in this sense should mean any product that presents itself as and stands wholly separate from (let's face it) D&D. Thus, as an example, Judge Dredd competes alongside Mutants & Masterminds and EverQuest. They are all distinct games, even if the latter two are OGL products that technically use the d20 system.

4) Most importantly - the judges have suggested reducing some of the "marketting budget" advantage held by some companies by creating a "Judges' Choice" award. This could take one of two forms - 1) a single overall award for what they consider the best product overall or 2) a Judges' Choice for each category. I have strongly advised them to solicit opinions before deciding on this last issue, as I can see it being fairly sensitive.

I disagree with this option. The nomination is enough of a coup, really, and once the judges are done picking the nominations, the rest should be left up to the voters. Also, going this route faces the eventuality that the Judge's Choice award for best overall product, say, becomes the focus and highlight of the ENnies -- not the winners as voted by the public. The judges do an incredible job of picking the nominations, and that should be their primary goal and ultimate satisfaction. Besides, the judge's get to vote individually on the products once the nominations are out, no?

Moreover, having 2nd and 3rd place awards is awfully tricky to negotiate. True, they do take away from the significance of the single winner. Yet acknowledging just a single winner provides us no idea as to how the other nominees ultimately fared in the voting. I'm not sure why final vote counts are not revealed once the awards are handed out, but doing so -- if 2nd and 3rd place awards are not given -- might allow folks to see just how everything shook down. Did WotC win by 3,000 votes or was it closer to 300? If the process will be transparent, final vote stats just might cancel the desire for "runners-up" awards . . . and give all of us a clearer indication of the sort of gap lying between WotC and "3rd-party" publishers.

I do, though, like Mearls' idea of a "Designers' Choice" award. What do the folks who make the products actually think about the work of their peers? Still, I would keep this sort of award as ENWorld-focussed as possible: i.e., again, voters must somehow be active members of ENWorld, voters must be part of a d20 publishing company and/or have published work within a certain timeframe, perhaps they are culled from only the products nominated by judges, and other such options . . . . Yes, I'd really like to see such an award.

In the end, let's avoid making the awards more complex than is necessary. Keep the focus on the ENWorld community while at the same time establishing the authority and legitimacy of the awards to the d20 community at large. The more straightforward the process, the less chance for problems. Well, maybe.


Take care,
Mike

 

[Nikchick]

As for the 1st to 3rd place awards, I don't really see the need. Adding more nominees cheapens that aspect of the process and cause further problems with market share. What if WotC wins all three awards? What if the same few companies keep winning? On a practical side, it triples the budget necessary to buy awards and diminishes the honor of winning a nomination. The Ennies process of nominations yields much more valuable nominees IMO because the judges' choices are based on directly comparing the books they receive. If you score a nomination, you know that your stuff was judged against the other submitted materials. Adding 2nd and 3rd place just muddles the process to no real benefit.

If the ENnies are putting everyone in the same category (WotC being thousands of times bigger than the next largest publisher, *any* print publisher being almost assuredly hundreds of times bigger than the PDF publishers) regardless of wildly differing scales, I don't think having a medal system for judging "muddles" anything.

Let me try another example: I used to compete in Extemporaneous Reading for my high school speech team. In the category, Poetry and Prose competed against each other, the selections were chosen by the judges and then the kids did the readings. The kids who read poetry were almost always at a huge disadvantage against the kids who read prose, because the prose selections often allowed the reader to employ accents or voices or tell an entertaining self-contained story, whereas a Carl Sandburg paean to Chicago was a different beast altogether. The poetry readers could win top honors, but it happened rarely. Still, having the opportunity to be ranked even if you weren't taking the top spot was fulfilling, especially if as a poetry reader you managed to best a few other prose readers in the process.

Having a medal system balances the unequal footing of the nominees, especially when we're talking about such a vast range from WotC to the PDF-only market. Wizards of the Coast's *quality* is not so vastly superior to all the other nominees, but they come into the game with a staggering head-start by virtue of their distribution and market penetration.

I guess it depends on what you're attempting to recognize with your awards. The best? The most popular? A combination? A medal system allows for a recognition of appreciation for high quality regardless of unavoidable inequities that arise from the format or availability of the product. My perception of the ENnies when they were first proposed was that they were going to be an independent award, like the Sundance awards for films made outside of Hollywood. El Mariachi got a lot of attention after winning independent film nominations and awards, but it had as much to do with the fact that the film accomplished as much as it did on its smaller-than-Hollywood budget as the end result. El Mariachi is no Fellowship of the Ring, but it's great for what it is, and it's a far sight better than Dude, Where's My Car?.

With the ENnies considering both the "Hollywood-sized" products and the "El Mariachi-sized" products in one pot, there's much less chance of smaller-but-excellent products getting recognized. I think the ENnies could really do a great service to the D20 community by expanding the awards to include medal system and bestowing some honors that have a chance of bridging the gulf between the tiers of products. Being able to say "Hey, Book of Awesomness won the Silver ENnie in 2003," is good for the consumer who is looking for quality material where quality isn't already implied through market penetration or company branding. It's good for the ENnies as it gives the awards more opportunites for exposure and a broader selection of quality titles through which the ENnies prove themselves (avoiding the argument that the ENnies aren't meaningful awards because they fail to recognize an excellent product--another argument I've become familiar with through my association with the Origins Awards). It's good for the D20 publishers because they are rewarded for their hard work and quality efforts in the uneven marketplace, making them more likely to invest themselves in the EN World Awards and the community that promotes them.

I'm completely doped up on cold medicine at the moment, and I fear I'm not making my reasoning clear. Or maybe people do understand and just disagree no matter what I say. Anyway, I still hold out hope that folks might come to see it my way.

Nicole

 

[mearls]

It's good for the D20 publishers because they are rewarded for their hard work and quality efforts in the uneven marketplace, making them more likely to invest themselves in the EN World Awards and the community that promotes them.

Hmm... this is one of many good points. One of the things I like about the Ennies is that they require active publisher participation, and a medal system would promote that without requiring special rules against WotC. Taken as part of the big picture of issues (rather than on its own, as I first looked at it), I think the medal system solves a few things:

1. It gives smaller publishers a chance to win something.
2. It makes it more worthwhile for publishers to devote the time, energy, and money necessary to ship books to the judges.
3. It gives PDFs a more equal footing.

Perhaps if the awards featured 8 nominees, with the top 3 receiving medals or plaques? If buying the awards is cost prohibitive, perhaps companies and freelance designers could contribute a nominal fee to enter the awards? Of course, a physical award isn't necessary but it would be nice.

 

[Morrus]

OK, how about this as a compromise solution:

At the ceremony, the nominees are "counted down" from #5 to #1. Only #1 actually gets an award, but everyone finds out what order they are are all in. That way, a company could choose to say "Hey, cool, we came second!" or not, as they see fit.

With that in mind, we could also disclose the %ages at the same time -- "In 5th place with 6% of the vote was XXXX; in 4th place with 12% of the vote was YYYYYY; ..... and the winner, with 40% of the vote is ZZZZZ".

 

[Nikchick]

If buying the awards is cost prohibitive, perhaps companies and freelance designers could contribute a nominal fee to enter the awards? Of course, a physical award isn't necessary but it would be nice.

First year we got a frame and a color printed certificate. Last year, we got a handshake.

It's the spirit of the award that makes it meaningful, fancy physical awards aren't necessary, imho.

Nicole

 

[Pramas]

Having a medal system balances the unequal footing of the nominees, especially when we're talking about such a vast range from WotC to the PDF-only market. Wizards of the Coast's *quality* is not so vastly superior to all the other nominees, but they come into the game with a staggering head-start by virtue of their distribution and market penetration.

Wizards also has two other advantages: the D&D logo and the fact that they don't have to comply with the OGL or the d20 STL.

What I would like to see, across the board, is a playing field that's relatively level (it'll never be totally level, obviously, but I think we can get it into an acceptable range). I'd like to see products that have to play by the same rules compete against each other. I'm in favor of keeping the PDF categories, because PDF products have constraints that print products do not. I'm in favor of not seeing WotC compete in most categories because they are free of constraints the rest of us have to bear.

Now maybe the thing to do is to have a "Best D&D Book" category and let WotC and Kenzer slug it out there. Then they aren't totally excluded, but they don't get to sweep the awards again either.

 

[MThibault]

Just my two cents. (Well, its turning into 10 cents. Sorry.)

I'm not convinced by the arguments against Silver and Bronze awards. Saying that it is meaningless because there might be a 5 vote difference between 3rd and 4th place sort of assumes that there will be more than a 5 vote difference between 1st and 2nd place. This is probably true with WotC in the running, but nothing to brag about. It is definitely not a strength of the single-award system. There will always be an arbitrary line somewhere so you draw the line in such a place that it supports the goals, terms of reference, or the mission statement, of the award.

So what exactly is the mission? I'm not sure if this statement is still the one being used but I found this on the Ennies section of this site:

"The EN World d20 System Awards (known as the 'ENnies') allow the gaming public to give the best publishers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. These prestigious annual awards are a sign of quality and excellence, a visible symbol that tells people that they are looking at something a cut above the rest."

The first sentence means that the voting should be squarely on the shoulders of the "gaming public". I don't think that this has to preclude a spearate Judge's Choice Award, but having a Juried Winner in each category would probably move too far away from the stated mission.

The second sentence is where the debate about degrees of recognition comes into play. While I do agree that being nominated is an honour, you really don't end up with a "visible symbol" of the gaming public's recognition, without being number one in your category.

This plays in two directions:

1) Without a silver or bronze award a publisher can only honestly say that a panel of judges thought they were a cut above, so nomination as an honour doesn't support the mission and it probably shouldn't be part of the equation when considering change and growth of the system.

A silver medal does actually indicate that the gaming public voted for you more than 3 or more other products (I too would be in favor of increasing the number of nominees if the emphasis were going to be placed on the top 3 finalists). No one has ever complained that having 3 medals in the Olympics takes away from the prestige of the Gold Medalist -- there is still only one Gold Medal. Well, except in figure skating last year but you take my point.

Clearly identifying and recognizing 2nd and 3rd place with a visible symbol does take away some of the prestige from the "also rans" but those who don't recieve medals in the ENnies aren't being recongized by the gaming public, so that should not be the highest priority.

2) As things stand now the prestige of the ENnies is compromised by the single-award system. If the assumption is that WotC will win 60% of the awards, and WotC does not associate the award with its winning products (except for one press release on their website) then the bulk of the potential visible symbols that promote the awards themselves will leave circulation. If the awards are supposed to "tell people that they are looking at something a cut above the rest" then expanding visibility by adding two more "cuts" will serve the mission and increase the exposure and by default prestige.

Why does visibility of the award increase its prestige? In this case, it is because it is a fan-based award. I don't want to sound like I'm denigrating people's-choice awards, I'm not. I just think that they are a different animal than industry-insider awards. The winners of an award that is granted by industry peers is prestigious because those people are peers, colleagues and competitors. The assumption is that they know more about the industry and the work involved in creating a product, they have thought longer and harder about what makes a good product or they have more invested in the industry so they take the award more seriously. Hopefully all three, often not though.

Now what generates the prestige of a people's choice award is the recognition it has amongs the people. I could get a bunch of friends together put up a web poll and hand out MT (pronounced Empty) awards, but if public hasn't heard of them they are worthless -- worthless to the fans and the publishers. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but the more visible the awards are the more prestigious they will be.

If there are three awards given out for each category this triples the potential visibility (and threefore prestige) of the awards themselves. This prestige is assumed in the mission statement, and to a large degree I don't have a problem with this assumption, but the mission will not be served in the long-run with only one award per category.

Cheers.

Michael S. Thibault

PS I'm assuming that WotC will always be eligible for ENnies; that they will always have suffient quality in at least one of their products eligible in most categories to be nominated; and overwhelming market share to make winning the gold medal in most of the categories a breeze. In other words, if they can get on the ballot, only a fool would put money against them.

PPS I'm also assuming that WotC won't be sending out stickers or bookmarks or whatever to advertise their wins on the products themselves, or including the "Medal" in 2nd printings, ongoing web enhancements, etc.

PPPS Sorry to ramble.

MT

 

[HellHound]

As much as I would like to say create a separate category for pdfs, I believe most publishers want their pdfs to compete against the print products because it will give them a boost should they be nominated.

I will just point out here that this "boost" is one of ego only.

Sales of Gar'Udok went DOWN with the ENnie nomination, not up.

 

[HellHound]

Honestly, I REALLY think that the current system (last year's) works fine. With only 5 nominees, EVERYONE who doesn't win but who got nominated effectively got the silver medal.

I'm QUITE happy with my silver medal.

In fact, I'm as happy with my silver medal for Gar'Udok as I am with my Gold medal for Portable Hole.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I guess I have figured out where the "medal" supporters are coming from, though it sounds to me like-- well, to put it in perspective, if they were film-makers, they'd value an MTV award over an Oscar.

Personally, I would be happy to have an ENnie Nomination and I would absolutely tout that fact in marketing. The nomination is every bit as "marketable" at a 2nd or 3rd place showing. And let's not kid anyone-- I do think publishers are pulling for something marketable here.

Frankly I think it is up to the publishers to give the ENnie nominations the respect they deserve. The nominations and award winners only have as much value as we are willing to put behind them.

The idea of changing the rules just to curtail WOTC's sweep leaves a more bitter taste in my mouth than the sweep itself did (and yes, it annoyed me, and I wasn't even nominated). With just a couple of exceptions, I had to eventually admit that WOTC won because they really did have the best entry.

I think this year, however, that has changed. As "small" publishers we are getting better-- and WOTC is probably getting a bit worse. I don't see it so much an issue of levelling the playing field as I see improving our performance to WOTC's level. WOTC indisputably makes some beautiful products that will pull votes on production value alone. For the most part though I think the 3rd party publishers put out better, more useful, more daring content.

Again, my only concern is to limit the "popular vote" to active participants at ENworld-- either by account age or number of posts. These are the ENnies, they should be decided by ENworlders, not by random passers-by drummed up just to vote.

I got enough of that crap livin' in Chicago...

Wulf