Crothian said:
I'm a little ignorant on the Orgins Awards and why they are so unpopular. Its ironic since I always go to Origins though. I hear people complain about them but its rare theat I get a good feel for what the Origins Awards is doing wrong in peoples eyes. That should also help me understand how the ENnies are politicking here. So would you or someone be able to explain why the Origin awards are seen as they are? Thanks.
The Origins Awards have a pretty basic problem: any reasonable person can look at the nominees and see gaping holes and mediocre products. Considering that the staggering majority of gamers play D&D or WoD games, both those companies rarely have many entries in on the Origins ballot.
The big problem is that there's a massive divide between small and large companies. By throwing them both in the award process, the entire thing is pointless. If WotC wins, then all the people who pull for the little guy don't see in any point in having an award, since WotC will win every time. If WotC loses, all those gamers who buy and use WotC stuff and don't find much good stuff elsewhere in the industry see the awards as a joke. They don't understand how WotC couldn't win.
That's the basic problem.
The bigger problem is that two groups have fought over the OAs for so long, and so bitterly, that no one wants to get involved. You can't stand up and say "This is what's wrong with the OAs" without one group or the other putting you on their enemies list. The sides are so polarized that they cannot accept any sort of middle ground. In the process, the awards have nosedived into the ground. The OAs are a better indicator of who's popular with RPG freelancers than who can put together a good game.
Industry awards really don't have any economic value for larger, successful companies. OTOH, without their participation they have even less value for small companines. On top of all this, they have little value in terms of sales to begin with. I can only think of one small press product in the past few years - Magical Medieval Society - that was a break out sales hit, and the awards did more to highlight its success after the fact rather than ignite it.
The ENnies-OAs comparison that Moridin made stem from, I believe, a few key points:
* The rules seem to change every year. This is a big OA problem, especially since whoever is in charge of the OAs has carte blanche to change what they want or alter the ballot as they see fit. It's part of the power that comes with the position. It leads to inconsistency and lots of weird rulings, like Heroclix counting as a boardgame.
* WotC didn't participate. This is huge - I think it chops the awards' validity out from under them. I mean, EN World is a site about playing D&D. Look at the discussion boards - threads that talk about WotC and WotC products are common and have some of the highest post/view ratios. Look at how many people have read this thread compared to the one about Dungeon.
* There are about 10 million categories too many this year. About half the categories cover games that people on this site haven't heard of and probably don't even care about. If you want to capture the RPG.net crowd, you should make that clear. Otherwise, it's confusing to d20 gamers.
My sense is that the ENnies want to cover all of RPGs, and they want to showcase smaller companies that could supposedly benefit from the exposure. You need to figure out if that's what you really want to do, and if it is you need to get the word out so people know what the awards are really about.
If you tell people "These awards are for the best RPG products of the year" and their response is "Where's Draconomicon?", that's not a good sign. You can explain why it isn't there all you want - the basic point still stands. The book that they thought was obviously the best of the year isn't on the list. If you lose touch with your target audience, the game's up.
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