ENnies: Publisher feedback and suggestions sought on the future of the ENnies

[Crothian]

7. I'm not sure what you guys did at the Ennies Booth as I was crazy busy and only saw it in passing. If everyone is saying that product sales for the winners are dead, where is the harm in having all of the products available for purchase at the Ennies booth? A couple people knew that we were nominated, but had a real hard time finding us. If there was a centralized location where one could browse and purchase the best products in the industry I think it would be a great draw. A percentage of sales garnered could be donated to the Ennies to pay for costs. There could also be other events ran at the booth to bring people in. Designers signing autographs and being available at the booth to talk to the fans. We could have the times displayed at the booth and get people to volunteer for a one hour time slot.

Good post, I liked it.

Allow me to address this point as I helped run the booth. First, we aren't allowed to sell anything at the booth. We were outsider the dealer room and from what I understand none of those booths are allowed to make sales.

What did we do there? While this might seem a little cold, we did very little. A few people stopped by to ask questions, but not many. We failed in having a list of nomines and winners. We also had too many EN World people hanging around making it hard for curious people to get information. There was more then one occasion that the people at the booth we talking to friends and not asking people standing around if they had questions. We have a lot to improve as far as the booth goes and since I was one of the people invoilved with it, I share in the blame.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

What did we do there? While this might seem a little cold, we did very little. A few people stopped by to ask questions, but not many. We failed in having a list of nomines and winners. We also had too many EN World people hanging around making it hard for curious people to get information. There was more then one occasion that the people at the booth we talking to friends and not asking people standing around if they had questions. We have a lot to improve as far as the booth goes and since I was one of the people invoilved with it, I share in the blame.

I'll second this. We dropped the ball at the booth this year. I think we were scrambling to make other things happen, and the booth was given the short end of the stick. The booth turnes into a hang out spot instead of an information spot. That was our biggest mistake. Second was not having the information that we should have had-a list of nominees and winners, both present and past. I'll take my share of the blame for the booth disorganization as well.

 

[Rasyr]

Keep the judges (and the product submissions, and so forth) as they are now, and keep the public voting too. But make them separate, with seperate awards.

Which is just what the Origins Awards did this year.

 

[Rasyr]

ok, I am a little late chiming in here, but anyways, here are my thoughts....

1) I have no problems shipping to each judge individually. Compared to the costs of shipping out review copies, and such, the costs are minimal. Now, if the judges also did reviews of the nominees as well, then I think that is quite fair (not every product, just the final nominees).

2) PDF versions of products - IF products are submitted electronically, then why use shipping at all? Every company has a website. The products could be posted to that website, and then a link for downloading be sent to each judge. ICE already does this specifically for it paypal customers. We put up the pdf and give them 24 hours to download it. If they do not get it within that time frame, we put it back up for them. The location we place the files changes periodically, and we delete each file put up after 24 hours. No muss, no fuss.

3) The only real cost to GenCon is the cost of the rooms, and it may not even include that, as it is quite possible that GenCon gets discounts on rooms for staff use (thus only pay for 1/2 the rooms they reserve), but we don't know the details, so cannot be sure. As for the booth and the venue for giving the awards themselves. Those are already rented by GenCon and at most they lose the fee that they would have made by renting it to sombody else. As for the badges, that entails just the cost of printing them as being the ones who run the show, a few free badges are nothing (IIRC, most reporters who show up get free badges as well). So, what it boils down to is that the costs for GenCon are minimal at most, especially when compared to the costs of the rest of the show. IF GenCon wants the ENnies to be THE GenCon awards, I think that they need to support them more fully. Such as covering the costs of the trophies as well....

4) I like the idea of moving the dates to earlier in the year as it does give the judges more time overall.

5) Marketing - Yes, the first 90 days are a large portion of a product's sales, but products can have a life much much long than that. The fact that a product gets nominated can be turned into a marketing opportunity. The awards themselves should not be considered to be marketing per se, but if your product is selected as a nominee, then by all means milk that for all that it is worth, it is only sensible! Renewed marketing on a product can lead to increased sales. Changing banner ads to reflect the nomination (and possibly the win) can also be used to increase sales as well. The marketing aspects of winning an award should be up to the publisher, and not the awards themselves. Personally, I think that the idea of quarterly awards is nothing more than an attempt to turn the ENnies into a marketing tool. Getting nominated or winning an award can be turned into a marketing tool, but the awards themselves should not be.

6) Liason - I liked the idea put forth of a single person who acts as liason betweent he companies and the judges. It gives the judges and the publishers both a single point of contact and can greatly ease things.

7) Product Auctions - I liked this idea as well. Chris Pramas' other Auction ideas work as well. Both are good ideas!

8) Product Recognition - one of the complaints over on the general forum was from a guy saying that he did not know many of the nominated products. Perhaps in the future, the judges could write up a single paragraph describing the product (or perhaps use te back cover text) and tell us what they liked about the nominated products. Then all this information could be placed online for the voters to review prior to voting. Or alternatively, the back cover text and commentaries could be made to appear in a pop-up when the voter clicks on the name of the product during the voting. This would give the voters who do not know a product something of an idea of what it is about (keep the current rating system along with the "Not Familiar" option). Thus, not only are you giving them a name of a product but also something by which they might use to decide upon whether or not to purchase that product in the future (i.e. I guess you could call this idea "inline marketing" hehe).

9) Quarterly Nominations - This is just more expense. I also see some other problems with this as well. For example, what if all the products that a judge thinks are the very best are all released in a single quarter? If only one nomination is allowed per quarter, that means that products that might be better than the one selected in a previous quarter could be left out, even with the allowance of one or two wildcard entries. From my understanding of how the awards currently work. Each judge submits his own list of the best products for each category. Then those lists are compiled and the top 5 from each list are the nominations. Breaking the nominations into quarters will radically alter this process, and in my mind totally invalidate it. Instead of the best products of the year, you instead have the best product for each quarter competing against one another.

I guess that is about it for my comments....

 

[Morrus]

So... uh.... where were we? ENnies.

Within the next couple of weeks, someone else will be in charge of running the ENnies. I'll still own them, but I'll be staying out of discussions like this; I'll leave such tasks to people more qualified than I! I was doubting the validity of the awards, but I've received a whole bunch of emails from publishers asking me not to get rid of them.

[For the record, by the way, my now infamous rant was not due to this thread (although, in one place, it referenced themes mentioned here) but to a whole bunch of stuff over the last couple of years; but that's digressing.]

 

[Mark]

So... uh.... where were we? ENnies.

Ask Peter Adkisson to contact WotC about becoming co-sponsors with GenCon for the ENnies awards. WotC would love to be involved but it is a no-win situation for them to enter actual product. Money-wise, it's a drop in the bucket for them and the perfect way for them to get their name in the mix without having to enter product for awards. Not to mention that if they are co-sponsors, I have no doubt that there won't be many people who haven't heard of the ENnies after a year or two.

I'll put this forth again since it seems it is either being glossed over or ignored. If WotC would be willing to pick up the portion of the tab for the ENnies not covered by Gencon, there would be far fewer problems to overcome. Further, being a co-sponsor would eliminate the question of whether WotC should be eligible and/or participating.

 

[Pramas]

I'll put this forth again since it seems it is either being glossed over or ignored. If WotC would be willing to pick up the portion of the tab for the ENnies not covered by Gencon, there would be far fewer problems to overcome. Further, being a co-sponsor would eliminate the question of whether WotC should be eligible and/or participating.

I'd say there would have been an outside chance of this happening when the ENnies were just d20/OGL stuff. Now, with the broader focus, I consider this extremely unlikely.

 

[Chaos Drake]

Words all of us should keep in mind.

Good post!

Yes, thanks Nikchick. Inspiring.

 

[Mark]

I'd say there would have been an outside chance of this happening when the ENnies were just d20/OGL stuff. Now, with the broader focus, I consider this extremely unlikely.

Are you suggesting that the reason not to pursue this is because they would probably not be interested? Given that it is a potential, single solution that could eliminate all of the budgetary considerations in one fell swoop, I don't see how it could hurt to put it forth to WotC. Quite frankly, I don't see why they wouldn't want to be the one and only co-sponsor just to get in there before someone else did. The fact that other games are played at Gencon doesn't stop WotC from being a sponsor for the full convention. Heck, maybe the same proposal can be made to White Wolf, GW, Steve Jackson Games, and some others and be set up as a bid process. Take the budget total from last time around, add ten percent, and call that the minimum bid. I have a feeling that the number would be considered so ridiculously small by the major publishers that they'd be hard-pressed to not do it. I'm a little surprised, Chris, that you haven't made an offer already yourself...

 

[2WS-Steve]

I would imagine that for everyone but WotC, being excluded from the ENnies would be a disadvantage.

While an ENnie award might not help sales of the orginal book much they very well might help build company reputation so that customers try out their next product, and allow a publisher to advertise the writers and artists as ENnie nominated or winning, and, for the bigger companies, allow the publisher to put the ENnie on the cover for a second edition.