ICE and the ENnies

[Dextra]

To put it bluntly...

taken to private discussion

 

[2WS-Steve]

Both Robin Laws and Mike Mearls have some interesting comments on what went wrong with the Origins awards:

Is there a technical term, maybe from geology or ecology or art preservation, to describe a situation where any new energy introduced into a system merely damages it further? Because that’s where the OAs are at. They’ve been tinkered with so much that they are beyond repair. Even the best imaginable set of changes to the awards, meant in all good conscience to repair the credibility damage they’ve taken over the last few years, would only harm them further. Stick a fork in them. They’re done.

How did this happen? The most obvious analysis is that they’ve been done by conflicting agendas within its body of so-called stakeholders. Do they award popular acclaim, or creative merit? Focus on a few awards, or award ‘em in a ton of categories, Grammy style? Such debates are inherently destructive to the legitimacy of the awards, when every participant envisions himself as a potential winner of a hypothetical trophy, if only the rules are jiggered to make them fair.

I’d argue that they’ve been done in by a one-two punch. This is also a story of changing communications structures. The OAs reached their zenith during a time when print magazines were the primary means of communicating game industry news to the public. During their years of instability, the OAs got the credibility rug pulled out from under them by the Ennie Awards. Now the audience generates its own sense of community via the Internet. Without the conflicts of interest that inherently plague accolades handed out by an industry organization rife with industry politics, they’ve swept in to seize the mantle of awards publishers and creators want to win.

The drawback of the Ennies is their focus on only the RPG sector. I expect to see other sectors served by other fan communities.

-- Robin Laws, The Origins Awards Can’t Be Fixed

Mike Mearls makes a similar point:

1. If only a few people run the awards, the group needs to be insulated from the people who can win the awards. Currently, the people organizing the (Origins) awards can also win them. This is terrible. Awards are a zero sum game. Everyone involved in putting together the awards wants to win, but they also want everyone else to lose. That is obviously a horrible environment for cooperation, trust, and understanding to thrive.

Past "discussions" (if one can call a shrieking cat fight a discussion) over the direction of the awards seemed to center on the utter inability of the Dancey and Lindross factions to trust each other. Both sides were convinced that the other was going to destroy GAMA as we knew it. Of course, they were both wrong: it took the two groups working together to effectively destroy the awards, but that's another story.

Sadly, we'll never actually see this happen. The RPG industry is too small to support a body of professional critics. We're stuck asking people who want to win awards to also organize them.

And later, regarding the ENnies:

What about the ENnies? The ENnies are sort of funny. When I worked in the d20 industry, and still today when I read publishers' posts, I always detected a faint whiff of fear whenever people talk about the ENnies. It was like, "These guys are the only ones giving out awards that people might care about. I really want to pitch a nutty over the process and run rampant like I did with the Origins awards (either in public or in private), but if I do that I might not be able to win. On the other hand, unless I seize control and tell these guys how to run the awards, I might not win. What am I supposed to do?"

I think "industry" people are all quietly freaking the hell out over the ENnies, because they can't seize control of them without looking like a pack of hyenas. They can sort of make suggestions, and I'm sure they bitch endlessly over them in private, but in truth the ENnies are beyond the industry's control. That's good, because we need a firewall between the awards and those who win them.

-- Mike Mearls, Effective RPG Awards

 

[Morrus]

To put it bluntly, so long as the ENnies are tied to EN World, they will ALWAYS BE BIASED towards d20 games (no matter how many are submitted) because the vast majority of members are d20 players and fans first and foremost, quality of the game becomes a secondary issue. When you have such a huge dedicated pool of voters for a single system being the core voters for your awards system, it isn't surprising when products for that system win, it is only surprising when something else wins....

The bias is there, whether you choose to recognize/accept it or not. And so long as the ENnies are tied to these forums, it won't go away.

I'm afraid EN World's awards program will always be associated with EN World. Sorry to hear we won't be hearing from ICE in the future.

 

[Psion]

Leave the ENnies as a d20-biased award system. Seriously. The wider the range of products that are allowed in, the less and less relevant the awards as a whole will become to any given individual.

I think you are 180 degrees out here.

In order for the awards to have any meaning, you have to have more entrants than winners. The third party d20 field has shrunk down to near nothing, and I suspect that WotC will continue to exclude themselves from the running. All that would be left is small press publishers hoping to spread the word. And while that's not bad and occasionally it works, it's not a big enough field to sift out a credible set of "best of the industry" awards.

Currently, the ENnies are meaningless to GURPS players.

Then the GURPS players -- and Steve Jackson Games -- are missing out. Over the last two years, the likes of Fanpro, Hero, and Margaret Weiss Productions have participated and had good showings.

 

[Pramas]

I think you are 180 degrees out here.

In order for the awards to have any meaning, you have to have more entrants than winners. The third party d20 field has shrunk down to near nothing, and I suspect that WotC will continue to exclude themselves from the running. All that would be left is small press publishers hoping to spread the word. And while that's not bad and occasionally it works, it's not a big enough field to sift out a credible set of "best of the industry" awards.

That was my first thought on reading Tim's post. Why tie the awards exclusively to a shrinking segment of the market?

It is important to learn lessons about what happened with the Origins Awards. Unfortunately, any discussion of the OAs always brings out an endless litany of ill-informed bs by people who know nothing of their actual history and difficulties.

 

[seasong]

I think you are 180 degrees out here.

And I may be.

And I apologize for saying something dumb. I do realize that what I said is no longer possible - that the ENnies I once used to help me sift through the horde of d20 products (and spot things I'd missed earlier in the year) no longer exist. Today, it's a very interesting popularity contest, and one that occasionally points out broad trends.

But when I saw the original post, I jumped into early 2004's mindset so fast my own head spun .

Then the GURPS players -- and Steve Jackson Games -- are missing out. Over the last two years, the likes of Fanpro, Hero, and Margaret Weiss Productions have participated and had good showings.

I'm expressing my opinions, not company policy. In all likelihood, as the ENnies become more popular (maybe even this year - I don't have time to keep track of our marketing), Steve Jackson Games will start submitting to the awards. From the company point of view, such awards are cheap advertising to non-GURPS players who might not have heard of us previously. Any philosophical issues with d20/non-d20 are completely irrelevant - let us take an award for practically free, and we will.

My opinions stem from me-as-gamer. In the past, I treated the ENnies as a shopping list - today, not so much. It's something I'm a little sad about, but not something I should have mouthed off about.

 

[eyebeams]

I think the ENnies are okay, but then again I co-wrote a game that won Best Writing last year

Anyway, the ENnies have plenty of industry/commercial ties to them, so Mike's observations about the awards being "independent" don't really make any sense. The problem is that we curently have a number of awards that do not reflect the reality of the hobby. The ENnies is the closest to a good general award.

The OAs do a lot of things badly, mixing an award system for RPGs with ones for other games that don't have the same audience or market size. Somebody's always going to get screwed in an awards system where wargaming, CCGs and RPGs are side by side. Of course, there were also certain people that greatly harmed the integrity of the awards.

CCGs, War/board games and RPGs need separate awards. Wargames need the exposure afforded by specializes awards. CCGs don't need RPG hangers-on and RPGs are a broad enough category to get their own treatment. A good award should probably have one peer award category to recognize work that may have passed under the radar otherwise, but it needn't dominate the whole thing.

Back to the ENnies, some of the category listings were nonsensical last year. Many RPGs go with the core + robust supplement, and the Ennies folds them in with other kinds of supplements (except when it doesn't due to the subjective influence of people who are supposed to be representing fandom but may have a production credit or two under their belts). Mage and Shackled City had no business being in the same category, for instance.

If I was the boss of all of you, this is what I'd take RPGs out of the OAs. I'd make the ENnies the only RPG awards and add a "product of the year" peer award. For everything else, I'd get rid of the judges who kind-sorta have industry credits, no matter how tenuous or ancient they may be.

 

[Crothian]

In the past, I treated the ENnies as a shopping list - today, not so much. It's something I'm a little sad about, but not something I should have mouthed off about.

I think it can still be a shopping list only instead of a shopping list of d20 books it is a shopping list of RPG books.

 

[Treebore]

I think the ENnies are okay, but then again I co-wrote a game that won Best Writing last year

Anyway, the ENnies have plenty of industry/commercial ties to them, so Mike's observations about the awards being "independent" don't really make any sense. The problem is that we curently have a number of awards that do not reflect the reality of the hobby. The ENnies is the closest to a good general award.

The OAs do a lot of things badly, mixing an award system for RPGs with ones for other games that don't have the same audience or market size. Somebody's always going to get screwed in an awards system where wargaming, CCGs and RPGs are side by side. Of course, there were also certain people that greatly harmed the integrity of the awards.

CCGs, War/board games and RPGs need separate awards. Wargames need the exposure afforded by specializes awards. CCGs don't need RPG hangers-on and RPGs are a broad enough category to get their own treatment. A good award should probably have one peer award category to recognize work that may have passed under the radar otherwise, but it needn't dominate the whole thing.

Back to the ENnies, some of the category listings were nonsensical last year. Many RPGs go with the core + robust supplement, and the Ennies folds them in with other kinds of supplements (except when it doesn't due to the subjective influence of people who are supposed to be representing fandom but may have a production credit or two under their belts). Mage and Shackled City had no business being in the same category, for instance.

If I was the boss of all of you, this is what I'd take RPGs out of the OAs. I'd make the ENnies the only RPG awards and add a "product of the year" peer award. For everything else, I'd get rid of the judges who kind-sorta have industry credits, no matter how tenuous or ancient they may be.

Could you clarify what you mean by industry credits? As far as I remember none of the judges have ever worked in the industry. Or is this an issue going back to the 2001 and 2002 ENNIE's?

 

[eyebeams]

Could you clarify what you mean by industry credits? As far as I remember none of the judges have ever worked in the industry. Or is this an issue going back to the 2001 and 2002 ENNIE's?

Of the 2006 judges, one is listed as having a Pyramid review credit, while another mentions a GURPS Talislanta project that earned a kill fee.