Joshua Dyal said:
Of course that assumes that he thinks the Origins Awards are worth fixing in the first place. Frankly, I'm not sure that I've ever thought they were; and after hearing about this years show, I'm even more convinced of that than ever.
A lot of problems with the Origins Awards, I think, stems from the fact that they are/were quite often changed at the whim of the Chair, who was appointed at the whim of the GAMA Board. Operative word here being "whim". There were no defined processes or rules/guidelines for making changes to the awards. Thus there was no consistency and no real control on how they are handled.
Currently there still aren't, but that is something that the Academy is trying to change. At least, I am. I am advocating fixed (yet flexible) definitions for categories, bylaws for the Academy itself, which will detail how changes to the awards process can be made, etc.. The Academy is also, for the first time ever, getting to select its own Chair (personally, I don't care for the only two candidates curently available - one is the Chair from this past year, and quite possibly the guy who made the awful decision about this year's ceremony - yes, it was a joke - and the other was part of the board who removed the previous chair just because one member of the board did not get along with her and was able to influence the President of the Board to dump her).
The thing is though, the OAs are the only industry awards we have and by industry, I am referring to more than just rpgs. Thus, I do think that they are worth saving.
However, saving them is not going to be something that can be done in a single year. It is going to take at least 3-5 years, maybe more. The only way to save the awards is to give them that consistency, and remove the elements of "whim" from them. That can be done in relatively short order, and once it is done, it will still take those x number of years of running the awards that way for people to start respecting them again.
The ENnies are a respected award because there is consistency behind them. The way voting is tallied each year, and other aspects of them may change (like the categories), but there is a lot of transparency behind those changes, and the actual core processes behind the awards have not appreciably changed.
This is what is needed for the OAs. The solid core processes, the transparency behind those processes and any changes needed to them, and a few solid years of implementing those processes to show that they are working as designed.
