PDF Awards?

[Warden]

While PDFs may be nominated and some RPG awards may include a PDF category now (or it could just be the Ennies, who knows), are there any PDF-specific awards out there? Only e-publishers can be nominated and only PDF products can be available for voting by the general public or a panel of judges.

If not, then I believe the next viable option is to see if we should all pitch in to do so. Having a major sponsor, such as EN World as Morrus works hard to promote PDFs for his own sake like the rest of us. It's pretty much agreed that reviews can help make or break a book but awards can't hurt either. My daytime job involves running a Blockbuster and I've seen what nominations and awards for films can do -- they pull them out of obscurity and give the audience an excuse to check them out and see what all of the fuss is about. We could call them the Puffies.

Perhaps with that last part aside, just how reasonable does this sound? Comments?

 

[cybermonkey]

This can be done a number of ways, but we could take a cue from the film industry (like the SGA Awards or the DGA) and have PDF-specific awards judged by its peers (other PDF publishers) or reviewers, or both groups to off-set the other.

It would be a great lead in to the bigger awards to at least gain some recognition for the "little guys" and perhaps help them out in the voting.

 

[astralpwka]

Great idea, warden. Or even some type of promotional "Indie Film Festival"... err... Independent PDF Festival.

Just being a nomination in the GameWyrd awards was as good as a 5 star review with Soul Harvest, where sales were concerned, and I agree with you with the type of exposure such creates.

I think it would be worth any pdf publisher's time to devote effort toward any such idea. If we did the festival event, we could create a sight that does massive indepth reviews of different pdf's (or link to them), links to their demos, etc. It could be a focus, in one place, for a publisher to show off his very best stuff, and links to their best reviews. Basically, an event that focuses on the shine. I don't know what else we could do, but I'm sure it would open up a lot of options. Make it last a week, with each day focusing on a different category. It should also focus on non-d20.

 

[Warden]

Turning these awards into an "independent gaming" festival, similar to Sundance, is an excellent idea. It basically says: "Sure, we publish RPG material just like the print guys, but we do it for passion."

So what do we call this award festival? I'd like to use a term like "Spirit Awards" or something that designates the passion each of us displays for our craft. And having room for non-d20 is also an excellent idea.

 

[astralpwka]

Spirit Awards sounds good... what about the festival name? I think its pretty safe to assume there's not another online pdf festival in existence, so we could go for the blunt (no jokes, Hellhound), and call it the Role-Playing PDF Festival, or something similar (and maybe that sounds a little dumb... the RPG PDF IGF (independent game festival, lol)).

Unfortunately, I've got to head out the door for work, but I'm interested in seeing where this train of thought leads. Count me in on whatever direction everyone wants to go.

 

[Warden]

Why not IGF? The Independent Game Festival or Independent Gaming Festival. A collective gathering of e-publishers competing against each other for various Spirit Awards and using the opportunity to promote their products.

Here's how I see it. Excuse the prune fingers on the keyboard but my best ideas come from the shower...

The IGF is held once every year just prior to a peak time in gaming sales (i.e. May). A special webpage is formed with each registered e-publisher (marked and recognized with an IGF logo that they post on their site) submitting a single product for entry the Spirit Awards as a whole. Each e-publisher can only submit one product per year and each product can only be nominated under every applicable category -- the e-publisher can choose to submit a product that was released earlier in the year or one that has yet to hit the market but has been fully completed and is ready for sale (meaning that the submitted entry hits sales during the festival). A panel of judges will then vote for all products under each category, meaning that all submitted nominees will be considered for all categories. The purpose of these awards are to gain attention to the e-publisher as a whole for which they must choose their best product to represent them at the awards. Each participating e-publisher provides a link on their home page to the IGF site and this is done vice-versa with the IGF site listing all nominated products and links to product descriptions and sales sites (i.e. RPGNow). A 30-day voting period will allow the judges (chosen by the general public) to vote for their favourites with the winners announced during the last day of the festival.

In addition to these nominations, there should be the True Spirit Award given to a single individual or e-publishing company that has helped to shape the PDF industry to its current level. This award will be chosen by all members of the IGF.

Now, here is the kicker: the IGF's final award show is done live online!!! All participating publishers list their award recepients should they win and that person will call if their product wins under the category for which they are nominated and give an acceptance speech. Who doesn't want to brag about their victory? With luck, we could have this take place on Mortality, which is already set up for live, online broadcasting, or invest the time and energy to do this ourselves. If our industry is dependent on computers, it should only make sense that it be presented on them.

A committee will need to be formed of voluntary members of the e-publishing community in order to piece this together. Having never been involved in awards of any sort that was not an honorary mention or participation ribbon, I can only take a guess at what is needed to put this together.

Off the top of my head, here are the awards that could be available for nomination. Each of them is not d20 specific and open to any game system (except for Best d20 Product; Best BESM Product, etc.)

Best PDF of the Year
Best PDF Adventure
Best PDF Sourcebook/Supplement
Best d20 PDF Product (and so forth for all individual game systems with an OGL)
Best PDF Designer
Best PDF Layout
Best PDF Artwork (Cover)
Best PDF Artwork (Interior)
Best PDF Cartography
Best Free PDF Product
Fan Award - voted by the general public
True Spirit Award - chosen by the IGF members

Are there any other Spirit Awards that we can think up? Any thoughts/recommendations/changes for what is listed above?

 

[JimAde]

Since this is a PDF-only thing, we can probably drop the PDF from the category names.

The exception is my suggestion: Best use of PDF features.

This would include bookmarks, hyperlinking within the document, all that good stuff that PDFs let you do.

Edit: Or, to eliminate PDF from my suggestion: Best use of the medium.

I think this is a great idea.

 

[RangerWickett]

Would pdfs that later get print deals be eligible?

 

[Warden]

Would pdfs that later get print deals be eligible?

I would say so. Since we are using the independent film industry as a basis for these awards, there are many indie films that are picked up by larger studios for distribution. That doesn't make them traitors, just successful. But not PDFs made from a print product. For example, if a print book was to later release an updated version on PDF, that particular product would not count as it was put out to print first.

 

[yangnome]

I'm not a PDF publisher (though I've considered it) but I think it’s a great idea. Anything that helps draw attention to the PDF market is good. I thought of a couple additional categories you might want to include:

Most Innovative Product: It might not be the best product of the year, but it really pushed the boundaries of what is currently being done by other publishers and will likely influence product by other publishers

Best New Publisher: Self-explanatory. An award given to an upstart PDF company entering the competition for the first time. This would likely be based off of the company's entire line rather than just one product.

Another thing you might want to do during the e-festival is incorporate chat sessions with various publishers. This will allow consumers to ask questions and get to know some of the smaller companies.

Contests and things like that during the festival might help draw attention as well.