[PR] Indie d20/OGL Deisgners: The 2002 Indie RPG Awards have gone Live!

[Andy Kitkowski]

The 2002 Indie RPG Awards have gone live!

http://www.rpg-awards.com

The RPG Industry has several major awards ceremonies: The Origins awards, which rewards industry professionals for their works, and recently the ENnie Awards for only d20 games and game publishers.

Independent RPGs and their designers, the "little guys" of our beloved industry, haven't had a chance at receiving recognition in RPG industry awards. Until now.

Accepting only independently ("indie") designed and produced games, and voted on by indie peers, the 2002 Indie RPG Awards seek to reward those talented individuals who designed and produced a game from the ground up by themselves. The grand prize is a moderate cash pool that will be used, like an advance, to encourage that designer to work on more quality indie games. There are also a number of smaller awards, such as Best Use of the d20 License, Best Free Game, Most Innovative Game, and the Indie RPG "Human of the Year", among others.

The Indie Awards website feature a showcase of all of the Indie RPGs released last year in one easy-to-access place. It features online registration for easy game and voting registration for indie designers. The awards also feature something quite unusual: An opportunity for fans and supporters to BUY VOTES for their favorite Indie games. Find out more at the site!

If you know anyone who produced an independent homebrew or d20 game last year, get the word out early and encourage them to register!

Registration lasts until February 28th. Preliminary voting then begins and lasts until March 14th, and when they are finished the Finals begin. The 2002 Indie RPG Award will be awarded in an online ceremony on Thursday, March 27th.

Come find out what innovative games the Indie RPG community is turning out! http://www.rpg-awards.com

-Andy Kitkowski
support@rpg-awards.com

 

[HellHound]

The vote-buying method is a potential land-mine, in my opinion.

I can spend $400 to give ten different friends of mine 1 vote each, and know full well they will vote for my product.

Heck, My Credit Card has a $15,000 limit on it. I can run through 50 rounds of preliminary voting and a further 50 rounds of final voting, knowing full well that I will get 5 votes in each round, regardless of merit.

And then I get all the money back, as I will have won the award, and I can pay off my credit card with the proceeds, plus $200 and whatever other money people used to buy votes.

Heck... I can get twenty friends to buy votes to make it look more convincing!

 

[Tyrant]

And here I thought I was the only one to consider such a scheme. lol

Without doing the math, I assumed the organization had left enough gap between money coming in and money being paid out to ensure that

a) the scheme wouldnt be exploited in such a fashion and
b) there was enough money around to advertise the site, the awards, keep the site running, and cover credit card processing costs (or are we supposed to pay with Paypal...?)

Eric Price

 

[Andy Kitkowski]

I can spend $400 to give ten different friends of mine 1 vote each, and know full well they will vote for my product.

Nope, can't happen! Check the FAQ

I actually ran through the exact scenario above in my head when someone on a message board came up with the idea of buying votes.

I've come up with a way that they can count towards a win but you can't use too many of them.

Basically, only up to 5 Purchased Votes count towards any game per round. If more votes are registered, we'll add it to the pot, but no more votes get officially tallied for that game.

5 votes seems small, but the scale of voting (Only Inde RPG designers from the last 2 years can vote) is such that it works out perfectly. Purchased votes CAN moderately ("greaty" in the case of a standoff between two hot products) influence the vote, but it won't blow it away.

there was enough money around to advertise the site, the awards, keep the site running, and cover credit card processing costs (or are we supposed to pay with Paypal...?)

Ads for the Site and Awards are all through PR notices and BBS posts- We're not big enough to take out ads in gaming mags or at Pyramid.com or the like. Yet.

Site running: It's a virtual domain off my main business account, so it's very little overhead for me, even with all the extra bandwidth. And CC processing is through Paypal.

Thanks for your comments!
-Andy