I was surprised at the ENnies to see how many people were "dressed up." I put that in quotations because for some of them it was only an effort of changing from jeans shorts into full-length jeans and putting on a fresh polo shirt ... but still, they made a special effort. Of course there were a significant number of people who really DID dress up, putting on jackets and ties (even a tux or two) or evening gowns, depending on their proclivity.
This surprised me because I know from first hand experience how difficult it was to get people to dress up for the Origins Awards a few years back. When Charles Ryan was the head of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, he and many others put a great deal of effort into trying to make the award presentation into a real SHOWCASE for the industry. But those efforts were fought tooth and nail, and for every person who did dress up for the awards, there were two or three who pointedly dressed down ... or didn't even bother to come to the ceremony when they were nominated and ended up winning. (One particularly memorable-if-embarrassing, year, a manufacturer sent a rather obnoxious and poorly-dressed fan as his representative.)
In only 5 years, the ENnies have managed to get the buy-in and effort from the professional community that the Origins Awards barely could muster through extreme effort, and never could sustain. In the end, I think A LOT of it has to do with the amount of respect afforded the organizations behind the awards. GAMA has, as far back as I can remember, always been a group filled with acrimony, political back-biting, and bucketfuls of adolescent spite. (Which is why, after trying to support those who were making a good-faith effort to reform the organization and watching them get torn down and publicly humiliated, I resigned from my membership in the Academy and GAMA, and will have nothing more to do with them for the foreseeable future.) On the other hand, the ENnies are run by the very popular ENWorld.org and supported by Gen Con LLC--and perhaps more importantly, by Gen Con's president, Peter Adkison--all of whom are VERY popular with both professionals AND the fans.
Anyway, it was GREAT to see a night where the industry turned out to celebrate the best efforts of the previous year. Over at The Game Mechanics, we won a few ENnies in years past, and this only made me value those awards more highly.
Now, if only they could figure out a way to make the ENnie Award Ceremony be SHORTER than an Oscar broadcast ... oh well, I guess you can't have EVERYTHING!
