2018 ENnie Nominees for Product of the Year - do they matter?

NYTFLYR · July 15, 2018, 07:42:18 AM

people like to be sheep, they like to follow the crowd, less work for them I guess.
I currently work at a home improvement center behind the paint desk, and the number of people who buy a certain wall color because of its popularity is astounding.

Philotomy Jurament · July 17, 2018, 06:44:48 PM

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;10473312018 ENnie Nominees for Product of the Year - do they matter?

I don't pay any attention to the ENnies. I've haven't found them to be relevant or helpful to my gaming.

RPGPundit · July 20, 2018, 05:44:36 AM

Quote from: ponta1010;1049037Quick answer - no. Answers by JediSoth on RPG.net for this thread So-umm-why-is-MYFAROG-a-votable-option suggest that the voting is rigged anyway. Essentially it seems to be that people can vote, but if the votings not as we think it should be we'll do something about it.

This isn't surprising, ENnies and ENies judges have been shown to be corrupt/rigged in the past. There was the time they caught a judge (Houghton) being corrupt, for example. Or the other time they promoted Shelly Mazzanoble's book which was also a candidate and she was promoting her book in exactly the same way.

FeloniousMonk · September 16, 2018, 05:11:03 PM

Revisiting this post. Harlem Unbound and Zweihander winning makes zero sense. There is no way they are that popular. Delta Green? Sure. And Zach took home some golds but not surprising since LotFP has a huge following.

jan paparazzi · September 16, 2018, 07:53:19 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;1048413A bunch of idiot SJWs claim that the new World of Darkness books are 'made to appeal to the Alt-Right' because they hired Zak and they claim Zak is a Nazi.

I would give more of a shit if he hadn't thrown almost all the other OSR writers the SJWs went after under the bus to try to virtue signal to the selfsame SJWs.

Ridiculous. Zak obviously is not on the alt-right/neo-nazi. He is not on the alt-light/new right/populistic right. He is not a right winger at all. He is obviously a left winger. Quite clearly. They are nuts. This is just as silly as that time that theneedledrop guy (prototype hipster music buff) had to cancel his tour because he got accused of being on the alt-right.

Omega · September 16, 2018, 09:23:00 PM

ENnies and EnWorld are meaningless now. (Assuming the award had any sort of meaning at all.)

Lurtch · September 16, 2018, 10:07:56 PM

I don't think the Ennies matter to the market at large. Outside of D&D most RPGs sell very few copies and a a good seller is a few thousand. OBS, as far as I know, doesn't release actual sales numbers. We don't know how many copies of a book is actually sold at the silver, gold, or platinum level. And usually when folks talk about how the Ennies have helped them sell more copies we usually get percentages and not actual units sold.

I think the folks that really care about the Ennies are the folks that buy RPGs to talk about them online and don't play that many actual RPGs at the table. OR maybe there is this huge audience of folks that hop from game to game. I've never really run into folks that do that.

FeloniousMonk · September 16, 2018, 11:30:34 PM

Quote from: Lurtch;1056421I don't think the Ennies matter to the market at large. Outside of D&D most RPGs sell very few copies and a a good seller is a few thousand. OBS, as far as I know, doesn't release actual sales numbers. We don't know how many copies of a book is actually sold at the silver, gold, or platinum level. And usually when folks talk about how the Ennies have helped them sell more copies we usually get percentages and not actual units sold.

I think the folks that really care about the Ennies are the folks that buy RPGs to talk about them online and don't play that many actual RPGs at the table. OR maybe there is this huge audience of folks that hop from game to game. I've never really run into folks that do that.

ENWorld is the premier rpg website. It's unparalleled even by the Big Purple and /rpg. This is why I am so surprised b/c I had never heard of Zweihander or Harlem Unbound on the site before the Ennies.

How Starfinder didn't win a single award is upsetting.

RPGPundit · September 18, 2018, 05:04:45 AM

The ENnies are ridiculous and pointless.

I have a player who's a big sci-fi fan, and he recently said "It used to be, that when I saw a book for sale and it said 'Hugo Award Winner' I knew it was going to be good; now if I see that I know it means nothing, or that if anything that it's going to be garbage". The ENnies are largely the same.

Rhedyn · September 18, 2018, 09:05:13 AM

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;1056426How Starfinder didn't win a single award is upsetting.

Aside from something like "Best production value this year" what exactly did Starfinder accomplish?

san dee jota · September 18, 2018, 09:22:15 AM

Quote from: Lurtch;1056421I don't think the Ennies matter to the market at large. Outside of D&D most RPGs sell very few copies and a a good seller is a few thousand.

Agreed 100%.

Quote from: Lurtch;1056421OBS, as far as I know, doesn't release actual sales numbers. We don't know how many copies of a book is actually sold at the silver, gold, or platinum level.

I thought they used to have hard numbers ("you hit copper when you sell this many"), but it looks like that isn't currently the case. If it ever were.

At a guess, it's a marketing gimmick to help them and (popular) creators both. "See this thing? It's highly popular, and you should buy it too!" Of course, that logic also detours people from buying stuff by obscure people, which is why I go by ratings and reviews over anything else.

Quote from: Lurtch;1056421I think the folks that really care about the Ennies are the folks that buy RPGs to talk about them online and don't play that many actual RPGs at the table.

More likely they're the ones who may or may not play games, but sure try to keep up with what a given online community is talking about. You see it on every forum.

Quote from: Lurtch;1056421OR maybe there is this huge audience of folks that hop from game to game. I've never really run into folks that do that.

I have. It lasts about as long as you'd expect it would too, for all the reasons you can think of.

tenbones · September 18, 2018, 04:24:47 PM

I've never:

Bought a book because it got an award.
Watched a movie because it got an award.
Purchased a music-recording because it got an award.

I can guarantee you that an ENNie isn't going to make me want to buy a game. I *might* even avoid a game, given the realities of this cottage industry of ours.

So nope. It doesn't matter to me. And I can point to the fact that I don't find most of the organizations that hand out these awards in any of these mediums to be honest, nor do I generally trust their tastes, especially in the last decade or two.

Lurtch · September 18, 2018, 05:25:43 PM

I've watched movies because they are considered classics or won awards and the same goes for books. A movie is a two hour investment and a book is easy just to pick up and read

I don't care about game awards and I don't think they should receive awards. Games are not art.

Rhedyn · September 18, 2018, 06:43:02 PM

Quote from: Lurtch;1056721Games are not art.

Strongly disagree, except for games with micro-transactions.

Lurtch · September 18, 2018, 11:38:04 PM

Quote from: Rhedyn;1056734Strongly disagree, except for games with micro-transactions.

Games becoming art made games shitty.