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Fan awards?

Started by Narf the Mouse, September 26, 2008, 12:42:31 AM

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Narf the Mouse

September 26, 2008, 12:42:31 AM
Presumably, there are some. What are the good ones? Preferences? Yada and penguins?
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RPGPundit

#1
September 26, 2008, 01:21:57 AM
What do you mean by Fan Awards? There are self-styled "industry awards", pretty well all of which are utter bullshit of one variety or another...

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Narf the Mouse

#2
September 26, 2008, 01:39:37 AM
Well, awards based on what fans like.

Industry awards are kind of like critics: They're only useful if they actively like or dislike what you like. In other words, not very and to not very many people.
The main problem with government is the difficulty of pressing charges against its directors.

Given a choice of two out of three M&Ms, the human brain subconsciously tries to justify the two M&Ms chosen as being superior to the M&M not chosen.

flyingmice

#3
September 26, 2008, 09:09:32 AM
Fan awards are pretty limited. They only reflect the market. Fans are not required to read everything available before voting, in fact they aren't required to read anything. Thus anything fan awarded would be "Most Popular," not "Best."

Industry awards are limited in a different way. They reflect the tastes of the judges, and have no relation to the tastes of the fans except coincidentally. Anything industry awarded would be "Best in Our Opinion," not "Best."

Compromises are just not workable. If the judges nominate and the fans pick from the judges' selections, you get people saying "WTF??? How the HELL is this POS to be even CONSIDERED for the Best??!!??" If fans nominate and judges vote, you get a "most popular" limited selection AND "Least Bad" attitude together in one package.

No matter how you slice it, awards don't really work.]

-clash
clash bowley * Flying Mice Games - an Imprint of Better Mousetrap Games
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Abyssal Maw

#4
September 26, 2008, 11:32:10 AM
Quote from: flyingmice;251535Fan awards are pretty limited. They only reflect the market. Fans are not required to read everything available before voting, in fact they aren't required to read anything. Thus anything fan awarded would be "Most Popular," not "Best."

Industry awards are limited in a different way. They reflect the tastes of the judges, and have no relation to the tastes of the fans except coincidentally. Anything industry awarded would be "Best in Our Opinion," not "Best."

Compromises are just not workable. If the judges nominate and the fans pick from the judges' selections, you get people saying "WTF??? How the HELL is this POS to be even CONSIDERED for the Best??!!??" If fans nominate and judges vote, you get a "most popular" limited selection AND "Least Bad" attitude together in one package.

No matter how you slice it, awards don't really work.]

-clash


As long as people start from the premise that popular appreciation  doesn't actually reflect anything important, awards don't and won't mean anything. Ever.
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flyingmice

#5
September 26, 2008, 01:20:36 PM
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;251610As long as people start from the premise that popular appreciation  doesn't actually reflect anything important, awards don't and won't mean anything. Ever.

Popular appreciation reflects a high level of quality, but you can have a high level of quality without popular appreciation. In other words, the set of all popular products are a subset of the set of all high quality products. Popular vote will discard from consideration all members of the superset that are not also members of the subset. Is this meaningless? Of course not. Will the vote give you the Best? Probably the Best of the popular subset, but not necessarily the Best product. Using a small number of judges, you can make a fair stab at seeing all the members of that big superset of high quality products, but the smaller the number of judges, the less likely that statistically their collective tastes will mirror popular tastes.

So while awards aren't meaningless, they fail either way.

-clash
clash bowley * Flying Mice Games - an Imprint of Better Mousetrap Games
Flying Mice home page: http://jalan.flyingmice.com/flyingmice.html
Currently Designing: StarCluster 4 - Wavefront Empire
Last Releases: SC4 - Dark Orbital, SC4 - Out of the Ruins,  SC4 - Sabre & World
Blog: I FLY BY NIGHT

Narf the Mouse

#6
September 26, 2008, 04:34:26 PM
...A fan award with a 'minimum quantity of votes' and a ranking 'quality of votes' would then seem to be the best vote-driven compromise.

'Rated out of ten...'
The main problem with government is the difficulty of pressing charges against its directors.

Given a choice of two out of three M&Ms, the human brain subconsciously tries to justify the two M&Ms chosen as being superior to the M&M not chosen.

jhkim

#7
September 26, 2008, 11:33:44 PM
Quote from: Narf the Mouse;251768...A fan award with a 'minimum quantity of votes' and a ranking 'quality of votes' would then seem to be the best vote-driven compromise.

'Rated out of ten...'
The last Origins Awards were done by popular vote of convention attendees.  Whoever filled in a form and turned it in got a vote.  (The methods have varied for the Origins Awards.)  The problem with open fan awards is that to a fair degree, the way the vote goes is where voting is popularized.  i.e. You get a big movement in RPGnet, say, to go vote and that's where the vote goes.  

Also, one of the points of most awards is to give recognition to games which have been passed over.  We already have sales figures, say, to show which games are selling the most.

Narf the Mouse

#8
September 27, 2008, 12:49:48 AM
Ok, points on what makes a good award system and what makes a bad one...

...But to get back to the original purpose of the thread, how about recommendations and links?
The main problem with government is the difficulty of pressing charges against its directors.

Given a choice of two out of three M&Ms, the human brain subconsciously tries to justify the two M&Ms chosen as being superior to the M&M not chosen.
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