The Origins Awards are crap

[ethan_greer]

So, just so everyone knows up front, I'm talking out of my ass here, but I've got some opinions I'd like to share. Anybody who wants to tell me why I'm wrong, I'm listening. Believe it or not, I wouldn't mind having some respect for the Orgins Awards. As it stands right now, I can't do it.

So, yeah.  The Origins Awards.  Has anyone noticed the complete lack of credibility that has been happening for the past eight years or so?  (That's when I started paying attention; this may have been going on longer.) Like, My Life With Master being nominated for best electronic product? Or Button Men winning best abstract board game?  Or Marvel HeroClix being considered a board game? Or the fact that the people who enter the games in the awards also vote for the winners? Or the fact that the rules for the awards get a major upheaval each year when flaw after flaw after flaw is revealed?

I mean, does anyone really even give a shit about the Origins Awards anymore? I certainly don't. They're a joke.  And not a very funny one.

So, to avoid this becoming a pointless brawl, here's what I want: If you have an opinion as to why the Origins Awards are relevant to the hobby, I'd like to hear it.  If you have a longer-term perspective than I do, I'd like to get your impressions of how the Origins Awards have changed over time. Were they ever a good thing? Are they still?  Why or why not?

[MarktheAnimator]

I've been gaming for 26+ years and have never paid any attention to the Origin Awards.

Nobody I've gamed with does either.

Sometimes I see them mentioned in print someplace, but it never encourages anybody to buy products.

People buy games because they have fun playing them.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I gotta call it, guys. What I see here is an opinion poll, and those ain't gonna happen at the Forge.

How about this, though:

If anyone has substantive knowledge of the history, administration, and outcome-trends of the Origins Awards, please post it. Most of what I've read about these degenerates swiftly into accusations and counter-accusations, and that's what I'd like to avoid. Just plain old basic historical stuff - like when did they start? How have the categories changed? And so on.

Best,
Ron

[ethan_greer]

Fair enough. It wasn't supposed to be an opinion poll, but I can't disagree with the assessment.

All of the Origins Awards ever awarded can be perused here. The first Origins Awards ceremony was held in 1975 for products released in 1974. The early awards categories are pretty much unrecognizable. It seems like the awards have mutated every year since their inception. In 1977 the awards were split into two sub-awards: The Charles Roberts awards and the H.G. Wells awards. The H.G. Wells awards included award categories for RPGs (which the previous years' awards didn't). The Roberts and Wells awards were awarded in tandem until 1987, when both awards were folded together and became the Origins Awards more or less as we know them today.

There it is.

[sirogit]

I don't quite understand most of your criticisms.

You don't think My Life with Master was good enough to be nominated or that it doesn't fit under the subject of electronic product?

While it's understandable that Heroclix would not be commonly identified as a boardgame, wargames and board games have both small enough output of titles(Compared to other award catagories) and enough similarities that considering them both doen the same award seems reasonable.

[ethan_greer]

As I said, it's a matter of credibility.  Every year, there's something in there that makes me think, "What were these morons thinking?". For this year, it's the ridiculous mish-mash of the Gamer's Choice awards, in which the MLwM debacle is only an example. As a clarification to my first post, I'll provide other examples, but I don't really want to belabor the point since Ron's asked us to shy away from opinions.

MLwM and EABA are both RPGs, and should be nominated as such.

The Button Men Web game appears in two different categories, play by mail and electronic product, which seems odd since it's not a PBM game.

Why the Best Historical Gaming Product category? Historical warrants its own category, but SF or Fantasy doesn't? Looking in the 16 Historical product nominees, we've got miniatures, minis games, and boardgames. How is one supposed to compare these divergent products?

Regarding lumping minis games with board games: There are five RPG nominees. There are 15 Board Game nominees. They couldn't squeeze a separate minis category out?

Regarding card games: Combining traditional card games with collectible card games is questionable. The production and design considerations for a traditional game vs. a collectible game are significantly different. With 10 nominees, why not have two categories?

It's mystifying. The Origins Awards are touted as the gaming awards, and the people running them don't exhibit a strong understanding of the hobby at all (either that or they make nonsensical compromises for reasons not immediately apparent).  Indeed, they can't even agree from year to year how to run the things. Credibility = zero.

[Andy Kitkowski]

On one hand, I agree with the sentiment expressed here- Every award system, especially a large one, has a "breaking point".  I mean, the excellent Mutants and Masterminds won a few Ennie Awards last year - Peer Choice and Best d20 game, IIRC - even though that game is clearly not d20, but OGL.

In my own awards (which were, actually, founded as a reaction to the "popular vote" of awards like Pen& Paper and Origins), I've even had a few games where the line wasn't so clear cut, and the ensuing discussion, if it went public, would probably "discredit" the awards: How I keep some of my "hard rules" loose, and the like.

And my awards only focus on small, Indie RPGs.  I can't imagine what a headache it would be to try to come up with lines in the sand and set them in stone. At least, unless I was getting paid 10K to do it.

-Andy

[ADGBoss]

Trying to avoid this going down in flames as they say :) The whole question of Awards and giving out Awards and recognizing outstanding products / people in the field is a very good one.

Ethan, if I am getting you on this, your questioning how seriously those who give out the Origins Awards take a) the award and b) the hobby? Is this more or less correct?

I do not think the answer is an easy one. First off I think we have to try and understand the nature of awards, as they are done in the modern American Entertainment Monolith.  The Oscars are the most famous movie awards, but by no means are they the ONLY ones. The same is true in our Hobby as we have a few awards given out here and there, most of them obscure even to people who play.  

Origins Award winner does not make anyone buy a product, that I am aware of.  Neither does winning an Oscar (I have NEVER seen Platoon or the English PAtient etc ect) or a Tony or any other award.  Awards are there so that famous people can be seen with other famous people (fame being relative here) and so that some of them can have golden trophies to sell when their drug habit gets too expensive.

Without all the commentary I guess I am saying that awards in the entertainment business, especially in THIS part of the industry are not taken that seriously.  More so because this hobby, well these hobbies (I consider RPGs and board games and war games separate entities) are not taken seriously, despite the millions of dollars in revenue they produce every year.  

I honestly would like to know who does vote on these awards and how the commitee that controls the Origins Awards (and GAMMA has awards to right) and other RPG/Wargame/Boardgame/Comp game etc awards recognize quality and make their choices.  

It seems you are crying out against something that no one takes seriously in any case, which begs the question: Should We? Should the RPG et all industries & Hobbies take themselves and thus their awards more seriously then apparently they do?

Food for thought.

Sean

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

That's a good perspective, Sean, although I have a slightly different take: that awards are a form of promotion. They promote the nominees, and (to whatever extent) the winners - but most importantly, they promote the commercial culture of the activity, in general.

It seems to me, in a terribly iffy and gut-level way of thinking, that the very existence of the Oscars is "about" movie-making of a particular sort, and that even the act of publicly naming the categories is a significant statement. It is, without quotes, an industry statement. It says to the customer, "This is what you're paying for. See? We not only want to show you, but also to congratulate one another for our efforts in all these different aspects of the process."

Now obviously the details of who wins and who doesn't are political as hell, fraught with soap-opera, quite likely semi-fixed in one way or another, and all that stuff. But no matter who wins or who doesn't, the culture of this sort of movie-making is promoted. It's like who wins the Superbowl - which is irrelevant compared to the fact that football wins, as a cultural entity, no matter what.

That's why the most important observation about the Origins Awards for me, from the page Ethan linked to, is how the categories have shifted wildly all over the place so frequently. I can understand a slow-ish evolution of the categories, which I only presume has happened for any awards process over the years. But why such ... flailing? I wonder whether the Origins Awards' reach (Oscar or Superbowl style whole-hobby cultural promotion, for all adventure gaming) may be exceeding the grasp of the hobby, whereas Enworld's Ennies, Ken Hite's Outies & Innies, and Andy's Indies all seem far more suited to what role-playing is and how it's sold.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

I think the rapidly changing categories is a huge part of why the Origins Awards aren't taken seriously.  When categories have permanence they have history.  When a director wins a Best Director Oscar, they're winning the same award that a whole host of other directors (many of whom are probably idols of theirs) has one.  There's a sense of continuity, a passing of the baton from one generation to the next.

When the categories shift and twist around, there's no history there.  Its almost like winning a new award that was just invented a couple of years ago and will be gone in a couple of more.


It also gives a tremendously distasteful appearance of gerrymandering.

From the outside looking in the cynic in me can easily conjure up images of the sort of politics that could be behind such category shifts:  One year an influencial academy member has 3 top candidates all competing against each other in the same category...so the category gets split giving more opportunities to win.  Another year an influencial member's top candidate is a clear loser to that years hot runner...so a new category gets created that that candidate can be put in where the competition isn't so fierce.

Even if absolutely zero of this has ever happened...it looks like it does and that's a big part why I don't even pay attention to who the winners are.

[Mike Holmes]

Movies don't change in terms of what they produce as a general rule. That is, there are actors, directors, cinematographers, etc, etc, all of which has changed very little over time.

When it has changed, things have changed. The addition of awards for special effects, for instance.

Games, OTOH, are all about innovation. They are "novelties" and, as such, need to be novel. When CCGs came out, for instance, well, are they board games? Miniatures games? RPGs?

Is it gerrymandering, or reapportioning in a sensible manner? I mean, with the influx of Abstract Games from Germany, if you didn't give it it's own category, it would threaten to make all other categories of boardgame overrun. For the most part I think that the categories change fairly sensibly from year to year. Imperfect, sure, just like the people behind the process...


MLWM is sold as a PDF. Hence it is an electronic product. It was in the nomination pool for best RPG as well. That is it could have been nominated for both. So, are you saying that the game is being shuffled off into some category in order to ghettoize it? Or that it's your opinion that it should have been nominated for Best Game?

I'm not seeing it at all. I mean, I would have voted to put it in the best game category, but, well that's my opinion. Obviously somebody else has another. Which doesn't make them wrong.

Every year people blow up about the awards and how they're run. Every year, the people behind the awards listen to what people say, and change the structure to accomodate the complainers. This years changes seem oddly reminiscent of an RPG.net thread from last year that went on and on (Bruce Baugh featured prominently) about how things needed to change.

Well, now they have, and the people who liked it the way it was are complaining. They can't win, can they?

If you really don't like the awards changing from year to year, then stop griping about them. If you think that they need to change yet again to "fix" them, then prepared to be dissapointed two years from now. If not every year.


Have you been to the award ceremony? It's just a bunch of gamers dressed up (and some like me who don't bother) patting each other on the back. Big deal. It's fun, and it's harmless.

Mike

[ethan_greer]

For the curious, the process for the Origins Awards can be found here. (They use frames, so if you want to see the whole site you'll have to navigate through from here. Incidentally, bad website design undermines credibility. Or am I being snippy?)

Mike:
Changing primarily to accomodate complainers is quite possibly the worst way I can think of to run things. If you're going to bend over backwards like clockwork every year, your consistency will be for shit. This is part of the cred problem as I see it.

I don't particularly have a problem with the awards ceremony itself. Fun, harmless, fine. I also don't see it as being particularly relevant to the topic at hand. There's going to be a ceremony regardless, so why not give the rewards a little more meaning?

How to do this? I like what Ron has to say about that. Pretty much echos my feelings. The first step would be to stop completely changing the awards every damn year. Adjustments could be made, sure. And due to the dynamic nature of games (which you pointed out), I think that minor changes would be made more often than in, say, the Oscars. But overhauling the categories and process year in and year out serves no one. Not the hobby, not the awards, not the award organizers, not the gamers. It's a one-way ticket to total irrelevance, which seems a shame considering the amount of work that goes into the awards.

[ethan_greer]

If you really don't like the awards changing from year to year, then stop griping about them. If you think that they need to change yet again to "fix" them, then prepared to be dissapointed two years from now. If not every year.

I just (re)noticed this.  That's a Catch-22 if ever there was one...  :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Ethan, I'm awfully confused when you refer to me making any suggestions about how to fix the awards. I didn't make any such suggestion, and have no idea what you're talking about. For the record, my position on the Origins awards has nothing to do with fixing or altering them. It's really just a big shrug for me.

Best,
Ron

[ethan_greer]

Hey Ron,

That's why the most important observation about the Origins Awards for me, from the page Ethan linked to, is how the categories have shifted wildly all over the place so frequently. I can understand a slow-ish evolution of the categories, which I only presume has happened for any awards process over the years. But why such ... flailing?

This is what I was referring to when I said I liked what you had to say. Yes, you didn't supply any solution, but I didn't mean to imply that you had. Poor wording on my part.