Indie RPG Awards?

[Valamir]

I think the requirement for payment is a good one.

If one were to put a list of every indie game available for payment on the web in list, and every indie game available for free in the other...I think you would find that the ratio of quality to crap is much higher on the payment list.  This is for the simple reason that requiring payment acts as a kind of built in reverse filter.

That's not to say by any means that all free games are crap or that all for pay games are quality (hardly).  Rather it is to say, that for 1 person who has to familiarize themselves with all of the games that qualify for the award before handing the award out, we need to recognize that the list of qualifiers has to be kept to a practical level.

There are literally tremendous hordes of free stuff available on the internet.  There is no possible way for anyone to be familiar with all of it.  The simplest and least subjective filter I can think of is to simply eliminate that horde of material from contention all together.

Anyone who REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to qualify for the judgeing, has merely to slap a paypal link on their site and make a for pay version of their game.  The way I figure it, if one is not willing to make that little effort, how can one expect Andy (or anyone) to make the effort required to judge everything that's out there.  As it is the task seems pretty daunting.

[quozl]

I agree that filtering is necessary.  I disagree that this is the right way to do it.  Here's a suggestion for an alternative:  in order to be considered for the award, a game must have 10 (or some other arbitrary number) nominees.  Now you've filtered out all games that don't have at least 10 fans, which measures quality better than the decision to charge money for your game or offer it for free.

[Jonathan Walton]

Why is this being limited only to games that require an exchange of payment?  Would Sorcerer be of less quality if Ron won the lottery and decided to let everyone download Sorcerer for free?  What does the cost of the game have to do with quality?  I really don't understand the reasoning here.

Responding on Andy's behalf, I'm guessing his reasoning goes something like this:

"Hi!  My name is Bob and I've played D&D for all of 3 years.  I've decided I want to write my own game.  It's got 12 attributes that you get by rolling 3D6.  It's got trolls, elves, humans, and things.  But it also has giant one-celled organisms, which makes it different.  I've stuck it up on my Geocities website and would like to submit it for consideration.  Oh, yeah, and I know about 300 guys like me who are doing the same thing.  Thanks!"

Obviously, commercial games aren't necessarily better than non-commercial games.  But commercial games certainly take more effort to produce, since, presumably, people are actually going to buy the damn things.  Limiting it to commercial games keeps everyone and his brother from submitting whatever trite idea they've just come up with.

Later.
Jonathan

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Ultimately, everything in this thread boils down to one thing: Whatever Andy wants.

If he wants to give twenty awards, that's fine; if it's a single award, that's fine too. If he wants to consider games-for-money only, that's his prerogative; if he wants to consider any subset of RPGs at all, ditto. All of our input can only be that: input. If he decides not to go with a particular set of reasoning or recommendation, well, that's not ours to criticize.

One last point: I really wish people would grasp the difference between independent as used at the Forge and alternative as bandied about in casual speech. They aren't the same things.

Best,
Ron

[quozl]

In case it wasn't clear from my adamant rants, I agree with Ron about what this boils down to.  I'm not saying what has to be done.  I'm only offering input which can be considered or ignored.

[Marco]

As his idea was posted here, it is up for debate and even criticism. I don't think Andy's a schmuck for putting an award up for pay-only games, I think he's not creating:

... an "award ceremony" for Indies game designers and publishers?

It's an award for indie for-pay games. And I do think that it'll exclude the non-alternative rules-heavy games since most of them are free. Now, one might ask why there's confusion about this:

One last point: I really wish people would grasp the difference between independent as used at the Forge and alternative as bandied about in casual speech. They aren't the same things.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=115&highlight=indie
Jorad Sorensen: "Is Gary [Gygax] even aware of the indie/Narrativist games out there? I doubt it."

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=98&highlight=indie
Mytholder:"75+% of gamers are never going to be interested in any of the indie games. You've got to find the people who are looking for something new and different, but don't know what's out there."

Jake Norwood: "Many indie games have an advantage over this because their systems are so focused (sometimes overly so, limiting the lifespan of a campaign, but that is rarely an issue with games that people intend to play for less than a month)."

Mytholder: "Indie games, which don't have to worry about market share and appealing to as wide a cross-section of gamer as possible, are free to concentrate more on "extreme" styles of gaming, which the GNS model attempts to identify and define. It's a tool which indie game designers can probably take more advantage of than "industry" designers. "

kwill: "overall, I guess indie is about experimentation: finding alternate methods and achieving surprising results"

xiombrag: "The idea here is to keep that balance of power in place, to keep players and GM comfortable, while simultanously encouraging exploration of the boundaries, without throwing those boundaries to the wind like some indie RPGs do."

There were more ... I think "indie" as used at The Forge it does often mean 'alternative.' Most of the games discussed here are 'alternative.' So maybe "as used" isn't the same as "as defined?"

-Marco

[Andy Kitkowski]

Heh.  I've been kind of out of it for the past two days so I haven't replied.  I better snap to it! (^.^)

>>>
Ultimately, everything in this thread boils down to one thing: Whatever Andy wants.
>>>

Essentially, yes.

I did come here to run some ideas off of people, though, but in the end I want(ed) to "lay down the law" on certain issues.  I will have to be heavy-handed and perhaps even "unfair", but it's the only way to get the process satrted, and it can always change later.

Having said that, though, Marco brought up an excellent, moving point through his Linux/Apache metaphor. Thanks. Some may say "Apples and Oranges", but hey, his metaphor acutally made me really rethink the free/pay distinction. (BTW, Marco, I agree with Andrew Martin that you should at least allow for a "donate" link for all your team's time and effort)

Anyway, since a little bit before that, my ideas have changed a bit. I had hoped to present them after I polished them off a little, but I think I'll reveal a bit about them just so we don't have to tread on old ground.

Here's what I was thinking recently:

* Have One Award, maybe two (no more) "sub awards".  After that, other honors will be given, they just won't be called "awards".

* Allow Free RPGs to compete with Sell RPGs, in all of their categories.

* Voting: Voting will be done (hopefully, if they want to, that is) by anyone who's produced an Indie RPG FOR SALE over the past five years (Jan 1st, 1997). Additional voting will be done by producers of free RPGs- But only those people who were nominated (See below).

***********

This will make my work a little tougher, but I think I've come up with a framework for a system that works. Here's a rough guideline:

1) There's no way I'm going to research, by myself, all the Free RPGs out there.  Even attempting to go out and look at the ones that were produced this year (and sorting those from the mass of RPGs out there) would be a daunting task.

2) Therefore, I'm going to, near the end of the year, send out Press Releases to every RPG-related site I know of, asking producers of free RPGs from that year to send a brief description and a link to my site.

3) When I send an email out, later, calling on Indie RPG publishers to participate, I'll ask them to visit a link where they can "write in" a Free RPG for nomination. The link ot the "known games fo 2002" will also be supplied, but they can certainly write in anything else as well, as long as it was made that year. That write-in vote process will last approx one week.

4) At the end of the week, the top three to five Free RPGs will be tallied, and the makers will be emailed asking if they wish to participate with the voting process.  All those that agree, from this point on, will be given the same consideration (votes, representation, etc) as the "Pay Only" RPG folks.

* It may seem unfair that the RPG Sellers, in effect, "choose" the Free RPGers for voting and representation, but that's about as far as I can go without putting more research time into the award than it's worth.

5) From that point on, the Game is On. All the known "For Sale" RPGs for that year, as well as the 3-5 nominated Free RPGs, will go on an online ballot.  All the aforementioned folks get one vote.  At the end of the week, votes are tallied, and awards are posted and sent out.

So that's what I'm thinking of so far. Any other ideas?

As for the other kinds of awards and honors, I will be deciding those over the next few weeks.  I might come back for some advice on those, but not yet.

-Andy

[Valamir]

I like the 1 or 2 awards and a bunch of honorable mentions format.

I think it is important to recognize things like "best layout" or "best website", or "best art", or "best overall production quality" or even "best index" if only as an encouragement that these things matter.

But the "too many awards dilutes the value" point is a good one.  I think you can get both by having only 1 or 2 core "awards" and then point out which games scored particularly well in each of these other categories.

This is particularly true if you actually use these categories as part of the criteria by which you judge a game.  The winner is the game that scores highest overall, but the honorable mentions are ones that scores highest in an individual category, but not high enough overall to win.

[Marco]

I think your compromise is an excellent idea. I'd endorse such an award.

Thanks for listening.
-Marco

[Valamir]

Question regarding the "new this year parameter."

1) is there a seperate award for new supplements or only new core rules
2) if a game has a new supplement in a current year but the core rules came out prior to the beginning of the award, will the core rules be made eligible as a result of the new supplement.
3) will the first year of the award reach back into older game material, or is stuff from 2001 just outta luck...

[Ron Edwards]

Whew!

I'm relieved about the commerce/free revision. I've been biting my tongue throughout the thread in order not to influence Andy by "what Ron thinks," but hoping that the awards weren't going to be restricted to commercial ones only. Marco's arguments have been extremely cogent in my opinion.

Two points for clarifying things, Marco:

1) Yes, Andy presented his ideas here for critique, and critique he shall get. If anyone was getting the idea that his conclusions were to be reached through any kind of consensus or approval, though, I wanted to scotch that notion up-front.

2) As far as "independent" goes, it's defined in a particular way on the Forge ... but as you say, people use it more widely than that. It bugs me every time - hence my comment.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Actually, I was on the fence about the whole Free/Pay thing. But we have a problem. If this is to be an annual award, then the award can only go to games that were released in the last year. This is pretty easy to determine for a Pay game, as there will most likely be a date that it started selling. At that point Pay games tend not to change much. They are "Complete" or at least complete enough to sell.

Free games, however, have no such limitation. One can add a few edits to a document and then call it a "New Edition". Which means it's hard to determine when the game becoame "live" officially, and for purposes of the contest.

That said, PDF publishing for pay has this problem to an extent as well. Can a game only be considered once, regardless of edition?

And, as I think about it, what do you do the first year? Do you disclude Sorcerer because it was published last year? Or do you include every current Indie game in existence as potential candidates?

Just some hurdles to check off before continuing.

Mike

[quozl]

And, as I think about it, what do you do the first year? Do you disclude Sorcerer because it was published last year? Or do you include every current Indie game in existence as potential candidates?

Just some hurdles to check off before continuing.

Mike

A possible solution:

Change Step 3 so only a certain number of nominations can be made.  Make no restrictions as to what year the rpg came out.
Change Step 5 so that only those rpg's nominated a certain number of times appear on the ballot.

This would limit the voting so we'd be voting for perhaps 10 rpg's instead of 100.  Also, more recent rpg's would be nominated more for the simple reason that they would be remebered more by those doing the nominating.  This would, in effect, leave you with a list of rpg's that mostly came out within the last year or so with a few notable exceptions from past years.

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm. This might work. The rule would have to be that an RPG could only be nominated once ever. And that those that won would be retired from the competition as well. Otherwise you'd get the same field over and over again, and possible repeat winners.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I still like the idea that Andy simply picks the winners as he sees fit, and screw all the voting. (Unlike the commercial/free issue, I'm not shy about blatantly trying to influence his decision, regarding this issue. But as ever, up-to-Andy is the rule.)

Best,
Ron