After getting a lot of feedback on the section of my proposal involving the selection of the products to be included on the Final Ballot, I am making the following revision to improve the overall proposal:


Selection of Products for the Final Ballot
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The chairperson of the Academy will appoint, with the advice and consent of the GAMA Directors, one or more Special Masters for each of the ORIGINS Award categories to determine the products which will appear on the Final Ballot.

If the Chairperson appoints more than one Special Master to a given category, the Chairperson will be responsible for determining, in advance, how the group of Special Masters will resolve ties and resolve debates.

Special Masters will be drawn from the ranks of the Academy of Gaming Arts and Design members. They will represent individuals with a broad-based knowledge of the category in question. No person will serve as a Special Master for more than one category per year. The identity of the Special Masters will be kept confidential. Publishers who wish to ensure that their products are reviewed by the Special Masters can send those products to the Chairperson who will ensure they are forwarded to the appropriate Special Masters in a timely manner.

The Special Masters will be appointed on or before the first day of January in each calendar year. They will present their proposed slate of nominees to the Chairperson on or before the first day of March in each calendar year.

Each slate of nominees will consist of up to 7 products, and up to 4 alternates. 3 of the nominated products will reflect the marketshare leaders, by unit volume, of products eligible for nomination in the category, where marketshare volume is determined by a process acceptable to the Chairperson and the GAMA Directors. Only one product per publisher will be added to the nominations list per category as a marketshare leader. If two or more products would qualify as marketshare leaders from the same publisher, the Special Masters will select the next product in sequence from a different publisher. If no method is available to determine the marketshare leaders that is acceptable, this criteria will not be used in the category in question.

In the event that a publisher has one or more products nominated in a given category, the Chairperson will notify the publisher in question immediately following receipt of the nomination list and ask if they wish to exercise their right to remove a product from the nominations list. The publisher in question will have 10 business days to respond. If the publisher exercises this right, the next alternate product in sequence will take the place of the withdrawn nomination.

The other 4 products on the nominations list will be selected by the Special Masters at the discretion of the Special Masters, with the objective of ensuring that the nominations list represents the very best products eligible for nomination in the category in question.

I'm modifying my revised proposal to deal with the issue of the confidentiality of the Special Masters.

Originally, my intent in keeping their identity secret was to avoid problems they might experience with future employers (or other kinds of relationships) based on the choices they make when compiling the nomination list.

I'm altering the proposal to reveal the identities of the Special Masters when the Final Ballot is made public in the interests of transparency and ballot integrity.

Ryan