Whole-heartedly agree with @StJohnLimbo and would go one step further and suggest that some of that reasoning applies to system-level awards.
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Sounds lke a good idea, assuming we do not have too many categories next year. I’ve heard several outside intfiction say that there are too many categories which makes it confusing. Of course, getting rid of Author’s Choice will help a lot. Also, I don’t see much point in the “feelies category” but that is just my very personal opinion.
I guess “obscure” depends very much on ones interest 
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Yeah, that’s tricky—it does seem like “multimedia” awards could be distinguished from the XYZZYs by breaking it out into “outstanding audio” and “outstanding graphics,” for example, but if people already feel like there are too many categories, maybe that’s not a good idea.
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This is a pretty interesting idea. Even if it was allowed, I don’t think I would ever vote on my own game unless the “opponent games” were obviously full of bugs or something like that but it may be useful for the smaller categories. However, some might find it tempting to vote for their own game one day before deadline, if there otherwise will be a tie or something like that.
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I feel like if I voted for my own game to tie-break it would be so unsatisfying, like I didn’t really earn it. Unless the other author in the lead had already voted for their own game and I was just canceling that out.
Speaking of, though, there is someone who’s been voting for their own game (hhrichards), and I’ve been wondering if those votes were going to get removed. It doesn’t really make any difference since there are no other votes for the game on any of the polls, but technically it is against the rules.
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Hmm thanks for the heads up! I will remove them eventually, but I’ll make it a priority the more it affects the polls. I will definitely remove it in the next few days though.
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Totally with you here. The idea of voting for my own game feels all kinds of weird and wrong. If other people want to do it, I guess I can’t judge them for it, but I can’t imagine how allowing this would improve any kind of comp. I mean, the whole idea of Winning is odd anyway, and Winning because you made yourself win does not square. Unless you’re a career politician.
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I think there’s a bit of a Catch 22 here, because if you’re the kind of person who’d vote for your own game as the best, almost by definition you’re lacking that blend of empathy and neurosis that marks out the actual best writers.
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The bad effects will probably outweigh the good by far but it was interesting to consider it.
I agree.
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Does suggest a certain lack of confidence in one’s own work!
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Hmm, yes, that’s a good point.
Although, let me remark that the selfish tie-break situation can also occur under the current rules, if an author’s game X gets the same number of votes as another game Y, which he voted for. Then he can withdraw his vote for Y, breaking the tie in his favour. Especially in the smaller categories, that might not even be an unlikely situation.
But admittedly, it’s not completely analogous/symmetric, because under the hypothetical self-vote rules, the author could break a tie against any other game (by voting for his own), whereas under the current rules, he can only break a tie against games which he voted for.
About the tentative idea in general, I do get the points and arguments which were made, and I myself also prefer if the awards are conducted in the spirit of a celebration of peers by peers rather than a cut-throat competition or something like that, so I’m not really advocating to allow self-voting, I just find it interesting to discuss.
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Wait, it’s not allowed? I mean, I guess I didn’t read the instructions. (I didn’t vote for my own game, I just wasn’t aware that this was a thing).
It seems like there’s a bunch of people in general agreement that it’s not great, but, like, if a candidate for political office didn’t vote for themselves I’d be asking serious questions about the nature of their run.
I feel like, if one thinks their game’s better than the other candidates, there’s no reason one shouldn’t vote for themselves. I guess the issue you might have is that it isn’t - and you know it, but want the prize - but it wouldn’t really influence the result unless you were already really close in the running. And if one were intending to cheat with sockpuppets, a no self-voting rule wouldn’t deter one, would it?
e: I guess political offices aren’t, like, exactly analogous; the person running for office has explicitly chosen to run, whereas in the case of awards you don’t need to opt-in your game. That said, I still think that, if you believe your game is the best game of the year, the fact that you made it shouldn’t stop you from being able to vote.
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If a future rule change was considered, allowing an author to vote for their own game could be simply framed as a way of an author putting their game(s) forward for consideration in any eligible categories. In some ways it’s not that different to the thread where authors are discussing why they think people should consider voting for their game. As long as there is no stigma attached to the self-vote, and the understanding is that it’s part of the nomination process, then hopefully most authors would do it and it would end up having little effect on proceedings. It would basically just be you, as the author, officially entering your game into the awards. Someone else could do it, by voting for it that first time, but you could also do it.
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I like this solution, actually. If we create the system to assume everyone votes for their own games (in addition to other ones), then we can just make the self-vote be something else entirely. I feel like nomination idea is perfect.
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I’m not sure how the polls are currently set up. Are people restricted to one vote per category? If so, that’s the only downside to the solutions I proposed. You would be using your “one vote” to nominate your own game.
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I like @8bitAG 's idea a lot. Authors know their own games the best, and can decide which categories their games belong in. They can nominate their work in any category they feel is appropriate. Other voters would still make the difference.
I don’t think voters are restricted to one vote per category under the current rules, so authors could still vote for other games they deem deserving.
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You can vote on as many games as you like in each category.
I don’t think we can expect all authors to vote for their own game - they might be away or not be comfortable with it etc.
Yes, it is important to remove that stigma first. I can probably come up with 10 different possible reasons why authors are voting on their own games. In above posts, there has already been some indications of such stigma. Not everyone reads the rules with 100+ lines (at least when viewed on my phone there are quite a lot of lines). It is sometimes hard to convince players to vote.
So if somebody breaks the rules, we should tell them in a private message. They may not have read the rules.
I believe something like this was proposed (but not implemented) to streamline the nomination process for the XYZZYs. It would have been part of a separate voting round, though. I think it would have been an interesting experiment had it worked out on the organizers’ end. XYZZY Awards 2020, and an announcement for 2021 | The XYZZY Awards
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Or you can bypass the stigma entirely by removing the choice for the author and add one automatic vote by system to all games intended to represent author’s vote for their own game. Of course you will still need to police for authors voting(a second time) by themselves, but that needs to be done anyway for sockpuppet accounts or whatnot.
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What about multi-author games? If we’re treating this as a nomination for a given category, it would make more sense to me if only one of a game’s authors were allowed to vote, but you’d have to be explicit about that in the rules.
(I don’t think it would make that much difference to the outcome unless a group of people decided to sweep the awards by making Cragne Manor 2: Electric Boogaloo*, but I did want to put that out there.)
Edit: *This is a joke and not something I think would actually happen, to be clear!
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