Continuing the discussion from What do the XYZZY's mean to you? (Future of the awards):
I think this would be cool, though maybe shooting less high than those two would be better lol
It’s worthwhile to ask the question: “What niche would a new award fill that the IMDB awards (and possibly the XYZZYs) do not already fill?”
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This sounds similar to the selection process for the baseball National Hall of Fame:
- screening committee of baseball writers create the ballot
- members of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America (BBWAA; sportswriters)
- must have covered 10 consecutive seasons; eligibility ends 10 years after they reach lifetime status (there are about 400 electors)
- each writer can elect a maximum of 10 eligible players
- there cannot be any formal discussion about candidates (writers can still post about who they’re choosing and why they’re choosing them, but each person chooses independently)
- a player must receive a supermajority of 75% of the votes from eligible BBWAA members to be inducted into the Hall of Fame
If we do something similar, we could come up with certain criteria (games released, games reviewed, etc.) for electors, have a round of independent nominations, then decide based on the majority.
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I think the best way to do this would be for the IFDB Awards to have a private poll only available for folks with the most Frequent Fiction points in that calendar year. IFDB’s top reviewers could discuss, nominate, and vote for their favorites in communication. They, more than anyone, know what the best games of the year are.
I think separately there may be something to having an award “ceremony” for IFDB Awards, like we do for IFComp.
Also, the XYZZY Awards did a “Xyzzymposium” soliciting articles from individuals to discuss the nominees in various categories in 2015 for the 2014 calendar year. Xyzzymposium 2014: Gabriel Murray on Best Story | The XYZZY Awards
The Xyzzymposium was a ton of work, way more work than running an award ceremony, and I’m not at all surprised that it never happened again. (Sam announced that it would happen again in 2018, but it didn’t.)
If someone wanted to volunteer to run a Xyzzymposium (or an analogous thingy for the IFDB Awards), anyone could do it, starting now. They’d either need to write all the reviews themself or rustle up more volunteers to write the reviews in a timely fashion. But I’m skeptical that anybody has time or energy for that.
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I’m all in favor of an award ceremony! Those are always fun.
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My only request is that if something starts up, it be run by a committee so that it doesn’t place excessive pressure on a single individual.
I personally would not be interested in an individual effort, no matter how competent that individual might be.
The rest of it (awards, reviews, and celebs) sounds fun to me. I would be glad to help out in some capacity.
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Now there’s an idea: an IF Hall of Fame 
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I have thought that it would be kind of cool for the Rosebush to host an updated version of the XYZZYmposium — since that kind of considered deep-dive analysis, written at posture and not in a competition rush, is one thing that the current awards/events landscape doesn’t provide — but haven’t done much thinking about what that would like like since the awards haven’t run since the idea occurred. I do agree that we’d probably need some folks to pre-commit to writing something to make it work, since the Rosebush team is mighty but not up to doing something like this all by our lonesomes.
(This isn’t at all a dig on Dan’s stewardship of the awards, I know he’s worked incredibly hard on them in the face of incredible hardship and I’m not really trusting myself to post in the other thread without getting very upset).
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What about a “Community Superstar Award” article every year? There are lots of folks here who don’t write games, but who grease the rails considerably for authors. There are people who exhaustively answer tech questions, beta test patiently, review, and who are excellent and goodhearted participants in all things IF. Of course, there is considerable crossover here with authors, but it’s sad that there are many people who keep the IF boat afloat who never get any accolades except for in author thank-you notes.
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The XYZZY Awards were the only awards that included a category for something other than games themselves (technological developments). It would be a real shame to lose that. Perhaps there could be other non-game categories too, like community events/services? Harder to vote on though.
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One major feature of current award ceremonies is having a surprise reveal. Since the IFDB award vote totals are public, there is less surprise (although sometimes there are last minute changes).
An awards ceremony could be fun if it focused on winners having time to say a few awards.
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I guess we could introduce secret balloting on IFDB? (Maybe a first round with public ballots followed by a second round with secret ballots?)
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On IFDB, you could allow voting for non-games if you just had people type their votes into poll comments. You could make all the comments hidden for a particular poll.
(Although maybe it would be easier to set up a ballot like that somewhere else instead of on IFDB?)
What problem does an annual awards series solve? The community excels at celebrating newly released games and responding to them thoughtfully. Is it worth the added effort to reinforce that the things that are popular are popular? The 2022 Best Game was According to Cain, which won Miss Congeniality at IFComp. The runners up were The Absence of Miriam Lane, second place at IFComp; The Archivist and the Revolution, fourth place at IFComp; Computerfriend, which had just been voted 38th Place in Victor Gijsbers’ Top 50 of All Time poll; and The Spectators, second place at Ectocomp. It turns out that games that polled well polled well.
Recently, I read Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which won the 2024 Booker Prize, and I could see why: it seemed preternaturally likely to be picked by an award committee. I am not an award committee; the next book in my queue was The Alexiad, a history written by a Byzantine princess; for what was I searching by begging the Booker for book recs? To have 2024 epitomized? Yes, Orbital’s strengths and flaws feel very 2024. But what was 2024, that I should care to endure it again? Why am I expected to understand the times in which I live? Nobody before has.
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Agreed. My views on the XYZZYs are honestly indifferent - they are very important, sure, but not the most important thing on my mind - and yes it would be sad to see them go, but it is not the end of the world if they do. I think either the XYZZYs should be done by Pinkunz, or whoever he hands the leads to, OR they don’t happen. I know a lot of people would disagree, but that’s my two cents. But yes, if they continue it should be a volunteer effort.
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