I was curious about this, too, so I added a “History” section to XYZZY Awards - IFWiki
History
- Originally organized by Eileen Mullin in 1997, on XYZZYnews. Over time, other volunteers assisted Eileen. In 2009, when announcing the awards, Eileen wrote, “Huge thanks to Lucian Smith, Dan Shiovitz, and David Welbourn for organizing and hosting absolutely everything.”
- In 2010, the 2009 XYZZY Awards were organized by Dan Shiovitz on xyzzyawards.org (archive). “David Welbourn tirelessly catalogues games of the previous year, Lucian Smith is master of ceremonies at the awards presentation, and Dan Shiovitz does the site maintenance and admin work.” The link to “email the competition organizers” went to Dan Shiovitz.
- In 2011, 2012, and 2013, the FAQ page remained the same, but Sam Kabo Ashwell posted all of the announcements to intfiction.org.
- In 2014, the 2013 XYZZY Awards were formally, officially organized by Sam Kabo Ashwell. Sam has organized every XYZZY Award since then.
- In 2024, Sam announced that he was handing over the XYZZY Awards to pinkunz.
At every handoff, from Eileen, to Dan Shiovitz, to Sam, to pinkunz, the previous organizer handed the competition off to the subsequent organizer.
We already did that; that’s what the IFDB Awards are, except for the part about declaring “XYZZY Awards” dead.
Nobody is in a position to officially declare XYZZY dead except for Sam, pinkunz, or maybe Dan Shiovitz, who still owns the xyzzyawards.org domain.