The nomination round of voting in the 2013 Awards is open. You can log in here and then cast your votes here. The first round will remain open through March 9th.
A reminder: it is not OK to canvass for votes, either for your own games or for someone else’s. Talking about the Awards is fine, but “hey guys, this game I wrote is up for an award, go and vote for it” is not, regardless of whether you do so on a major game blog or your personal Facebook page. Exercise your best judgement.
The exception to this rule is the set of (experimental) For Your Consideration polls on IFDB for the Individual categories – Best Individual Puzzle, Best Individual Player Character and Best Individual Non-Player Character. These awards can be more challenging to vote for, so if you’re struggling to come up with something and would like to try a few more games before you make your mind up, or if you think there’s a puzzle or character that deserves a second look, go forth and have fun.
It looks as though the reason that this slipped through is that the original IFDB entry didn’t have a date of release on it; the page later got updated with a date of release, but after we had done our first sweep to compile the list. We later did a second sweep, but using a method where only new additions - rather than edits to existing games - would show up.
Er, would it be okay to make the general For Your Consideration poll instead? It seems like the three specific polls are the only ones allowed this year.
As long as it’s made clear that it’s not a straw poll (i.e. don’t keep upvoting things that have already been mentioned), I’m OK with this; it doesn’t mess with the intent of the rule, which is to prevent people from unleashing communities that have only been exposed to some narrow subset of the nominated games. We’ve pretty much assumed that IFDB represents neutral ground anyway. Or the most neutral we can hope for.
A reminder: you have until Sunday to get your nominations in.
The first round is really the most crucial round, as far as I’m concerned - and, because of the broader distribution, it’s the one where your vote can make the most difference. So if you give the slightest hint of a damn about the results, get your butt over to xyzzyawards.org/?p=257 and vote.